Reflections in Excellence - Susatinability: Buzzword to Business Practice

Sustainability: From Buzz Word to Business Practice (20 June 2003)

So where are we at with sustainability? I was recently at the launch of a new business ethics model and one of the keynote speakers was leading a question and answer session. Sustainability was one of the buzzwords that were being thrown around in response to a question about what makes a good corporate citizen. There was quite a bit of puzzlement in the discussion, different people expressing different perspectives, apparently all about the same thing. In the confusion I too was confused. Then I understood the cause. What was being meant by most of those present at that particular forum by this term - 'sustainability" was 'the ability to still be in business in three years time'. With a smile I realized that we are at that interesting stage where a technical term has come into widespread usage and its meaning becomes confused. This is a good thing and I'll explain why.

In the research field of organizational learning, organizations are often looked at as social systems - much like communities. Studies have been done in this area to examine how organizations learn and adapt to new ideas and the way these new ideas become part of our business practices. One learning theory suggests that in going from a new idea to established business practice organizations follow four distinct stages (1.). We call these four stages the Four I's. These are:

· Intuiting
· Interpreting
· Integration
· Institutionalization.

Intuiting is where individuals discover new concepts and new insights. At this early stage the new way of doing something is merely an unexpressed idea and some trial and error exploration occurs.

Interpreting is when these individuals share their insights with others and a process of interpretation occurs. New language is created and the concepts are developed by discussion, but the concepts themselves, and their application, are not yet completely clear.

Integration occurs when others begin to adopt the new way of doing things. There is some coordination between groups with a shared understanding of the practice and the language, but not everyone is doing it with confidence.

Institutionalization completes the cycle when the new way of doing things has become an integral part of the main business practice understood by all.

So when we work with and develop new concepts there is a necessary transitional period of learning that has to occur. In doing this there are clear stages that we go through. While all the stages may be occurring at the same time, most of the activity can usually be said to be in one stage or another. So between stages there is often confusion. This confusion is part of learning and part of our sense making process. It is how we make sense of the new when it is different to the old.

This learning process can be seen to be also true of the development of the thinking about sustainability that is presently occurring in business, local and global communities. In terms of sustainability on a macro scale in the corporate community, we are a long way from sustainability thinking being a shared and clear business practice and an established institution. In most forums where people are gathering to discuss sustainability we appear to still be at the second stage, 'Interpreting' - where the ideas have been thought of and the business community is trying to understand the new language. While some companies are innovators sharing their success stories, many of us are still learning what the terminology really means. However, we are beginning to move into the third stage of 'Integration'.

So this present process of apparent confusion and exploration is a good thing, as through all of these discussions a wider sense of meaning is developed in our understanding of the buzzwords that reflect the new ideas. All of this helps refine our thoughts and allows us to combine our thinking.

This is the reason there appears to be multiple and distinctly different definitions of sustainability (and one source suggests there are over 100). Like other concepts that have become value-based terms, the original technical term and its related concepts (e.g. sustainability assessments, sustainable development, sustainable practices) are evolving and are becoming differentiated only as our thinking matures. This is why, at present, no-one can tell you what sustainability means, only what they mean by it.

Concepts such as sustainable communities, corporate citizenship, environmental responsibility and sustainable development all involve difficult issues, new terms and unfamiliar or changing business practices. If the terminology is sometimes confusing this is because, for the moment, many of the emerging concepts are still being confused. In exploring the meaning behind these terms we begin to understand that sustainability is not about the imposition of someone else's values, but is all about discovering our own.

For example, the concept of 'sustainable development' promoted in the IUCN commissioned 1980 World Conservation Strategy may have originated from the desire to link environmental protection and human development as integrated concepts2.. However, the phrase has often been co-opted and reversed in meaning. Contrary to popular belief 'sustainable development is not merely development that can be sustained, but rather the kind of development we need to pursue in order to achieve a state of sustainability'3.. There is a distinct difference in approach even though the words used are similar.

Which leads us to all sorts of issues and tensions central to the debates that are dividing the discussions about sustainability. The commonly adopted 'Brundtland Report' definition of sustainable development, being 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs' 4. raises the key issue of determining whose 'needs' and how these needs may be different to 'wants'. It is interesting how readily this definition of 'sustainable development' is adopted and then re-interpreted for use as a corporate definition of 'sustainability' (which is a different concept) without recognizing the inherent irony in doing so. Considering where the definition comes from (an examination of our common future as a race with reference to world poverty, economic inequity and environmental degradation) the truth behind what appears to be a convenient and idealistic definition is, for many organizations, far from ideal.

This then highlights the conflict between so called 'weak' and 'strong' sustainability, where it becomes unclear if natural capital can be exchanged for social or financial capital - as long as everything balances out over the long-term, or whether sustainability is not about balancing trade-offs, but about finding solutions that are 'in essence' sustainable.

So how do we deal with sustainability in a practical way right now? The way many organisations handle this big issue is to break it into three separate parts - creating a triple bottom line to account for the economic, environmental and social responsibilities of their organisation. Increasingly, however, organizations are realizing that these concepts are not separate but are in fact integrated, and sustainability is more about a way of thinking about the whole of what we do, rather than changing only specific parts of existing practices and managing and reporting on these separately. Some argue that while we may not get to sustainability through the triple-bottom-line, it may be a way of discovering it. All of this is part of the ongoing dialogue of interpretation.

As we move deeper into the 'interpreting' stage, there are now also emerging many splits in the approaches to sustainability. Sustainable development reporting is one example where this is occurring. Organizations are finding it hard to reconcile the need for a common and comparable approach with the principle that it is up to each organization to determine how they will make what they do ultimately sustainable. Sustainability reporting provides transparency into the thinking behind how we are going to determine our progress. It also allows us to focus on the parts that we think count. Finding what to measure is then a function of why we are measuring it. The difficulty for many organizations wanting to work with sustainability is that with no framework to guide their focus and the priorities, reporting on measures that are meaningless, may become purposeless.

This is the reason leading companies begin an approach to sustainability as an integrated concept. Their secret is in understanding that if the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, then some of the parts will never equal the whole. What they seek is a clear and workable definition of sustainability, an enumerated list of principles to guide their desired outcomes, a sustainability assessment process that integrates with their decision making, meaningful metrics to inform those decisions and useful and practical thinking tools to guide them - so as to make sustainability a complementary rather than a conflicting business process.

So who are these organizations? Those leading the way with sustainability are both traditional businesses doing things differently, and non-traditional businesses who are doing different things. These are the organizations that are planning to be around for the long-term even if it means being quite different to how they are today. They have understood that sustainability thinking is not complex, it is merely multi-faceted. And they are comfortable with this different thinking. Part of this involves thinking about their future in a different way. However, in determining what we should do now, we often get muddled with what we knew and did before.

When we need to work on something new, learn new concepts and deal with new language, it is often necessary to come up a level in our thinking and take a broader perspective, asking the 'why' question before focusing on the 'how' of our processes and systems. To do this consciously is always worthwhile if what we are dealing with is considered important, because by getting our thinking right, we get to think about the right things. It is only then that we realize that it is how we choose to think about sustainability, that will ultimately make what we do sustainable.

By William Varey

· Sustainability Frameworks

· Sustainability Definitions and Principles

· Thinking Sustainability™ Training Workshop

· Thinking Sustainability™ Assessment Tool

· Sustainability Metrics and Reporting

· Sustainable Excellence® Management Program