What would it take to make growth sustainable?

In business, we are almost always looking to grow. Whether you’re a startup, a large global company, or a B2B sales person. It really doesn’t matter. We are all looking to grow. Since this doesn’t seem to change any time soon, the question I’m asking myself is what it would take to make the growth sustainable, and not just from a planetary perspective, but from a holistic perspective?

Here is a framework I really enjoy using:

I use it to:

• Help organizations consider what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they have in each of these four areas.
• Assess investment pitches I get from startups.
• Read annual reports from large companies in which I’m potentially looking to invest time and/or money.
• Challenge my employer.
• Influence politicians on how to think about sustainable business growth.

As I’m a lifelong learner I’m sure this framework will evolve over time, but for now I’m really happy about it. I really believe any organization that isn’t net positive on all four dimensions will at some point struggle.

Financial sustainability: Any startup that doesn’t find a sustainable business model, relying only on raising more and more investments, will at some point struggle. The same goes for bigger companies where costs grow faster than revenue.

Customer sustainability: Any company that is dependent on monopoly/oligopoly/high entrance/change thresholds to keep customers, instead of sky-high customer satisfaction, will at some point struggle.

Employee sustainability: Any company that doesn’t invest in employee wellbeing as a top priority, treating work as a sprint, rather than a marathon, will at some point struggle.

Societal sustainability: Any company that isn’t net positive to society across dimensions of physical, mental, social and planetary wellbeing will at some point struggle.

So when you read the next annual report and you look at the executive summary, do you see a key performance indicator for financial (yes, always), employee (almost never), customer (sometimes) and societal (often only bare minimum on planetary, not physical/social/mental) sustainability? If not, why?

In the same way, when you assess your next startup investment pitch, do they have a clear idea of how they will build a sustainable business across these four areas?

I believe as a next step every company should define clear KPIs across these dimensions and start transparently reporting on them, or come with a really good reason why not. I’ve still not heard a good reason after hundreds of conversations with business owners about this.

After the KPIs are clear, ensure that you really move in the right direction. The challenge here is that many people and consequently companies (as they are made up of people), are not really interested in the truth. They are more suffering from confirmation bias, looking for data points and ways to report to make them look good towards their owners. It’s not because they are evil (they are not). It’s probably more because of lack of knowledge, awareness and deliberate intent to do better. You can for example see this in annual reports when you look at exactly how something is reported, what benchmarks they have picked (or not picked).

If you as a business owner and/or leader are serious about leaving a sustainable legacy, then care about the truth about what your business does with customers, employees and society. I trust you to try to do the right thing. Let me know if I can help.

Thank you ??

Some inspirational reading in this domain are: Net Positive , Global Reporting Initiative , the KPIs of the Future .