I am interested in helping people to understand how to deal with sustainability issues. My framework helps me to articulate the challenges leaders have convincing themselves and others about the importance of dealing with sustainability issues.
I am inviting friends to this site who appear to be interested in learning about how to make sustainability happen.
About The Sustainable Way
I wrote this short novel to help people understand what they need to do to deal with sustainability issues. While some organisations have prevaricated, others have dealt with sustainability issues well. The book articulates what they do differently and is based on the findings of my PhD research with CEOs of large well-known organisations. Click on the book to the right for more details.
Briefly, those leaders who deal with sustainability issues well challenge ( no they confront ) people who think they have the right to ignore or avoid sustainability issues. It is one thing to make a commitment to behave more sustainably, but if you do not change the underlying mood sustainability issues will not be dealt with appropriately.
What is sustainability?
Early in my book I define sustainability as the holistic consideration and balance between economic, ecological and societal issues (triple bottom line).
Have a look at my thesis for the detail: http://intergon.net/phd
I leave sustainability pretty vague, because it means different things to different people. Generally speaking, to make "sustainabiity" happen you need to align the underlying mood.
How then does ethics fit into that? I suppose it ties into what CEOs need to confront stakeholders about.
What do they confront about?
Some people think they have a right to rip-off incentive systems (recall The Smartest Guys in the Room); these sustainable way CEOs then they ask themselves, "is this incentive system sensible ... is it ethical ... are we coercing people to behave in an unsustainable way?" Well, quite often incentives systems create a lot of evil behaviour.
Ever get even the slightest guilt about being a human being?
If not you likely do not get sustainability/CSR. I feel guilty about creating unnecessary pollution. So, I bicycle whenever I can, recycle what I can, and bury kitchen scraps in the garden.
See the man in the wheel? That is me running and running – trying to get people to listen to this message. Few people listen. Why should they when there are so many incentives to behave in an unsustainable way?
The Sustainable Way is for those who just don't get it
This is a book written for people who do not get it; it is short and easy to read. What they do not get is that they have to do it . Robert Anton Wilson said (Nature's God, 1991, p. 127)"intellectual laziness and common sense are the same thing - common sense is just the trade name of the firm".
Perhaps give your boss a copy of The Sustainable Way .
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