Creating Sustainable Organizations

By Chuck McVinney
©2001 McVinney & Company

1. The Idea of Sustainability

A value that is both old and new is taking hold in American business - and it's about time, too. Current economic and ecologic events, from the recent business slow-down to the emerging definitive evidence of global warming and the ongoing energy crises, it's clearer and clearer that we need to address core issues of sustainability in our lives and in our life-times. This is also t rue when building companies and organizations.

However, sustainability is an odd word. It conjures up notions of environmentalists with protest placards blocking entrances to the national park, and endless local battles over the construction of new subdivisions. Nevertheless, the call to acknowledge sustainability as a business issue is real, and goes well beyond the need to guarantee quarterly profits.

Sustainability seems to be a miss-understood and perhaps overly maligned word. Basically, what it really means is the ability to survive and thrive over time and in a variety of circumstances and conditions. Further, the word holds deeper meaning than most people acknowledge or recognize, since it clearly embraces concepts of growth and change for the sake of the continued life of the organism or community. Consider this set of definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary, 1981.

Sustainability:

1. To keep in existence; maintain or prolong. The quote used in this edition to exemplify the word in action sheds interesting light on the broader meaning; "The historical process is sustained by man's desire to become other than what he is." (Norman O. Brown)
2. To supply with necessities or nourishment; to provide for. (Note: The same dictionary defines "nourishment" as: "That which supports life and growth in living organisms." And again: "That which promotes the development or vitality of something."
3. To support spirit and vitality - encourage - as in 'devotion to his trade sustained him' (Mark Van Doren).
4. To support from below - to prop up and keep from sinking.

Since the word "nourish" is used to describe "sustain" in the dictionary definition, and nourish is described as supporting growth, we find, as we might expect the following definition of growth:

Growth:

(Again from the American Heritage Dictionary - 1981)

1. The process of growing (grow: to increase naturally in size by addition of material through assimilation or accretion - to expand; to gain - to increase in amount or degree; become extended or intensified).
2. Development from a lower or simpler to a higher or more complex form; evolution.
3. An increase, as in size, number, value or strength; extension or expansion.

In short, we find that sustainability is all caught up with growth and nourishment, as well as development and change. It's not just a word describing the status quo or referring to survival at the level of mere subsistence. This casts a new light on the word "sustainability," which because of these simultaneous meanings, takes on a somewhat paradoxical quality.

Some feel that sustainability confronts capitalism with a certain paradox, as well. On the one hand, we succeed by growing and growing our markets and bank accounts, but on the other we deplete the environment that supports us by turning it into disposable goods using non-renewable energy sources. Sustain but grow is, on the face of it, a contradictory message.

Furthermore, the phrase "sustainable development" is also abundantly used these days, and as such presents a core challenge to 21st century business. With our definitions in mind, we can see that business today must ask itself: "In addition to supporting our companies by making them economically successful, are we contributing to the well being of our communities, nation and planet? Are we attending to the needs of life, and the future of life in the work we do and the way we do it?" Some have called this the emergence of the three-part bottom line. In addition to the economic measures of success we have to add the social and environmental measures to assess the real success of businesses and other organizations. Most new models of sustainability also include these three components; economic, social and environmental, in their descriptions of what the future will expect and measure in business activity.

Finally, Sustainability is a natural order concept - it is a dynamic that has been present since the universe was born. The earth has sustained itself for billions of years, and we have been nurtured by that capacity. Now, in a more conscious way, we must begin to learn from that success story about ways to live and work without jeopardizing our future, and preferably, while enhancing it.

To better understand the scope of this challenge, we suggest a number of core principals and practices that define sustainability. Among these are three key concepts that smart leaders and mangers will be learning more and more about in the coming years. >>