Environmental management has become commonplace in the Netherlands. Especially in the world of infrastructure and area development, but in recent years also for issues such as energy. Increasingly, environmental management is based on four building blocks: working from a vision, with a repeatable approach, with the availability of the necessary competencies. The fourth building block has received relatively little attention so far. This blog is about that. Anchoring SOM in the organization. Why? Because SOM is an organizational competency!

The Mutual Gains Approach is the foundational philosophy for stakeholder engagement, aimed at preventing unnecessary stakeholder problems, resolving stakeholder conflicts, and simultaneously strengthening mutual trust. We call this form of stakeholder engagement Strategic Stakeholder Engagement (SSE). But how do you embed a way of working based on strengthening trust into the organization so that the organization can deliver on its promises and doesn't promise more than it can deliver?

After all, it cannot be the case that during a project, everything is promised to stakeholders to secure the project outcome, but that the organization is not actually interested in the stakeholder's interests. That the spirit and letter of the agreement are not adhered to with conviction. And thereby, in other processes, the interests of those same stakeholders are ignored. Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. Mistrust from the environment towards the organization can be fatal for the organization, including management and the board. It takes a lot of time, has a negative impact on the result, and leads to frustrated relationships that will exact their toll in the next encounter.

What then is needed? The answer is clear: make environmental management an organizational competency!

The old way of working is insufficient: appointing an environmental manager who acts as an inspirer and facilitator across projects is not enough to build trust structurally.

The new method of anchoring must provide answers to the following questions:

What if the (internal) clients and project managers do not see the benefit and necessity of an early, trust-based dialogue? What happens when the (internal) clients and project managers are not encouraged and held accountable by management and the board for building a trustworthy relationship with the environment? Then, for the environmental manager, all that remains is smoothing over the ripples caused by the rest of the organization. The lesson, therefore, is that the organization's leaders must stand for a mission and vision that describes the desired relationship with the environment (and has been operationalized in strategies).

Another question is where, and based on what information and by whom in the organization, decisions are made. Is there an integrated assessment, in which, in addition to the traditional substantive, legal, and financial aspects, there is also room for considering, for example, the interests and promises to stakeholders? Yet another question is how it is determined who talks to whom. Is that hierarchy, or are the available qualities optimally utilized?

Finally, in this list: what competencies need to be developed within the organization to elevate the organization's overall environmental sensitivity? Is this challenge also being addressed by HRM, and is HRM being held accountable for it?
All these questions can only lead to one insight. Much more is needed for the License to Grow¹ than merely appointing an environmental manager or changing the organizational or project structure. SOM is an organizational competency!

But how do you determine what's needed to carefully embed SOM? This requires both facilitating the conversation within the organization about ‘what kind of organization do we want to be’: how important is mutual trust between us and our environment, and why? But it also requires a systematic approach: a careful, interactive diagnosis. Uncovering the strengths of the organization's dialogue, but also uncovering its weaknesses. Systematically organizing these qualities, showing what's needed to further professionalize interest management within the organization. This makes embedding SOM an organizational task as well, a change task that will need to be shaped differently for each organization. With this observation, SOM enters the next phase of development, and the ideology and craftsmanship will mature further.

¹ License to Grow, by analogy with License to Operate, indicates that having all the permits and being elected is not enough to secure the future of an organization. The opinion of the environment increasingly determines whether an organization has a future and whether there is room for that organization to develop.

Director, Co-founder

Marc Wesselink