Designing and implementing effective environmental management

"IntroductionThe job of designing and implementing effective environmental management sounds like what one executive, assuming responsibility for a very sick organization with lots of potential described as, ""an insurmountable opportunity"".Effective environmental management is an opportunity, no doubt. Its an unusual, if not unique opportunity. Insurmountable? Maybe not! Indeed, in the authors' experience, the keys to unlocking this opportunity are not in new or complicated technicalities; they are in the existing strengths and successful experience that one has in managing other complex and exacting management issues.To begin, it is necessary to understand what these issues of sustainable development mean to business. What is the nature of this opportunity? What makes it look unsurmountable?New Games: New RulesLawyers have described some of the new rules companies are facing and there is a new game being played; a game characterized by unique challenges.Take two, for example: • The ecological problems to be faced are Mother Nature's business, the political solutions required are our business. This combination of natural problems and political solutions requires the development of new management mechanisms, to bridge the gaps among us, as individuals, as professions, as interest groups and so on; indeed, even as countries;• and gaps there are : about as many gaps as the people involved : many of them with new and changing expectations, often mutually exclusive and not negotiable.The challenge of these relationships and communications among so many different interests is one of the keys to effective environmental management.Like any game, this one has rules and they are new, too. These rules are evident not just in new legislation - tough legislation with draconian penalties; they are also evident in new and exacting business policies, value driven and just as unforgiving of poor performance. Senior management of many companies are speaking about the role of enlightened corporate policies and how important it is for everyone involved that these policies drive and reflect business practices. Absence of day to- day behaviour which evidences the words in action, the policy on the wall of a corporate office or published in an Annual Report is first evidence for the prosecution , not the defence.The challenge of practical policies is another key to effective environmental management.This is a new game, with new rules: the challenge of change."