How to find the right path to sustainability?

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Table of content

1. Introduction
2. How to find the right path to sustainability?
3. Visual of the week
4. ?? Special offer: Build an efficient and responsive organization, the playbook
5. Conclusion: we're moving forward

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Introduction

From the start, The Road to Sustainability initiative adopted a broad scope of research and development, focusing on mission-driven enterprises across the public, nonprofit and private sectors. This agenda led to the adaptation of new concepts and frameworks tailored to the sustainability sector's unique strategy considerations.

?? In this week's publication, you'll find some links to help you advance the field and catalyze action by engaging the key constituencies.

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?? Learn more and practice to build your sustainability plan on Nevelab's Vault.

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How to find the right path to sustainability?

In the previous publications, we saw that building a high-performance sustainability plan requires substantial management assets and bold leadership skills to align its business model with its paradigm shift model. The management team needs to acquire the ability and flexibility to navigate the market affected by fragmented capital markets, complex performance measures, and conflicting goals.

Explore more: "From chaos to recovery: gateway to sustainability" reviews:

1. Introduction to resilience - Part 1/3
2. The road to recovery and well-being - Part 2/3
3. Sustainable approaches to innovation - Part 3/3

As debated in the different publications, the interplay between sustainability and evolving practice fields has resulted in meaningful changes among organizations within institutions and across industries. Eventually, practitioners identified and developed market-based solutions to advance the sustainability sector generating practical policy recommendations.

Evaluating resource management requires time and efforts

Many would agree management and business inherit from external situations, whether they are accelerated or, on the contrary chaotic. It is worth taking the time to think about each step of the purpose-driven or sustainability plan rather than hastily fill out an ambiguous and even maybe worse, ambitious framework. Sustainability and ecosystem health are two dimensions on which the impact of management can be evaluated.

The problem is to drive a productivity and growth plan, involves short-term predictions in the context, a skill that is not necessarily inherent in the team. Yet, decision-makers who are prone to narrow framing build a preference every time they face a risk. The suggestion here is to embark on a risk policy that they would routinely apply whenever a significant problem arises. There is no guarantee–obviously–that the biases will be canceled out in every situation. But at least, it provides a perspective for thinking about a path and gets started.

To get inspired, I've chosen the following quote related to the ongoing situation:

"The things we fear the most in organizations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - are the primary sources of creativity."—Margaret J. Wheatley

Lifecycle management

Whenever we need to do a global evaluation of a complex or uncertain situation, we tend to assign a weight to its characteristics—[Read "The sustainability paradox"].

It is necessary to evaluate the current movements, and it can start with a fourfold pattern (a la "SWOT"). The process bears similarity with many other life cycle type processes, particularly the renewal cycle that can be defined in four phases of capital and connectedness. Capital/knowledge is accumulated in the long term (e.g., growth, productivity, energy-saving, or specific skills). Connectedness is the ability of the components of the system to change arrangements among one another.

We are left with the hypothesis that no single or perfect management strategy gives others an advantage in perpetuating sustainability and not being vulnerable to uncertainty or environmental hazards. But this offers us the opportunity to elaborate resource management systems with relative effectiveness.

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Visual of the week

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Special offer: Build a resilient and responsive organization, the playbook

?? Join the community on Nevelab's Vault: for each yearly subscription (20% off), get the "Build a resilient and responsive organization" playbook (value: $149, release March 1, 2021).

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Conclusion: we're moving forward

We are at a unique point in the arc of history when institutions and countries are confronting all kinds of stubborn global challenges, from the pandemic to failing institutions to reconceiving work environments and environmental instability. We see leaders and public servants aggressively committed to re-engineering their ecosystems with unprecedented determination.

In the years ahead, organizations and communities have a historic opportunity to address fundamental social challenges. Not only to contain or reduce the status problems but also to make concrete progress in humankind's well-being. Of course, it's going to be hard. It will require intensive collaboration and risk-taking. Yet, the recent accomplishments in technology, healthcare, finance provide countless opportunities to be of exceptional service to the world.

See you next week,

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A few more things

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Disclaimer

The road to sustainability is an initiative by Nevelab Technologies and is circulated for informational and educational purposes only.

Nevelab Technologies Research utilizes data and information from the public, private and internal sources, including data from actual Nevelab open data access. While we consider information from external sources reliable, we do not assume responsibility for its accuracy.

The views expressed herein are solely those of Nevelab Technologies as of this report's date and are subject to change without notice. Nevelab Technologies may have a significant financial interest in one or more of the positions and securities or derivatives discussed. Those responsible for preparing this report receive compensation based upon various factors, including, among other things, the quality of their work and firm revenues.