A Comprehensive Review of Chapters 1-5: 'The Step-by-Step Guide to Sustainability Planning'

Sustainability plans are at the center of the business world today as our planet’s resources dwindle and social conflicts are at a high.  The responsibility a company holds to the environment and community is rising for the better, but this requires strategic planning supported by both high-level executives and employees.  The Step-by-Step Guide to Sustainability Planning breaks down the process of achieving an effective and influential plan to engage all members of an organization towards a single goal: becoming a visionary, sustainable company. 

Introduction

Summary:

The Step-by-Step Guide to Sustainability Planning book’s introduction chapter focuses on an overview of what exactly is a sustainability plan along with the importance of implementation in any business or industry.  In addition,  this chapter highlights the growth that sustainability within business plans has seen over the past two decades, along with the support from both employees and higher level executives.  It is believed that ‘approximately 75% of the largest corporations now produce a sustainability report or corporate social responsibility report.’ 

Key Concepts:

• Sustainability Plans Versus Assessments: A company can ask for either a sustainability assessment or plan, however it is crucial to recognize the difference between the two, and how that will affect the long term sustainability impact.  A sustainability assessment  is the equivalent of a yearly physical; it is a checkup to compare the efforts of the company to standardized metrics to evaluate where improvements can be made.  A sustainability plan is comparable to a lifelong health plan; the goal is to recognize the weaknesses of the company via the sustainability assessment, and then improve upon them by setting a long-term plan to achieve the planned outcome.

• Tailoring a Planning Process to Your Needs: This concept emphasizes that sustainability planning takes work every year, and can be deepened as the process continues.  It recommends to not dive into every sustainability step to its full extent, but rather lightly implement it, to allow growth.  As the company progresses, it can allow more detailed approaches and attacks to the weaknesses that lie within the company’s sustainability practices.

Case Example:

• EarthScan’s Sustainability Plan and Report is Three Years in the Making: With only 20 members on their team,  EarthScan ‘manages a worldwide supply chain of editors, proofreaders, distributors, and more.’ With this in mind, they spent 3 years working on their sustainability plan which is focused on greenhouse gasses associated with paper production.  Due to the scale of work done by each individual member on their staff, they took their time to finalize their plan to ensure slow but effective implementation to achieve the greatest impact.

Methods:

• SCORE™ : This metric scores how well sustainability has been integrated and entwined into the company as well as the business practices.  It is a way for a company to compare its efforts to another, to thus improve internally.

• S-BAR: This is another metric used, however it is used less frequently.  It allows for companies to access other companies data within their sector to improve the industry as a whole.

Chapter 1: Preparing for Change

Summary:

This chapter focuses on preparing the organization for the transition into a new sustainability program or initiative.  It is crucial to brainstorm the challenges that could be encountered on a corporate level as well as an employee level, and how to best engage the team to understand the purpose, supporting aspects, and end goal.  Before a sustainability plan can be successful, it must be thoroughly planned with the right energy behind each and every step, to ensure the most payoff for the organization as a whole.  

Key Concepts:

• Creating a Sense of Urgency: The concept of a ‘burning platform’ is sure to excite employees to join the effort of the plan, as well as contribute new ideas.  By creating a sense of urgency for the plan, it will ignite individual responsibility towards the newly presented initiatives; for example, one organization used pictures of the employees’ children as the backdrop of their sustainability kick-off meeting to allow the employees to recognize the impact their efforts will make on their future.

• Make Sustainability Understandable:  Although not a new concept, sustainability can seem notional to the average person.  Therefore, efforts should be taken to explain how the planned efforts will impact the employee specifically, to then shift the ‘big picture’ idea to a more manageable experience. Efforts should also be put towards translating the complicated language often used in sustainability reports to a simpler, more relatable vocabulary.

Case Example:

• How Not to Build Support: This case study focuses on how a single man at a corporation created a lasting negative impact by picking cans out of the garbage.  After his weekly findings, he would scold his fellow employees; this ‘guilt-trip’ is not a technique that should ever be emphasized. One should try to make sustainability fun, engaging, and inspire others to take action.

Methods:

• Readiness Assessment:  This method is recommended to be used prior to any major actions made to the sustainability plan, thus a preparation method to evaluate the current position and stance of the company and its employees.  In addition, this assessment will ask a company to assess how supportive the organization is of sustainability, how sustainability relates to current and past organizational goals, and when is the best time to action on this plan.

• Champion Assessment: This method is often used to assist in clarification of what the ideal ‘champion’ of the efforts made towards the sustainability plan resembles. In other words, this assessment helps identify what a role model should contribute to the sustainability plan as well as how they will inspire others to join the movement.

Chapter 2: Refining the Business Case

Summary:

This chapter focuses on establishing why sustainability is crucial to the long-term success of the company, with both finances, environmental, and social impact in mind. By defining the reasoning behind sustainability rather than just ‘being the right thing to do,’ but rather its personal impact to the organizations employees and shareholders, the likelihood of failure of the plan is little to none. Ultimately, the company must explain why this is worth the time, expense and effort to justify why sustainability is the right choice of focus over other aspects.  

Key Concepts:

• Right Action, Wrong Reason?: Companies usually get involved with sustainability concepts due to a complex set of reasonings: some of them right, some of them wrong.  The key takeaway is that you need to get the organization involved because of their personal views and reasonings rather than getting involved because ‘it's the right thing to do.’  

• Why Organizations Pursue Sustainability: Organizations typically start a sustainability initiative due to both business and personal reasons. Businesses typically are motivated by customer demands, following trends within the industry, as well as protecting the image of the company.  Financial holdings are at stake, and thus this is a way to avoid the pitfalls of a reputation associated with unsustainability.  As for personal reasons, children, illness, nature, and leisurely travel are all reasons for members of the organization to strive for sustainable business decisions and actions.

Case Example:

• Make the Message Memorable: Stories often can be more impactful and memorable than just a jumble of numbers and statistics. Thus, by relating the organization's personal interests to the negative impacts of not adhering to a sustainability plan, they are more likely to remember the common goal.  This motivation technique is nothing short of effective as well as inspiring to initiate personal change. 

Methods:

• Worldwide Trends Cards: Dorthy Atwood of the Zero Waste Alliance created the process of generating a set of statistic cards that highlight the ‘doom-and-gloom’ trends around the globe.  By reminding people of the horrors that may not affect them personally, but are still present, it creates a sense of urgency to take action.  Balance is key, so ending the set with a hopeful message is recommended.

• SWOT Analysis:  By comparing internal strengths and weaknesses, along with external opportunities and threats, it allows the organization to think about their actions and processes.  The SWOT analysis is very effective in terms of sustainability actions, because it turns an abstract idea into something applicable in their day to day role.

Chapter 3: Creating the Vision of Sustainability

Summary:

This chapter highlights the importance of determining what a sustainable version of the company looks like versus its current state.  By defining the desired outcome of the sustainability plan and efforts, it allows for the organization to engage with the term ‘sustainability’ on a personal level as well as recognize their actions that could aid in obtaining the ideal outcome.  Considering sustainability is a fairly generic term with numerous definitions, defining what it means to the individual company is crucial.

Key Concepts:

• Long-term Visioning: With the ideal version of the company in mind, breaking down the steps in a way that can be spread across a timeline will be most effective.  Near-term visioning encompasses the current state of the company along with its threats and opportunities from an external viewpoint. Following this up with categorizing immediate actionable items versus long term action items too will assist in the strength behind the sustainability plan. The long-term visioning refers to the company’s framework and major internal changes that need to be made.  The question that needs to be asked is: ‘What will be the role of this organization in a sustainable society?’

• Suggest Metrics: A company must provide its organization with a summarization of its goal, along with a way to measure progress; this can be done through a set of metrics.  By defining a set of common metrics to analyze the efforts done by both the organization and its employees, it suggests improvement, weaknesses, and all around a way to quantify the successes towards the final goal of sustainability.

Case Example:

• Hawaii 2050 Sustainability Plan: Hawaii in 2007 made the decision to introduce a long-range planning process that engaged over 10,000 residents within the local communities.  Although this may not have been the easiest way to go about implementing a state-wide sustainability plan, it was extremely effective.  By involving the public through surveys, meetings, and opportunities for youth involvement, it gave the public a sense of ownership to the plan, thus rewarding them with a plan to enact a sustainability council to ensure future accountability.

Methods:

• Threats and Opportunities: By asking the organization to identify threats and opportunities in an external perspective, it engages them to to ‘think outside the box.’ It allows for the organization to think of new ideas to implement to reach the end goal, as well as new ways to think about the company as a unit.

• Backcasting:  This method consists of four steps: awareness, baseline mapping, creating a vision, and down to action.  By breaking this process down, it allows for the organization to challenge their current business model, and prepare for change.  This method is best used when trying to incite the ‘end game’ of the sustainability plan.

Chapter 4: Identifying Impacts and Priorities

Summary:

This chapter focuses its efforts on companies identifying and analyzing their interactions with the environment, society, and their specific industry. The idea of recognizing what you take from these sectors, what you do with it, and what you contribute allows for companies to think about their efforts in a closed-circle.  All of these relationships are crucial to the business model as well as the sustainability plan, in the sense that the customers that they are serving and the products or services they are producing all affect the environment, society, and industry.  By identifying the impacts and priorities of the company, benchmark goals can be set in place in hopes of reaching a sustainable company.

Key Concepts:

• Look Beyond the Obvious: Looking deeper into a single activity’s impact can often surprise the organization due to its sheer size.  For example, a legal company was a major consumer of paper.  By changing to an electronic logging system, they avoided using enough paper that if stacked, would be as tall as a 22-story building.  In addition, they had a cost savings of around $20,000.  Not only by identifying this issue did they recognize their impact on the environment, they had a cost-savings that accelerated their business structure. 

• Go Beyond Your Gates: Often companies choose to ignore the impact of their products once transferred to a customer.  Although a customer cannot be forced to recycle a product, the company can manufacture their product to reduce the environmental impact.  This comes down to design.  In addition, this strategy can be aided by marketing your product as more sustainable than the competitors, thus creating a higher demand for the product. Sustainable decisions too can be a positive financial decision.

Case Example:

• Process Inefficiency at Engineering Firm: An engineering firm discovered a waste that went unnoticed for some time, within their quality check department, they found they were wasting nearly 35 sheets of paper per item.  This waste not only was an environmental impact, but by switching to a digital system, it created a quicker process that diminished billable staff time.

Methods:

• High-Level Impact Assessment: By creating a cross-functional team to represent each functional area of the organization, you can create this assessment to analyze the impacts and critical issues that could be targeted by the sustainability plan.  This simple approach is a quick and easy way to gather critical information to catalyze the sustainability effort.

• Process Mapping:  Best used for companies with one to two main impact processes, this method will target inefficiencies that need work.  Process mapping can be an easy but impactful way to target faults within the organization, especially if process maps are already on hand.

Chapter 5: Developing Sustainability Metrics and Reports

Summary:

This chapter focuses on the importance and impact of metrics and reports to track and represent the progress made towards the sustainability plan, and ultimately the sustainability of the company.  Metrics are a way to ‘track progress and celebrate successes.’ By providing quantitative data to the organization, it a way to quantify their efforts.  However, is crucial to have metrics that are both readable, and not manipulative. A metric that represents a negative effort can make the organization feel as though they are ‘falling short.’ This is not motivating and could halt successes.

Key Concepts:

• Should Targets Be Realistic or Audacious?: Long-term sustainability goals should fall somewhere in between realistic and audacious. The reasoning behind this lies in the idea that once the goal is achieved, it will lose momentum to push passed.  Thus, by setting the goal high, it allows for the organization to generate energy towards the final goal, and continue to improve upon their efforts.  Realistic goals make sense to implement when it comes to benchmark or short-term goals, this reason being it gives a sense of success.

• Data Traps to Avoid: Data has faults that can originate from numerous sources, however this can paint a picture of inaccuracy of efforts towards the sustainability goal. Some common origins of these so called ‘data traps’ is people logging data differently and data that is segmented differently.  People can log data in different time frames such as categorizing a certain usage of electricity at the end of the period, but the period for one person can vary to the next. As for segmented data, this refers to the categorization of waste for example.  If you have a used sauce packet, would you classify that under a food waste or plastic waste?

Case Example:

• Sellen Construction, Measuring Green Building Projects as a Core Competency: Not only should internal impacts be measured, mission-related impacts too should be taken into account.  At Sellen Construction, they are measuring their progress by organizing more sustainable building projects by tracking and forecasting their clients’ efforts towards Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design projects.  By doing so, the internal volume of positive impact will grow.

Methods:

• Sustainability Scorecard: This scorecard will act as a base to assess what metrics need to be measured for each of the sustainable initiatives that are chartered within the sustainability plan. Getting the organization involved with this method is a great way to assess where the organization believes each metric lies, and under what department.

• Metrics Worksheet:  This metric can be used following the sustainability scorecard, once you know which metrics are going to be tracked.  By breaking down the goal into its metric, goal, sources of data, computation and charts, it allows for a systemic approach by the organization.