Will Richardson wore a chicken suit to land his first job, a test of commitment he compares to how companies set sustainability targets then quietly abandon them. He argues organizations lose credibility by hiding these reversals in footnotes instead of spending ten minutes publicly explaining why they changed course.
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Hey, thanks so much for listening. I would love to be able to help you more on what it is that you are listening to and why you're listening to, to me. If you could click on the link in the show notes, that would be awesome because it will help me define what it is that we should be talking about on this podcast. I got my first proper job because I agreed to dress up in a chicken suit. This is Sustainability Solved by Will Richardson. And this is part 3 of 7 on why I'm changing Sustainability Solved's main podcast. Last time, we were in the Welsh cow fields. This one starts with hundreds of closed doors on the King's Road. When I left school, I worked in a pub, the Magpie and Stump on the King's Road. Some of you may know it. The only reason I wanted to work in a pub was because I'd read and learnt that when you get a job in a pub, you get a room, and I couldn't afford to move out of my parents' house because I didn't have the deposit for a flat or anything, or a room. So, I knew that that if I could get a job that gave me a room, then that would be my rent included, and I would not need a deposit or anything like that. So I walked around my local area. I actually grew up in Wimbledon Village. It was a very different place then, but I went to every single pub in Wimbledon Village, every single pub in Wimbledon, every single pub in Putney. You can see a trend here. Every single pub in Fulham and just moved further and further away. Hundreds of pubs over a number of weeks, feeling pretty despondent with the fact that I could not get a job. Then, I walked into this pub on the King's Road, and they asked me if I would dress up in a suit, but not just any suit. a chicken suit to get more customers to come in? Of course! I said, absolutely, I would dress up in a chicken suit. And they said there and then, right, you've got the job. They told me later on that the only reason why they asked me was that they wanted to see how keen I actually was to get the job. Think about that. Because it is a communications lesson with a business cost attached. They did not test my CV, or lack of it. They did not test my references, or lack of them. They tested whether I would do something slightly humiliating in public for a cause I had no stake in yet. Everything they needed to know came from one question that had nothing to do with the job. Most sustainability reporting is the CV. It is thorough, it is accurate, it is expensive, and almost nobody reads it as evidence of anything. The chicken suit is what people actually judge you on. The small, visible, slightly costly thing you are willing to do when you did not have to. One supplier contract renegotiated in public. One flight route dropped. One target missed and explained honestly rather than quietly restated. This is second half to this story. I worked at that pub for 7, 8 months. Over that time period, Right at the beginning, unbeknown to me, I was actually sacked quite a few times. My belongings were moved out of my room and into the corridor so that when I came back, I would have to leave. But on those nights, I was staying at a mate's house, and I would come back and everything would be normal again. I look back on it and I think it's pretty harsh, but I think things were slightly different when we were younger. Um, but anyways, um, Lorraine and Paul, my managers, they were a married couple and would say to me a few weeks later, yeah, we really got sick and tired of you and we just didn't think you were right. They would then wake up in the morning and feel bad about what they were doing and give me my job back, unbeknownst to me. I became incredibly close to them, and I've actually lost contact with them. And I would love to get in contact with them again. Paul and Lorraine Green. Anyway, it's just one of those things, isn't it? You just lose contact with people and— We do this in organisations constantly. A target gets set, then quietly dropped. A commitment gets made in an annual report and then softened in a footnote that the following year. Nobody is told either way. The reason so many people have switched off from climate messaging is not that they disagree with it. It is that they have watched the belongings go into the corridor and back again, over and over, and stopped believing anything that gets said. So what your organisation can do today is find the last sustainability commitment you quietly changed And tell the people affected by it. Say what changed and why. It is a 10-minute job and it buys back more credibility than the whole report. Next time, I'm running the staff at 19 and I turn down, at that point, the best job offer I have ever had. The written version is on Substack. Link in the show notes. I'm Will Richardson, and this is Sustainability Solved by Will Richardson.
Grab free access to Will's Substack while it lasts. Every week we pull together the top sustainability stories from dozens of trusted sources. Then he breaks down the big issues facing business right now in plain, practical terms. Link in the description.
