Every job is a climate job with a role to play in helping to solve climate change. Last week I shared why now is the time to make this idea main stream. Core to advancing climate impact is establishing the bar you will measure your change.

Measure what matters

Most businesses have key performance indicators (KPIs) that leadership monitors to track growth. These trends are not goals in themselves, but tools to help track progress.

As an aspiring intrapreneur, seeking to make change from within your organization or an entrepreneur just starting out on your own how might you align to an important KPI in your sector or business?

Choosing the right KPI

"You can't improve what you don't measure." A quote often attributed to management guru Peter Drucker, a sentiment that has drawn admiration and groans alike. As professionals we are accustomed to looking for signals of success in data, but do not want to become beholden to it. Wearing data blinders can focus our attention and blunt our creativity leading only to incremental improvements not innovation.

Measuring at human scale

It is tempting to choose a KPI that is shared by your business. Certainly, we should select a measure that ladders up to our companies mission, but we should be careful not to single-handedly try and take on the mission of our business. We must creatively find a metric that matches our sphere of influence and skills. Start by answering a few key questions like what is in my control? What keeps my manager up at night?

Reframing problems to opportunities

When we only see problems it is easy to get discouraged or move on and look elsewhere for opportunities. An abundance mindset is about reframing these challenges as opportunities even in the face of adversity. Some of the most inspiring and impactful design work i've seen was born out of constraint not excess. It is uncovering these constraints that stokes creativity.

Honest Reporting

Tracking and reflecting on our work helps us grow with intentionality.

I encourage you to share your metric with peers, managers and even openly if not in conflict with your businesses operational rules. We don't want to violate any NDAs!

I find sharing my KPI helps me feel accountable and help me make steady progress. Sharing my goal of running three sustainable programs at the All Hands meeting in front of the leadership, my manager, peers and reports it makes certain I do it — or be publicly shamed.

Making aggressive announcements excites teammates by building momentum making them want to join your project or track their own KPIs. Establishing your goal and measure of success is the foundation of spreading ideas.

These are my KPIs for next year

In 2023 I am committed to a mix of personal and professional tasks that all relate to my career. This is my approach for tracking my goals and how I will track my success over the year.

Writing every day
🏗 Write daily and publish at least weekly
✅ Check off a daily task
✅ Publish material
Sustainable design on majority of my projects
🏗 Host 12 sustainability project kick-offs at work
✅ Complete 12 sessions
Publish one sustainability toolkit at work
🏗 Create a tool to help designers execute on sustainable design practices for one specific task
✅ Publishing the tool internally
✅ run an internal training session
✅ leverage tool on three projects

The key is I have a sandbag goal that I know I can attain and use it to build momentum in my stretch goals. Key to driving success is repetition and establishing good habits to chip away towards attaining your goals.

If this topic is interesting to you leave a comment or like. Please feel free to suggest future topics you'd like me to research and share.

How to make every job a climate job

💡Headline: How to make every job a climate job 👤Who: professionals 🎬So that: anyone can

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