“Dunno what we’re 🤬 doin”

You know that feeling of stepping onto an escalator that’s out of order?

It’s weird – you know the escalator isn’t working, yet no matter how hard you concentrate, you still lose balance when you step onto it, even though it’s moving at the same speed as the ground you just stepped off (0km/h).

Feels like you forgot how to walk, or you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s actually a thing – it’s called, surprisingly, the broken escalator phenomenon.

The short version is that your cognitive systems (that control learning, understanding and decision-making) are too strongly programmed for your muscles to override them. You can see the escalator is broken, but your automatic functions just see an escalator and having learned how they work, they go ahead and adjust your gait in preparation for the ride.

How this is relevant… sorta.

I always ask what’s holding an organisation back from starting a sustainability policy, and it’s usually some version of what a guy I spoke to recently said: “We dunno what we’re bloody doing”.

Who does.

This is quite a leap, but from my (outside) perspective, there’s a similarity between business owners who are just that bit hesitant to press go on a sustainability policy, and someone stepping onto a broken escalator…

Your cognitive system is used to doing what it’s always done. Wait, procrastinate, or buy time til you’ve figured out what you’ll actually be doing with sustainability before you commit to anything.

I had the escalator thing happen to me last week, it was so weird. I used the same escalator 4 times (2x up, 2x down) and–knowing about the broken escalator phenomenon–forced myself to try and walk normally. I REALLY wanted to, but I just couldn’t do it without a bit of off-balance-ness.

But I still made it up the escalator. I didn’t fall, or bail out and use the stairs, or turn around and go home. In fact, as the phenomenon predicts, everyone around me did the same thing. Stepped on, had a wobble, chuckled at themselves, then walked up anyway.

A sustainability policy isn’t an audit, or a scientific paper, or a big application for some certification. It’s just a list of stuff – stuff you’re doing now, and stuff you want to do later.

Wobbly; Basic; Imperfect. Like this.