For most of our lives, we’ve enjoyed cheap and plentiful oil.
Go ahead and use all you want, you thought, we’ll make more! Those days are over. Now, gas and electricity are more expensive than ever. Their production threatens the health of our ecosystem.
As a leader, you need to set an example to others by practicing extreme energy conservation. It starts with the lights. When you leave a room, turn them off. Ask for your facilities group to look into auto-dimmers. Hunt around the office for energy-vampires: devices that we leave on that drain energy even when not in use. At the end of the day, turn off the power strips, computers, everything.
Be very visible and vocal about it. Make it your bizlife’s habit to be an energy miser. Think of this as your eco-integrity. If you preach it, you must practice it. As the old saying goes, “integrity is what you do when no one else is watching.” Which means that when you travel, turn off the lights in your hotel room when you leave or check out. Chide your housekeepers to turn off lights and A/C when they clean your room.
The more you integrate energy conservation into your day-to-day, the more you build a culture of use-less at your company — and with the companies you do business with. When you do this, you are buying precious time for us to find answers or install them into legacy systems.
