Please complete the following three “footprint” exercises and discuss the questions below. Wait. What?! What does this have to do with organizational behavior? Keep on reading! You’ll see that this exercise has a lot to do with people at work. After all, how are we going to change organizations to be more concerned about the environment if we can’t persuade employees to change their own personal behaviors?

These three calculators will help you evaluate the global implications of your lifestyle. You can click on the link or cut and paste.

1. Your individual ecological footprint: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/personal_footprint/
2. Your individual water footprint: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/water-footprint-calculator/
3. Your individual carbon footprint: http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/index.htm

Discussion Questions: What do the various calculators tell you about your lifestyle? Any surprises? How do you compare to an average American? How do you compare to individuals in other countries? Which of your behaviors have a high impact? How can they be modified to reduce your impact? Are there areas of your footprint that you have more or less personal control over?

Take Action: As a manager (or future manager), you will no doubt ask others to change their behavior in some way to meet organizational goals. It’s good to experience the “change process” yourself, if only to remind yourself how difficult it is to change an ingrained behavior. Choose a behavior of yours that might be considered unsustainable, or at least, unhealthy for people and the planet if you (and everyone else) were to continue this behavior. Describe the behavior you plan to change (e.g., reduce your use of plastic, cut out red meat, stop buying fast fashion), and tell us how you are going to make that change. Publicly committing to change is a way to reinforce the change, so please share with us the change you plan to make. You will want to set SMART goals to increase the likelihood that you will be successful. Figure out a way to track your behavior daily (e.g., spreadsheet or table).

Summary: Complete the exercises, comment on this DB, choose a behavior to change, and start tracking it. During the last week of the semester we will discuss the progress you made, or didn’t make. Good luck!