Post Green Teams

Post Green Teams or harnessing the enthusiasm of individual green champions is an effective way to implement sustainability strategies that require input, coordination, and dedication from stakeholders with a broad range of expertise and backgrounds. Sustainable operations require team efforts by committed groups of informed and engaged internal staff with holistic visions and concrete goals, who identify and implement appropriate projects, practices, and policies. An effective, inclusive approach helps ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals, and allows personnel across multiple offices to share the responsibilities.

U.S. Ambassador Thorne makes remarks at green embassy event in Rome.

Image Source: U.S. Embassy Rome

Following is a list of suggested steps that posts can take to form successful Post Green Teams. Consult OBO’s Post Green Team Toolkit for additional resources.

1. Gain upper management endorsement and support.

The Introduction to the Guide includes five steps that COMs can follow to begin the journey toward eco-diplomacy. Note that step two is “Ensure that a Post Green Team is organized and empowered to lead.

As volunteer team members may be operating outside of their professional roles and responsibilities, obtaining upper management’s endorsement and support is especially important for successful Post Green Teams. Teams who receive endorsement and support gain authority that they otherwise may not have: to meet, to establish team goals, to gather and disseminate information, and to make recommendations about implementation of policies and practices.

1. Identify leaders.

A Post Green Team’s success depends in large part upon the credibility and effectiveness of its leadership and the degree to which leaders can engender support for the team’s initiatives.

Leadership responsibilities may include the following:

• Organizing, convening, and leading regular team meetings
• Encouraging subject matter experts, representatives, and partners to remain engaged as they balance demands of their official work responsibilities
• Building and leveraging relationships with key stakeholders throughout the mission and with other Department and external entities in order to build momentum
• Leading Post Green Team interactions with staff, sections, team members, and management; coordinating with OBO’s ESD; and raising awareness about the Department’s platform of ecodiplomacy/li>
• Managing and measuring overall progress and results of Post Green Team initiatives and reporting successes and challenges to leadership

2. Identify other team members and partners.

The results of Post Green Teams also depend upon the enthusiasm and knowledge of their members, as well as the breadth and depth of their reach. Ideally, Post Green Team members represent as wide a variety of post sections and offices as possible, and bring expertise in subject matter related to one or more of the impact areas in the Guide. It is important that members bring enthusiasm, that they understand the necessity of the team’s success, and that they are willing to dedicate time and effort to performing their roles and to producing results.

Just as with the team leadership, Post Green Team members typically embody a personal commitment to sustainability values aligned with the Department’s Greening Council and the established guiding principles of eco-diplomacy as represented by the Department’s GDI. Post Green Team members model this personal commitment through their daily behavior.

A member’s responsibilities may include the following:

• Making and keeping commitments to fellow Post Green Team members to model sustainability by consistently demonstrating sustainable actions
• Sharing ideas for strategies to meet Post Green Team goals
• Identifying achievements, opportunities, and challenges within team member’s own sections or offices, and sharing this information with the Post Green Team
• Implementing strategies specifically related to their subject matter expertise in support of federal performance goals

3.Form the team.

Once Post Green Team leadership, team members, and partners have been identified, the team can meet to establish their group norms and roles. These may include:

• Establishing a team purpose by defining the Green Team’s primary goal, mission statement, and guiding principles; and ensuring that the mission statement is post-specific and well aligned with the Department’s mission statement, as well as with host country challenges and opportunities
• Defining the team structures by identifying specific team member roles and responsibilities
• Establishing the team process by defining meeting times, meeting agenda standards, creating standards for communicating with other group members between meetings, and setting standards for the creation and distribution of meeting minutes between meetings, and setting standards for the creation and distribution of meeting minutes

U.S. Embassy San Salvador beach cleanup

Image Source: U.S. Embassy San Salvador

4.Continue building the team

In addition to holding regularly scheduled meetings, Post Green Teams can benefit from conducting wider annual meetings to invigorate their visions, revisit their mission statements, reestablish team goals for the upcoming year, and revisit existing strategies. These meetings should be open to broader groups of interested staff to educate, build awareness, and engage staff. During these meetings, it may be determined that some goals and strategies should be replaced, while others—such as ongoing energy efficiency training during orientation—should remain indefinitely.

Keys to Post Green Team Success

There are several best management practices that can help Post Green Teams manage expectations of mission leaders, inspire post personnel, advocate change, and contribute to success.

Following are the key actions to success gleaned from experienced Post Green Teams:

1.Gain knowledge of post’s context.

Post Green Teams should be aware of, and understand as well as possible, the contexts within which they operate. The quality of the information maintained by the team can determine the level of certainty with which the teams can execute change.

In order to better understand system characteristics—including existing conditions; geographic context; climate; and financial, time, and policies constraints—Post Green Teams can undertake the following tasks:

• Conduct audits for each of the Guide’s impact areas.
• Discuss audit results as a team.
• Identify areas of special interest and priority to post, such as local climates, resource availability, and resource costs.
• Identify Post Green Team and post constraints, such as budgets and key team member availability to contribute and complete strategies. Include short-, mid-, and long-term constraints.

Some potential questions to ask during the goal selection process

1.Select meaningful strategies.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to achieving performance improvements at posts. Some posts may have significant impacts related to energy and water consumption, while other posts’ biggest impacts may be related to their transportation profiles. Posts should use the Guide to identify their top two or three impact areas and focus on those areas first to gain momentum and success. To bring focus to those top-priority impact areas, Post Green Teams should begin with audit and staff engagement strategies; doing so can give teams greater understanding of the issues related to those topics and help them begin to shift occupant behavior toward achieving federal performance goals.

Begin by reading the impact area introductions, using post’s unique characteristics to rank the impact areas from most significant to least. Next, use the audit results and Priority Selection Criteria included in each impact area’s introduction to identify the two to three strategies within the highest ranked impact areas to implement. Consider which strategies can be implemented by the skills of Post Green Team members, and which can create operational savings with quick payback.

Although many potential strategies are included in the Guide, it does not provide an exhaustive list of strategies for meeting any goal. There are other possible strategies beyond what is written within. Seek unique opportunities to motivate others and produce results.

2. Develop an implementation plan.

Strategies provided in the Guide do not provide all the information that Post Green Teams need to create an implementation plan; however, teams can use the Investment and Time metrics contained within each strategy as starting points for discussion. In the implementation plan, Post Green Teams should identify which strategies can be executed in the short term so that the team can begin to develop patterns of success. Include, too, strategies that span multiple years and achieve significant benefit.

While various levels of detail are possible, at minimum, plans should:

• Record the goals and targets.
• Establish current baselines for performance to measure against progress and success.
• Document the selected strategies and how they reinforce established goals. Use worksheet planning tools to document the planning processes.
• Document and verify progress, success, and barriers to implementation. See Post Green Team Planning Worksheet within the Post Green Team Toolkit for an example of how Post Green Teams might document their plan.
• Incorporate lessons learned and modify the plan accordingly.

3. Implement, measure, and communicate results.

Successful implementation, good project management, measurement and reporting of progress, and tracking progress against project goals are activities that are critical to a Post Green Team’s success.

Some activities unique to Post Green Teams include the following:

• Start a Post Green Team webpage. Websites can be an excellent way to share success stories, gain feedback, and raise awareness. U.S. Embassy Beijing notes on its website (see: http://beijing.usembassy-china.org.cn) China’s National Sustainable Development Outline principles and plans as well as current events, reports, and announcements. Other countries use their embassy websites to communicate commitment to sustainability, including the embassies of Chile, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, and Denmark, all of which state their environmental laws and recommendations for green activities by organizations and citizens. U.S. Embassy Madrid includes its ‘Strategic Plan for Climate Change Science Program’.
• Connect with other Post Green Teams. The strategies contained within the Guide are a compilation of those that have been successfully implemented at posts around the world. Consider documenting your experiences in implementing strategies—perhaps using a format similar to the one used in the Guide—and sharing information with posts in neighboring countries. Membership in the League of Green Embassies is one of the best ways to benefit from and contribute to the sharing of greening successes.
• Apply for awards. The Department offers several ways to gain recognition for performance improvements and sustainability policies and programs that help achieve federal performance goals. GDI offers posts the opportunity to share their successes via an interactive, web-enabled map of Greening Success Stories. Annual GDI awards celebrate leaders around the globe who successfully implement sustainability initiatives. (see: http://www.state.gov/m/pri/gdi)