Many companies and government agencies have grappled with improving their environmental impact. Now we are asking if ‘sustainability management’ can deliver even more savings than environmental management achieved – this raises challenges for all types of organisations. Michael Lunn, Lead Associate to the SustainUs Group suggests an organisational sustainability process that both government and business could work with.
The continued rise of sustainability issues has not gone unnoticed by businesses and government agencies. Some are already well engaged in programs to improve their sustainable performance others have still to be convinced of the benefits. Business knows environmental management systems (EMS), eco- efficiency can help save them money and avoid pollution incidents and the consequent costs of fines for breaches of EPA legislation.
Many organisations also value stakeholder dialogue, not just to deal with local issues and better service delivery, but increasingly to gauge customer values on issues like carbon emission trading, or Biomimicry).
From “environmentalism” to “sustainability”
The challenge for a ‘sustainability manager’ is to demonstrate the potential benefits of looking beyond the traditional narrow focus on environmental issues to broader social and economic questions. In all but the biggest corporations this is presently a difficult task, however some of these businesses are now asking if sustainability management can deliver the savings achieved by environmental management.
One example is the market potential for switching from selling products to charging for services. In the home we could soon be paying for sustainability services to enhance livability in the home rather than buying separately an air conditioner from a manufacturer, electricity from an energy company, and repairs and servicing from another. In this example, it would be more cost effective for a single service provider to install low maintenance, energy efficient, retrofit designs, – this kind of integrated service delivery is beginning to happen. Other examples are benefits of ISA ethical investment funds or ‘green energy supplies’.
“We believe that a transition to sustainability is necessary, inevitable, possible,
and a source of both great new opportunity and long-lasting prosperity,
and we dedicate our best efforts to making sustainability happen.”
SustainUs Mission Statement
The key question organisations ask about improving their sustainability performance is ‘what could be the effect on my organisation of changing social values and changing environmental conditions?’
Some influences will be financial, like the cost of legislative compliance, however it may also require access to new resources and markets. This is a risk – should a company ‘wait and see’ or take the risk of early change and potentially be at the forefront of a new market.
Not all organisations will be as involved in sustainability management as others. It is obvious that the smaller the organisation the less influence it has. Nonetheless the smaller producer or service provider will be part of cultural change, will be part of the supply chain pressure, and may face demand and competition for a new way of providing its end product. It is for the individual organisation to identify where it is in its market place, to review what it has to do to keep its share, and to take action.
The drivers for change (see below) are evolving from ones that first pressured for improved environmental management, and continue to major drivers in sustainable management.
Table 1: Drivers for business to manage sustainability
Ø Organisational sustainability
Ø Time
Ø Corporate public profile
Ø Personal and corporate liability
Ø Success of ISO14001
Ø Supply chain pressure
Ø Business new opportunities
Ø Retain market share
Ø Environmental regulatory compliance
Ø Social legislation
Ø Local stakeholder management
Ø Consumer pressures
Ø Save money
Ø Banks want risk management
Ø Insurance companies want risks managed
Ø Employees want change
Ø Risk of bad publicity
Ø Social change
Ø Quality management
Finding common ground between businesses and Government
When defining sustainability business emphasise its potential for affecting sales and opportunities. On the other hand, government authorities believe that, whatever the precise definition, sustainability is for the benefit of the wider population and business community. A mutually agreeable definition is elusive and this is hampering effective organisational management.
The gap between the two interpretations is best illustrated by how sustainability is defined in the business world. The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) defines ‘sustainable business performance’ as a ‘global competitive advantage; catalyst for innovation; and a way to capture new market and financing opportunities’.
This definition seems a long way from an environmentalist’s understanding of sustainable development. Sustainability professionals must be wary of twisting terminology to suit another agenda but must also not dismiss how business perceives its role in sustainability.
Consider this alternative definition: ‘corporate sustainability means internalising environmental and social responsibilities into a reinvented core business strategy in a phased manner that enables the corporation to deliver lasting benefits to current and future generations of shareholders, employees and other stakeholders’.
Though long-winded this definition does include the concepts of future generations, progressive change, business’s social responsibility, communicating with stakeholders and new business opportunities. Business has learnt that sustainability seems to mean all things to all people, but also recognises that it describes social responsibility and corporate citizenship, and that despite its muddled definition there is an inescapable energy for change. As with the emergence of e-commerce and the associated millions to be won and lost, business is listening to all that is new. But it will continue to listen as a business – the boardroom need to understand the business and ethical case for sustainability performance management. Government agencies must use conventional management tools and understand that sustainability spells both politics and a business opportunity.
Developing an organisational sustainability process
There is a view that legislation and compliance will deliver steady progress towards more sustainable development. However others have suggested that the transition to business sustainability will be episodic, partial and disorganised, and will be driven by events, population growth and demand. How can someone trying to improve their organisation’s sustainability performance, in either a business or government agency, respond to this complex picture? One way is to repeatedly ask ‘does our organisation have the right approach to operate in a sustainable society?’
Box 1 (below) and the following explanation sets out a process of responding to sustainability drivers with organisational management techniques. It shows distinct stages which are increasingly ambitious over time, and implies a progression. It can be used to audit current performance, but only on a self-assessment basis. Clearly this means that an organisation wishing to ‘show off’ stating that it is near the top - has to be regularly audited by external verifiers and benchmarked against sustainability league tables, such as AA1000 or similar standards.
Box 1: Stages of sustainability management for organisations
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1. Singular actions |
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2. Review & change |
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3. Basic tools |
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4. Performance management systems |
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5. Towards sustainability alignment |
Singular actions
Singular actions mean individual projects and initiatives that meet sustainable needs e.g. a community event, an e-commerce venture or a new community led service. These are actions delivering some form of considered triple bottom line benefit (social, economic and environmental).
Review and change
Reviews are ongoing in any organisation but this stage describes a review which is more thorough and results in a significant organisational plan of action. This could be a corporate policy or visioning exercise, a drive to investigate new markets, to seek partners for a cooperative approach, or to initiate an EMS. It is a tangible corporate step forward supported by involvement of stakeholders and need not be sustainability led, but must consider sustainability. A sustainability review of products and services could be a potential example.
Basic tools
This means effective use of appropriate sustainability management tools. It could be the systemised use of a sustainability checklist, or the initiation of an internal and operational EMS or even a simple sustainability audit. There is a progressive introduction of tools and corporate sustainability activity, such as training, project and product sustainability evaluation, and staff and community development. As many of our readers are aware we specialise in such things and find the AtKisson Accelerator incorporates a number of strategic tools for delivering sustainability, including the AtKisson Compass, the Sustainability Pyramid, and the Amoeba of Cultural Change, as well as, sustainability appraisals of capital projects, and our own sustainable performance management system.
Performance management systems
Here performance systems mean fully implemented corporate management systems such as a reporting and audit mechanism like the global reporting initiative (GRI), or using “ISIS” Methodology (Indicators, Systems, Innovations, Strategy) or ‘business excellence’ in a way which delivers sustainability change and progress. The organisation will be networked with its peers and using all the relevant sustainability management tools. It will be engaged with its stakeholders, will be managing this process at the board level and will be demonstrating publicly its sustainability performance from small projects to corporate policies such as environmental purchasing and product stewardship.
Towards sustainability alignment
This will be characterised by a fundamental shift of an organisation’s work, products and services. It will be at a time when society’s character and value set has also fundamentally changed. There will be more co-operative working and less distinction between business, voluntary sector and government function. The politics of sustainability will be widely understood and its value set accepted and reinforced with legislation where appropriate. There will be emphasis on services rather than products, leading to more durable and recoverable products, and the sharing of technology and organisational performance will be the norm.
The way forward
Effective sustainability management is important to business as well as government agencies. It makes sense to share a common goal of a sustainable society – this means that a common approach needs to be adopted by all organisations. Those responsible for sustainability in their organisations should be utilising the best techniques emerging from business, local government and the voluntary sector. They should be seeking practical and affordable corporate sustainability management that responds to evolving cultural, economic and environmental change, and responds in the context of market opportunity, stakeholder values and governmental policy.
If you would like assistance in designing or evaluating a sustainable management system for your organisation or would like an executive briefing on these issues, please do not hesitate to make contact with one of our team.
Useful websites
www.AtKisson.com AtKisson Inc Sustainability consulting and sustainable performance
Other Announcements from SustainUs
Alan AtKisson plans visit to Australia in Feb 2005
It brings us great pleasure to inform you that we are arranging another visit for Alan AtKisson (CEO – AtKisson Inc) (Author to Believing Cassandra) to Australia. SustainUs is presently coordinating a tour of Australia (dates already confirmed for Melbourne, and Sydney) in early February 2005. Additional slots are available but filling up fast, so if you would like Alan to present at one of your events please make contact with Michael Lunn as soon as possible so we can look at availability. The tour format will provide a range of opportunities for engagement, from public and private lectures to closed consultation sessions and operational workshops.
Sustainable Samford moves up a gear
Over the past few months SustainUs have been busy working on the Sustainable Samford Project, a community just north west of Brisbane, see www.SustainableSamford.com.au This week the Executive Committee met, and have agreed dates to run the AtKisson Pyramid workshop as a strategic planning process for delivering a more sustainable future for Samford Valley. This workshop will enable the local community, business and strategic stakeholders to meet for the first time to consider the sustainable future of this community. The methodology being used will be the Atkisson Sustainable Pyramid which brings together many of the ideas and practices that have become central to the concept of sustainable development. Indicator development, systems thinking, and the applications of innovation theory to strategic Change Agentry have all become common to sustainability practice; Pyramid, with Compass and ISIS, brings these together into an integrated process. (Note that the Compass is not the only sustainability framework that works with Pyramid; the Triple Bottom Line (“TBL”), Economy-Environment-Equity (“EEE”), and other sustainability frameworks can work just as well.)
Moreover, the structure of Pyramid guides a group through the process of first building a firm base of understanding, casting a wide net for relevant information and ideas, and then focusing and narrowing down to what is important, effective, doable, and something that everybody can agree on. Throughout the process, Pyramid takes an inter-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, systems approach. . Strategic use of small group/large group discussion tasks mixes people together in different ways and supports the identification of important linkages and leverage points. Groups get practice in sharing ideas, expertise and experience, and in building consensus based on clear criteria.
For these reasons, we believe Pyramid represents a genuinely new approach to group learning and strategic planning that is specifically designed for integrating sustainability into planning, decision-making, and design. This model uses sustainability as a value added methodology to focus on the problem, issue, policy, or project at hand. In our practice, clients have often found it to be an improvement over their existing strategic planning methods in a more general sense.
has been used in a wide variety of settings, and in
several different ways, including:
Ø As a training program on applied sustainable development, Pyramid has been used by UN-sponsored training programs in Asia, sustainability cities, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Townsville, and the other state government agencies.
Ø As a strategic planning framework, Pyramid has been used by our team with a wide variety of clients, both explicitly and in the background of our own planning. Its explicit use has been with clients such as foundation grant programs and regional sustainability initiatives.
Ø As a workshop model for bringing multi-stakeholder groups together, building a common understanding, and generating initiative ideas, Pyramid has been used by sustainability initiatives at the city, regional, and international level.
For more information on use Sustainability tools and services click here
Reader Comments
As you will recall last month we reported on “Community capacity building and Sustainability”
Graham Ashford from IISD commented that conveying low expectations of people abilities and emphasizing the many problems they face, latent skills remain untapped, motivation is low and community ownership of new initiatives is difficult to sustain. It’s a step backward in our view.
As you may know IISD has been working for the last ten years to move away from a deficit based model. Our initial efforts centered on analyzing communities that had encountered significant stresses such as war, famine, and poverty but had maintain resilient livelihoods. Our research sought methods by which sustainable adaptive strategies could be identified and supported through enabling technologies, policies and community level institutional structures. We recently completed a project using appreciative inquiry in southern India with MYRADA, a large southern Indian development agency. By combining appreciative inquiry with Myrada’s local institution building approach, which focuses on establishing and training self-help micro credit groups) we were able really effect change on the ground with the 70 organizations and 10,000 local people we were working with. In conducting the fieldwork people told us that they had always considered their community as full of problems that only outsiders would help them overcome. They had never identified the many achievements and peak moments of cooperation and progress that they had made or sought to understand the underlying conditions that enabled these. Yet by doing so they were able to build their confidence, improve their understanding of their latent capacity and develop meaningful plans that brought them closer to a shared vision for their future. They began to see that the development of their communities was in their hands. Spontaneous initiatives frequently sprung up that addressed local priorities through local resources. Their relationship with outside agencies moved from a position of dependency to a situation where the poorest people were leading the process and seeing the outside agencies more as short term providers of support and training, that built their capacity and helped link them to banks and other institutions that they would need for longer term credit. As well, the experience of the Myrada field staff involved in the project led to a change in the way they saw development, ultimately resulting in an organization wide appreciative inquiry process that produced changes from the way they delivered training to communities to the way that they conducted staff evaluations.
I look forward to reading more newsletters from SustainUs. I also attach a link for your interest to a document we produced titled The Positive Path: Using Appreciative Inquiry in Rural Indian Communities. http://www.iisd.org/ai/myrada.htm The document can be downloaded for free in PDF format.
If you have a comment, or a case study you would like to share with our readers drop us a line at info@SustainUs.com and now to our latest sustainability news. Click on links to get to news story.
