Every sustainability professional knows the paradox: the dashboards, the KPIs, the frameworks, the impact assessments—they’re necessary. They give structure. They help us communicate progress. But the truth is, they rarely tell the whole story.
The real signals arrive differently. Not in charts or bullet points, but quietly. A first impression in a meeting. A sentence overheard in a corridor. A feeling in the body when leadership says, “We’re fully committed to sustainability,” and something inside quietly answers, “Not quite.”
I’ve learned—sometimes painfully—that those whispers are not noise. They’re the compass. Ignore them, and what you noticed early will come back tenfold later, usually when it’s far more expensive to fix.
The x10 rule of love and organizational life
Think of relationships. If someone talks endlessly on the first date, don’t expect less later. Count on more.
It’s the same in sustainability projects. If leadership shrugs off employee feedback during the first month, don’t expect them to suddenly build a culture of listening once the ESG reports start rolling in.
The early signs are the loudest truth—they just speak at low volume.
I’ve seen it play out in collaborations where I sensed something wasn’t right: a partner not disclosing everything, someone quick to judge and slow to include others, a leader too wrapped up in their own suffering to notice anyone else’s. Each time, my mind offered a million good reasons to move ahead anyway: others had already committed, this was “the only person available,” or “we were already on a sailing ship.”
But the x10 rule never failed. What showed up small at the beginning returned later, amplified and with consequences.
Fear or intuition?
Of course, not every reaction is intuition. Sometimes it’s fear dressed up as wisdom. Fear feels like a sudden contraction in the body:
- tight throat
- shallow breath
- pressure in the chest
- tension in the shoulders
That usually means old experiences are knocking on the door—echoes of not good enough, not seen, not heard.
Intuition, by contrast, feels different. Clear, calm, and strangely matter-of-fact. It doesn’t come with a speech or a defense. It just points. Like morning air—crisp, quiet, undeniable.
In the world of sustainability, that difference matters. Fear might tell you to abandon a project because it feels overwhelming. Intuition might tell you to pay attention to the way leadership sidesteps uncomfortable feedback. One contracts, the other illuminates.
Speaking the signal out loud
When I began coaching, I often received intuitive hits—images, phrases, strong feelings. But I muted them. My training at the time didn’t allow for deviations, and I was still insecure.
These days, I coach almost entirely from intuition. If an image or phrase comes, I name it. Once, I told someone, “I see you standing in a concert hall, instruments everywhere. What comes up for you?”
Sometimes it lands exactly. Sometimes the person reshapes it: “Actually, for me it’s a small ensemble for an intimate audience. That feels right.”
Either way, it opens the conversation. Intuition is not a verdict. It’s information. Like soil testing before planting—you don’t dictate what grows, but you know more about the ground you’re working with.
Frank, my partner, did the same in a different setting. He hired people for years and always trusted his gut. He often knew at the doorway whether someone was right for the job. Out of respect, he’d still do the full interview. But the compass had already spoken.
When ignoring intuition breaks things
I once ignored a signal because everything looked perfect on paper. The investor had the right profile, the right resources, the right promises. My intuition whispered: “Not integrous. Anger beneath the surface.”
I stepped over it. When the project came under pressure, those exact issues erupted. My company, iThrive, collapsed into bankruptcy.
The lesson was sharp: ignoring intuition doesn’t just cost personally. It weakens the bigger cause. Projects that could have served people falter because the whisper wasn’t honored. In software, we call it technical debt. In nature, it’s like sowing in the wrong season and blaming the weather.
The sustainability manager’s dilemma
Consider the sustainability manager hired into a company that claims to be “all in on sustainability.” The posters say one thing; the corridors say another. Employees give negative feedback. Leadership neither collects it systematically nor acts on it.
And when challenged, the leadership mantra is: “Never change a winning team.”
In that moment, intuition whispers: “Something is off.”
The difference between projects that succeed and those that stall often lies in what happens next. When leaders act on intuition early, while they still have leverage, they can build structures that support real change:
- Feedback rhythms that become oxygen, not annual theater.
- Clear decision-making rules about who decides what, when, and with which input.
- Dashboards that reflect reality, not wishful thinking.
- A culture where inconvenient truths are not punished but welcomed.
These may look boring at the start. Later, they turn out to be lifesavers.
Guardrails as love in action
There was a time I had a major project fully in my hands: operations, contacts, momentum. I handed it over without setting guardrails—no clear communication agreements, no decision protocols, no accountability structures.
When cracks appeared, rework was almost impossible. The project ended.
What I’ve learned is this: intuition without structure is fragile. Structure without intuition is blind. Together, they are love in action.
Guardrails are not mistrust. They are design. They are the riverbanks that allow the water to flow without destroying the valley.
In sustainability work, these guardrails look like:
- communication agreements that prevent information from getting lost
- operational checklists that hold the basics steady
- conflict protocols that keep disagreements from becoming theater
- delegation that is real, not cosmetic
Small, practical agreements that look ordinary on day one and turn out to be heroic on day two hundred.
Bigger than authenticity
There’s a tendency to frame intuition as a personal matter—“being true to yourself.” But in sustainability, it’s bigger than that.
Ignoring intuition doesn’t just deny your authentic self. It denies the larger purpose. It denies communities, employees, and ecosystems the chance to benefit from a project designed with integrity.
The whisper matters not because it saves us discomfort, but because it protects the cause we serve.
The compass that doesn’t shout
Sustainability is not only a technical transition. It’s a cultural one. And cultural transitions are guided less by reports than by listening—deeply, sometimes uncomfortably.
The voice of intuition rarely shouts. But it’s often the first to tell us whether the values on the wall are alive in the room. Ignore it, and we invite collapse. Honor it, and we give transformation its best chance.
Because what shows up at the beginning will always return later—tenfold. And in the long game of sustainability, that makes all the difference.