Want to Match it to the Earth's Future?
To Start: Leadership
Building Capacity in your Leadership Team and
Financial Performance
to Anticipate
Rapid Changes in the
Conditions for Business Success
Some executives, as we suggest elsewhere, think they can do it on their own. A very few can. Most who think they can, either put off doing anything about it or fail because of lack of skill and attention. The smarter ones generally look outside the firm for reliable, competent consultants who can view their teams from outside the system and foster change without being a part of any vested group. They count on us for cost-effective, time-bound, reliable intervention that pays for itself, usually within a few months.
The Natural Step - Four System Conditions that Determine our Future -
- The Absolute Minimum Required to Sustain a World
Dr. Karl-Henrick Robert, a Swedish pediatric oncologist, has concluded that human society can achieve long term stability only if four system conditions are met. That is, only if these four rules are followed can the whole earth system remain in equilibrium.
- Substances such as oil, iron, lead, and other minerals can not be removed from the earth's crust and not be restored;
- Substances such as persistent chemicals - PCBs, DDT,chlorofluorocarbons, polymers and other man-made substances that break down only after thousands of years - can not build up on the earth's crust faster than they can be absorbed by the earth;
- The products of a fertile earth - croplands, fish, water, etc. - can not be used up faster than they can be restored by natural systems; and
- Humans can not be deprived of their abilities to make decent livings.
Poor people, he observed, can not take care of their environment. Desperate people cut trees, tear up crop lands, whatever it takes to feed their families and get shelter.
These four system conditions, published by the organization he founded, The Natural Step, form one set of criteria for a sustainable earth. Any business that seeks to survive into an unknown future will have to act within the lines suggested by the four conditions. In fact, our goal is that every business move forward with respect to these conditions. They form excellent guidelines for company policy - for the prudent company. It turns out that in most cases, following them has also enabled companies to grow and to prosper.
The Mantra of Nature's Three Laws- a refreshingly honest wall
- Applying Them to Business
- Saving Resources and Expenses
- Waste equals Food - in our economy, where typically 95% of all inputs to a product are wasted,
- The system can use only the energy equivalent to the sunlight that falls on the earth each day - in a situation of rising energy costs and tightening investment limits, and
- Diversity enhances stability of the whole ecosystem - and in the end survivability. Competition and cooperation are both characteristic of a growing, flourishing system and its components.
Our job at ConfluencePoint is to co-design with each client a new way and to get you started on it at a reasonable cost, typically earned back in less than one year.
Interested? Contact us.
Financial Stability is a vital foundation for growth. Our first concern is to provide a way for you to gain certainty - by enhancing leadership, helping you design scoreboards and reporting channels, breaking down silos, assessing the 12 drivers of bottom line results, and reassessing overall efficiency of effort in return on sales, asset turnover, and return on total capital.
This forms a solid base for doing the right things -
This forms a solid base for doing the right things -
- innovation,
- cost savings,
- continuous improvement,
- environmental policy development,
- employee engagement in sustainable initiatives and finally:
- metrics.
Two alternatives:
Any company can 'go green' and launch an ad campaign by starting a recycling program that is more or less successful and resolving to waste less truck fuel. That's certainly one alternative, and it seems cheap. It doesn't require much time from the executives.
The capable leaders, however, will spot the real opportunity in this decision, which is to commit to pursuing sustainability principles as the company's basic strategy. This second alternative, surprisingly, has been found over and over to improve the company's full performance.
Any company can 'go green' and launch an ad campaign by starting a recycling program that is more or less successful and resolving to waste less truck fuel. That's certainly one alternative, and it seems cheap. It doesn't require much time from the executives.
The capable leaders, however, will spot the real opportunity in this decision, which is to commit to pursuing sustainability principles as the company's basic strategy. This second alternative, surprisingly, has been found over and over to improve the company's full performance.
In the course of innovating specific environmental and social programs, for example, companies have had to rely on information from all their employees. Done right, that has led them to create structures for systematic employee contributions, a process called Lean. Such an approach can change the way employees see the company, the way executives see the employees, and the availability of timely operating and financial information to the chief.
Growing to accomodate that enhanced performance potential makes the difference between mere recycling and cost savings on the one hand and on the other, fully opening up the company to its new levels of profit as well as environmental and social performance.
For an illustration of this process See our Blog Page.
To arrange an exploration by telephone, Contact Us.
To arrange an exploration by telephone, Contact Us.
