Your team is divided on sustainable design guidelines. How can you bridge the gap and foster collaboration?

By facilitating open discussions to understand differing viewpoints. Encourage team members to share ideas and find common ground. Promote collaboration through workshops and brainstorming sessions. Emphasize shared goals, and involve an expert if needed to guide and unify the team's efforts.

An easy-to-implement circular guidelines workbook starts by defining the vision, goals, scope, audience, and application area. The very first (and most important) step is to understand what kind of change you envision making and in what area: industrial design, product development, material sourcing etc.

Setting a goal towards achieving a certification like LEED, WELL, TRUE, SITES, or other similar credentials is highly beneficial. These certifications are industry-specific and help streamline processes, bringing the team together with a unified purpose. The pursuit of such credentials ensures that the team adheres to best practices, meets rigorous standards, and ultimately enhances the quality, sustainability, and efficiency of the project. This collective effort not only fosters collaboration but also positions the organization as a leader in its field, committed to excellence and continuous improvement.

To bridge the gap and foster collaboration on sustainable design guidelines within your team, start by facilitating open dialogue to understand differing perspectives and concerns. Establish common goals and values around sustainability, emphasizing the shared benefits of integrating eco-friendly practices. Encourage knowledge sharing and invite diverse expertise to inform decision-making. Implement structured brainstorming sessions and consensus-building exercises to reach collective agreement on key principles and priorities. Lastly, ensure ongoing communication and regular reviews to refine guidelines and ensure they align with both individual insights and overarching team objectives.

Using data to set goals within realistic ranges and comparing the results to the previous years can create clear cut goals that are trackable and able to help with accountability. That way you can set goals that are tangible and comparable such as creating a goal of reducing waste produced by 15%. From that point you can brain storm and create many different ways to contribute to your goal, yet have a common focus.

One of the common reasons behind communication gaps is a knowledge gap. Moreover, there is always something new to know. Hence fostering a knowledge-seeking and sharing culture is important for facilitating collaboration. This is especially important for knowledge-driven fields like sustainable design....

Promoting lectures, workshops and seminars from third parties and giving encouragement or investing in these type of resources can benefit everyone involved. It can help bond a team and help generate new tools for future projects.

The important part of collaboration is leading by example. Show your team that wanna foster collaboration by inviting their input and incorporating viable suggestions. Foster an environment that makes people feel welcome to collaborate....

The most important part of fostering collaboration is the collaborators knowing that their perspectives are respected. If your team feels their perspectives are being ignored, they won't be willing to share their inputs henceforth....

Besides making the implementation more sustainable, incremental implementation also helps you monitor your changes better. If you implement too many changes together, you won't be able to tell which of those changes are working well and which ain't....