Sustainability is near the very top or close to the top of any forward-looking board’s agenda. The board, pushed by its multiple stakeholders and shareholders, is recognising the growing concerns of several “intertwined issues” that need significant recalibrating. It is forcing them to think beyond asking “how can we thrive and survive, into how can we build a sustainable pathway for value, growth and impact?”.

Where does our business fit within and alongside society, both in who we serve and society in general, coupled with realising that the planet is heading towards a critical crisis? Today, we need to account for the impacts of heat, flooding, water shortages, health and food issues and what we can do to reduce these pressures. How can each of us contribute to becoming more sustainable?

There are growing impact points that are harder to separate, they are increasingly becoming intertwined. The economy for a business to function and be profitable, an environment that is climate and nature friendly and thirdly, the growing considerations for a broader range of people to serve, support or inform the social and corporate values come increasingly together.

We live in a connected world mutually dependent on nature, and our environment, in sharing and valuing that we only thrive and survive if we collaborate and cooperate.

Sustainability is reshaping the core of business in four ways.

If the decision is made to become more focused on “being sustainable”, drastic shifts in direction will undoubtedly occur. The shift from that fear of being disrupted due to the digital transformation is being replaced by the need to build a sustainable company built on increasing insight and connected understanding, seeking and exploring, experimenting and confirming a new value equation.

The shift into a more future-focused position where sustainability becomes core will require a dedicated, focused, systematic need to assess the portfolio and the operating conditions. This goes way beyond the present “where to play and how to win”; this becomes as much for the long game as managing the short term.

We need to often completely rethink the present business model.

I would argue that all of today’s business models urgently need to be redesigned around ecosystem thinking and designs that are open, highly collaborative and responsive but equally geared to being sustainable for the long run.

I suggest, to start, four focal points to consider

The focus is on undertaking and shaping a new core through four focus points for sustainability;

1) redefining a new set of strategic choices,

2) evaluating both product and operation reinvention to reflect this strategic design,

3) re-evaluating your innovative partnerships within a new sustainability ecosystem design and finally

4) recognizing the length of time it will realistically take to achieve more sustainable value creation and the shift of all your resources to make this change.

If you don’t have the appetite to undergo this, then recognize your business is already facing decline and will have less relevancy and customer identification. You will progressively be “frozen out” of a world of collaborators and relationships, building a very different, more complex set of solutions to provide lasting value and impact.

Redefining new directions and strategic choices

To embrace sustainability, you embrace a new set of principles of governance that bring the planet, people and prosperity far more into the thinking.

What would that mean in the magnitude of change? How do you assess if your current business portfolio is sustainability proof of what is required or needed for today and in the future? Different scenario thinking needs a constant mindset and evaluation.

Contact me, Paul Hobcraft, at phobcraft@gmail.com to begin a strategic conversation on mapping a sustainable journey.