SQUEEZING STRATEGY INTO A SMALL ORGANISATION

✍ Scribed by Lisa Andrews; Jason Palmer

• Book ID: 101275780
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Weight: 65 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0968-9427
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0925(199703)4:1<15::aid-ema57>3.0.co;2-3

✦ Synopsis

Small organizations face enormous pressures on their time and money. This often shuts doors of opportunity and confines them to a small space: thinking only about day to day operations and missing the wider (more long-term) picture. Yet to address environmental issues coherently, an organization needs to step back from fire-fighting; to think strategically. Here, a method that succeeded in helping a small organization to lose its myopia and draw up a strategy is described. The fruits of the process are also presented in terms of the definition of a corporate environmental strategy, summarizing this as a mission statement before clarifying specific areas for action within a written set of aims as an environmental policy.

OVERVIEW

A small Warwickshire company employing 22 people operates in the field of environmental technology, manufacturing clean=clean-up technology widgets that reduce and recover water-borne pollutants. It did not have a written environmental strategy or policy.

Two facilitators ran a tightly structured workshop aimed at: (i) defining a corporate environmental strategy; (ii) summarizing this as a mission statement; and (iii) clarifying specific areas for action within a written set of aims as an environmental policy.

The workshop lasted two and a half hours (further details in Appendix 1: Programme and Running the Workshop). Four company employees were involved: one senior management and three with operational responsibility (one from the workshop floor, the factory chemist and the sales manager). The participants were asked to complete a preparatory questionnaire before coming to the workshop (Appendix 2). The questionnaire aimed to get them thinking about strategy and to help them consider their own motivation for having an environmental strategy.