Tove Kinooka connects workers’ sustainability dots

• Name: Tove Kinooka
• Title: Director at Enteleco, Director at Global Perspectives
• Hometown: Southwest England
• Years in Japan: 26

Growing up in a farming community surrounded by nature in Scotland was Tove Kinooka’s introduction to the importance of sustainability. “I was always interested in plants and animals and the nature around me,” the bicultural sustainability integration consultant said. Now based in Tokyo, she has been able to carry forward her passion for nature and sustainability after co-founding the management consultancy Global Perspectives K.K. in 2015, as well as its sustainability arm, Enteleco.

As a director of both, Kinooka, her business partner and her team now work with major global corporations, small and medium-size enterprises, nonprofit organizations, embassies, chambers of commerce and social venture organizations to accelerate their actions toward sustainable growth. She took time out from her busy schedule to sit down with The Japan Times’ Readers & Leaders section to discuss the valuable work she is doing, how she helps her clients and what inspires her in her work.

“Well, I was young and looking for a new challenge when I saw an advertisement in the newspaper to teach English in Japan on a one-year contract,” she related about her improbable start. “I knew absolutely nothing about Japan. I didn’t come with any fixed expectations, and I sort of just branched out from there.”

After establishing Global Perspectives, Kinooka and her team began working with organizations and senior leaders, and found that a lot of the change management she was implementing often returned to issues surrounding and driven by sustainability issues. “After a while we began to see a connection between our own passion for sustainability and the work we were doing in organizational change and people development, and we thought, ‘Hang on a minute — there doesn’t seem to be anyone connecting the dots here between what’s happening in the sustainability world and how things are accelerating,’ and that companies need to be taking action on this.”

Kinooka found that while most of the employees at the organizations she worked with were aware of environmental issues surrounding climate change, water use and deforestation in a general sense, there was a gap in their knowledge about what that actually meant to them. “For employees not in a sustainability team, if it’s not in their job description, if it’s not in their KPIs (key performance indicators), it’s very hard for them to see, ‘Well, what does this actually mean for me?’” she explained. “For us, it was an ‘aha’ moment, and we needed to connect the dots.” She realized that they could foster motivation within organizations to enable individual employees to make the connection between the everyday tasks they were performing and the company’s overall sustainability goals.

Kinooka believes it is important to embed this mindset of sustainability throughout the company rather than having the goals pushed down from management. She achieves this through a combination of consulting and in-depth programs that may include seminars, workshops and business innovation projects. Taking teams that are not directly involved in the company’s sustainability goals, she walks them through various aspects of the energy use, durability and recyclability of everyday products and actions, helping them reflect on how their everyday actions can contribute to sustainability in both small and large ways.

“For example, we may take various products and ask the employees how they might rank them in a sustainability index — things we use every day, things we have choices in — and we look at perhaps the energy it takes to produce something, versus the recyclability of something that is comparable, and we can relate that back into people’s own context and ask, ‘Well, what is the impact of that service or product on people and planet?’” she explained. “We can help them build an impact map, step by step, so that once they understand the ecosystem that they are a part of, they can then understand their role in that ecosystem, and what their impact is, especially when it comes to choices A, B or C, so you can change the thinking because you can link it directly to their decisions.”

Kinooka’s passion for her vocation in building sustainable practices in organizations often takes her in surprising and rewarding directions. After holding a Global Perspectives workshop at the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan in 2016, she had the good fortune to meet Jane Best, the executive director of Refugee Empowerment International, a Japan-based nonprofit funding projects that provide opportunities for displaced refugee communities around the world. “Jane was looking for some people outside the organization to help guide her on how to take the organization forward, and we felt it was a good fit because all the projects they do are by refugees for refugees, and helping people rebuild their lives once things are under control.”

For Kinooka, the opportunity to help empower refugees in displacement camps to become independent was particularly inspiring. “How do you rebuild your life, regain your dignity? They don’t want to be dependent on aid, there’s no dignity in that. So the projects REI are working on are finding ways for the communities to build resilience and build skills and knowledge to support themselves.” She gives the example of an organization in Kenya that offers business startup training for people fleeing conflict, to help them use the skills they have to establish themselves in a new environment. “REI can provide training and a starter pack — which is often their own ideas — to help them become independent, and the model has proven to be quite successful.”

With both Enteleco and Global Perspectives now well established, Kinooka is building her team so that she can slow down a bit and focus more on family, especially as they enter a new chapter in life. “As a perfectionist, taking a step back and letting someone else take things in a new direction is tough for me, but we do have some great people who are coming in with a lot of energy.” For the moment, she is trying to be conscious of not doing too much, but is looking forward to mentoring some up-and-coming people as well as continuing her sustainability integration consulting work. “I’d love to do it all, but one of my challenges is learning to say no.”