Sustainability MBA – A Program of My Own

Posted: January 28th, 2011 | Author: JenniferSRoberts | Filed under: Sustainability | 2 Comments »

After making the tough decision last September to not continue a formal MBA program in sustainability, I decided to cobble together a program of my own. My goal was to mix good readings, tactical experience (if I could find it)  and meet with others already working in the field.

I outlined a pretty broad list of items I wanted to learn. Well, I am 4 months in and I thought it would be good to review where I’m at. You can see the outline I posted back in October.

I got through the EPA lifecycle  (barely). Gawd, was it dry, like chasing melba toast with saltines but contained a number of great project management reminders. What’s interesting about each of these methodologies, whether it’s GRI, Six Sigma, EPA, etc is that they all share a number of common elements: importance of stakeholders/agreement, scope definition, status updates, etc. This is not to suggest that there isn’t something worthwhile and unique in each but that they all share a common framework.

GRI Training

I did finish the GRI training down in Albuquerque, which was awesome. Nancy from the ISOS Group provides an in-depth, comprehensive introduction to GRI principles. There are a number of hands-on excerises and lots of classroom discussion. I left feeling very inspired and am trying to finding a local guinea pig, who would be willing to let me lead a GRI exercise. I think GRI can be a particular valuable reporting tool for a small business; the type of records and monitoring that are required for GRI just make good business sense in many ways. The first year’s set up can take some time but the long term value of really understanding your business and its place within both the natural environment and community cannot be overstated. I wrote up my perspective on GRI and the small business advantage for a great group in Austin called Business Earth. I met Melinda, who is an accountant ++ with them, and was so impressed by what Business Earth is trying to do.

Net Zero Energy Courses

I took the Building Net Zero Energy Homes &  Businesses in December down in Denver. Dan Chiras was the instructor and handed out a great book called The Homeowner’s Guide to Renewable Energy. These types of courses or discussions can be so hard to make interesting because there really isn’t anything that sexy about insulation, HVAC systems, tight building envelopes and windows.  But there was tons of great information to learn and really if we would just orient are new housing developments correctly we could eliminate a huge chunk of our energy needs. The rest of us in older homes are stuck retrofitting but that’s ok.

I have not gotten to statistics. The book is on the shelf. My goal was to get stuck in when there was a big snow here in Boulder, but there’s been very little snow. So, really this is not my fault.

The networking is going ok. I have not gotten to a Boulder Green Drinks in awhile but I continue to reach out to people, who are working in the industry and doing some interesting things. On the whole, everyone I have talked has been tremedously generous with their time and eager to point me in the right direction for more information, resources or other people to meet.

I have to give a big shout out to @billkeller, who gave me tons of great material to review. It’s so interesting to see how theory is applied to actual projects. Great Stuff. Thanks, Bill!

Other Business Books/Resources

• The New Capitalist Manifesto (my review)- I really can’t say enough about this book. Here’s the Amazon link.
• Linchpin – I think everyone but me had already read this.
• HBR – Harvard Business Review Blogs
• Can you think of others?

I really need to compile a list of Web/blog/news I read that have also helped.

Next Steps

Obviously, I need to get stuck into Stats but are there are other books, resources, people I should be getting to know? Any input is appreciated!

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