Sustainable business strategy

Planning

Sustainability is a strategic platform that allows any business to develop and thrive in the ever-changing economic environment. Sustainability is not an add-on to the business plan, it IS the business plan – or it should be.

The planning and implementation process can be broken down into the following areas:

1 | Sustainability SWOT Analysis
Assess internal strengths and weaknesses and analyse external opportunities and trends, threats and constraints. By knowing where you stand now you can plan to take advantage of future opportunities and manage future risks.

You could also audit your stakeholders.

2 | Strategic planning
What is the business case for sustainability? What are your business goals? Where does sustainability fit in? You might do scenario planning where you create discrete future scenarios and examine how your business might fare in each. As an example the UN Environmental Programme uses four scenarios – market first, policy first, security first, sustainability first. It is important to consult all stakeholders – including customers, suppliers, investors, community groups, government departments – and find out about constraints and issues as well as abilities.

3 | Sustainability terms and frameworks
You will need to describe sustainability and the framework or methodology you use so that you develop implementation plans around them. How will you categorise your efforts? What words will you use to explain these to staff? Depending on your type of business you may make use of two or more existing frameworks or modify ideas from several.

4 | Implementation Plan
What are the steps you are going to take to implement your strategy? Where will you start? Who will be responsible? Who else will be involved? How? Where? By when?
Will you have a sustainability co-ordinator and/or a steering group? Will you create task forces for each major project. Importantly, how will management demonstrate their support?

5 | Align business systems
Business systems – such as recruitment and training, performance appraisal, budgeting, planning, purchasing and administration – each influence the organisation in different ways and one or more of these systems could easily hold up any change efforts. Ensure that sustainability is incorporated into each system.

6 | Create transparent benchmarks and reports
There is a need for transparency, accuracy and ethics when implementing and monitoring sustainability efforts. Sustainability reports to all stakeholders is a good option. They need to be honest comprehensive – brick bats AND bouquets. Benchmarks need to be set, goals need to be stated, and shortfalls explained.

7 | Review and improve
Based on performance, changing stakeholder expectations and the changing external environment – economic, social and natural – you will need to review your sustainability and look for ways to improve upon it.