In 2017, I asked Barbra Batshalom how organizational strategy becomes accountability. Her answer included a contradiction from one of her process-mapping workshops. An executive said the team always completed a particular step. A project manager replied that the step never happened.
Both people were describing the same organization. That gap explains why a sustainability promise cannot be managed from a policy statement alone.
Map the work before the promise
Barbra Batshalom described bringing 20 to 50 people together from different levels and business units to take apart their project-delivery process. They traced barriers at each phase and identified actions within their control. The conversation also exposed places where leaders and project teams held different pictures of how the work was being done.
That disagreement is useful information. A team cannot place a new expectation into the work until it can see the work clearly enough to agree on where the expectation belongs.
Some strategies need a pre-strategy
Barbra shared an example of a company that wanted green leases across the properties it rented. The idea sounded ready, but few leases were approaching renewal and the company did not yet have the necessary legal and real-estate support in place. She called the missing preparation a pre-strategy.
The ambition was not the problem. The sequence was.
Barbra asked, “what's the pre-strategy for the strategy?”
Before a new requirement can become routine, the organization has to identify what must already be true. A needed skill, agreement, source of information, or decision-maker may have to be established first. Naming that preparation as part of the strategy keeps the team from treating a later implementation problem as a lack of commitment.
Accountability has to fit inside project delivery
Barbra Batshalom also described why additional checks can meet resistance. Project schedules were being compressed, budgets were not growing with the work, and teams were coordinating more specialty consultants. Under those conditions, another separate task can feel like more weight on an already crowded project.
Her response was to connect the expectation to work that already occurred. A firm could place an energy target at kickoff, return to it during a design review, connect it to quality control, and include it in a project closeout. Leaders at each level also had to reinforce the same expectation so project managers could tell that the commitment was real.
This changes accountability from an extra sustainability activity into a defined part of delivery.
Accountability also needs evidence. The Sustainable Performance Institute process Barbra explained began with a baseline, followed by a review of gaps and priorities. It then asked organizations to support their performance claims with evidence. If a firm said it delivered high-performance buildings, the review looked for actions such as setting a target at kickoff, completing energy modeling, and analyzing specific design decisions.
The same discipline can be used without reproducing that certification process. Place one current sustainability commitment beside a recent project's delivery path. Follow it from kickoff through review and closeout. Mark where the team was expected to act, who carried the expectation, and what record could show that the action occurred.
If one of those points cannot be named, treat it as preparation the strategy still needs. Adding another initiative will not fill that blank.
A sustainability promise becomes a program when the people doing the work can see where it enters the process, what must be ready first, and how the organization will know it happened.
