Networking And The Art Of Green Evangelism

These days everyone, everywhere is talking aobut global warming. It's in magazines, newspapers, television and the movies. And the good news is that there are actually some people doing something positive about it.

Many companies are also devoted to this cause.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in an article from this week's New Yorker, whose subject was Amory Lovins, perhaps the preeminent green business consultant in the world and C.E.O. of the Rocky Mountain Institute (R.M.I.).

Lovins doesn't just think outside of the box, he declares, "There is no box." And this goes for generating business as well. One thing is for sure: Amory Lovins is a great networker.

It doesn't hurt that he's a genius and polymath. He has worked for twenty five years with clients in a wide range of industries, where his primary focus is on sustainable businesses and energy conservation.

Companies hire him because he produces bottom-line results, such as dramatically cutting energy costs, but he's not one to hide out in a laboratory waiting for clients to call. He gets himself out there - in a big way.

Let me quote from the New Yorker, where Elizabeth Kolvert describes Lovins at an international conference:

"After lunch everyone switched tables. This time, Lovins ended up sitting with several executives from Ford; Pernendu Chatterjee, the head of a private equity firm; and William McDonough, one of the preeminent "green" architects in the United states.

"In the front of the room, executives from two international companies were holding a panel discussion on energy saving companies with the former NATO commander, General Wesley Clark.

"Lovins spent most of the discussion sending emails. One was to the Norwegian philanthropist he has just met. The philanthropist owned a cheese farm; Lovins attached a paper on energy-efficient dairy farming.

"When General Clark said something he disagreed with, Lovins sent him a long email outlining why. During a brief break in the program, Lovins sought out Thomas Friendman, the times columnist, and Rick Fedrizzi, the president of the U.S. Green Building Council, to give them a PowerPoint on a school R.M.I. had designed in Brazil.

"During another break, he presented the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, with an inch-thick pile of articles. As Newsom took the articles, he laughingly alluded to an equally thick pile of reading material Lovins had handed him several weeks earlier."

Lovins certainly networks with people in high places but he is only doing what any good networker does - getting attention by communicating value and then providing more information. You can bet he follows up diligently with every contact by email and phone. It obviously works.

He has built R.M.I. into a fifty plus person consulting firm that not only does well but does good. His organization's stated goal is "the efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining."

You may or may not agree with Lovins's aim, but you have to hand it to him. He's a networking and personal marketing powerhouse that would put most of us to shame.

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