We need to relate our propositions to their business priorities, and show them that our recommendations will help them beat their competitors. By showing how sustainability-related strategies are helpful to key elements in their current business model, we gain their support and accelerate their adoption of sustainability-based approaches. We make sustainability relevant.
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HBR reprinted that article in its July-August 2008 issue in its “Best of HBR” series. By then, I was eight years into my next career as an author and speaker on the business relevance of sustainability-based strategies. I’m still impressed by how the service-profit chain provides a valuable web of interrelated business goals which sustainability-related strategies can help achieve better and faster. I am convinced that the credibility and effectiveness of sustainability champions is improved if we show how our suggested approaches contribute to the success of one or more links in the business value chain. This week, we’ll look at a few versions of the value chain, and conclude with a touchstone generic business version to add to sustainability champions’ toolkits.
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At the World CEO Forum in New Delhi, India, in February 2010, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) released its Vision 2050: The new agenda for business report. Pulling this together was not a trivial task. It was compiled over an 18-month period by 29 leading global companies who represent 14 industries. It reflects the combined efforts of CEOs and experts, and benefits from dialogues with over 200 companies and external stakeholders in some 20 countries. The effort was significant. So is its content, for four reasons.
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In my bibliography at the end of The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook, I list “20 Good Books on Transforming to a Sustainable Enterprise.” Happily, that list of resources for agents of transformation keeps growing. Here are three more excellent, free, downloadable resources that came out in the last year which I would welcome to my previous list of 20:
1. Planning for Sustainability, from The Natural Step
2. Making Your Impact at Work, from Net Impact
3. Greening your Business, from the RBC Royal Bank
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There’s nothing wrong with consumption of basic goods and services. It’s when consumption takes on a life of its own that we risk overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet, as illustrated in Our Ecological Footprint, by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees. We don’t really “consume” most goods. We just use them and throw them away. The resulting build-up of hazardous and non-hazardous waste is not sustainable. That’s why green packaging, green supply chains, and green products are receiving so much attention.
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In today’s business model, growth is a given—an imperative. “Grow or die” is the undisputed maxim of business leaders. The stock market punishes companies that do not meet growth expectations. Growth is good. However, continuous growth appears to be at odds with sustainability principles. Growth is the ‘un-discussable’ elephant in the board rooms of companies aspiring to a sustainable business model.
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Is it really possible for a company to become a sustainable enterprise? Yes, it is. But, it requires a significant transformation. No company will undertake such a significant metamorphosis unless it increases its value. In fact, each step must benefit the company or it will be difficult to convince shareholders and other important stakeholders that it should go further on the sustainability journey. The four stepping-stones from an unsustainable company to a sustainable business model are designed to ensure that each step produces real business benefits.
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It’s one thing to critically assess how today’s dominant business model is not sustainable; it’s another thing to design one that is. As sustainability champions, we need to have a positive vision of the pot of gold at end of the sustainability rainbow. We need to be able to respond to a “put up or shut up” challenge with a description of a sustainable business model that is better for the environment, society, and the company.
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Sooner or later, there is a tough message that sustainability champions need to deliver to harried business leaders—the business game they are playing can’t continue. It’s been fun, but if they keep playing the game the way they are, everyone will lose. The rules need to be updated— quickly. That contention is probably not the best conversation-opener with a senior business leader. But, at some point along the line, sustainability champions should be ready to gently help them see that their current model of doing business is not sustainable.
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As companies progress toward being sustainable enterprises, we can position them on a five-stage sustainability continuum. They evolve from an unsustainable model of business in Stages 1, 2 and 3, to a sustainable business framework in Stages 4 or 5. Executive mindsets also evolve from thinking of “green,” “environmental,” and “sustainable” initiatives as expensive and bureaucratic threats in the early stages, to recognizing them as catalysts for strategic growth in the later stages.
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