Catalyze June 22

CONTINUED...
No business ever does all of these things, but they know how to prioritize and pick the
right things and get the right people aligned. Well, the same thing can happen with
sustainability. With sustainability, I'm just extending the model for three simple ideas.
The first one would be environmental. All things about understanding the raw materials
and the impact that your operations have on the environment, the raw inputs that
come in that your suppliers bring in, and how and what you do to the environment as
it's going back out.
The next one would be economic. That's where you get into using sustainability
techniques to understand the overall cost of operations and optimizing the cost of
operations for your business. This is usually where all the ESG conversations go about
reporting requirements, smart cities, and things like that. And finally, community.
Community is a really important piece of this sustainability conversation because what's
at the center of this picture is the folks on your team, the people that work with your
customers, et cetera. And you've got customers themselves that you're trying to market
the idea that sustainability is about growth. How are you gonna grow into new markets
unless your customers understand and see what you're doing? It's important to have a
purpose-driven organization. And so now when I understand all these different topics
that are considered sustainability, now I can actually apply them to my framework and
understand how they fit in my understanding of my organization. And a lot of
companies will say, “well, we're not interested in that. You know, we're not interested in
clean water. Why? Because we're a water company.” The idea that you can take from
this is, first, to find a really simple framework because everybody makes things too
difficult. There are simple frameworks that you can use to understand your business,
and how to apply these ideas. And change is gonna happen, but it's that combination
of innovation and resilience that's going to reduce the impact and let you live to
another day. If innovation is tough, it can be engineered. Don't give up on the idea that
you can't introduce innovation to your organization and actually make it work. And then
finally, the last two key ideas: Resilience is a reactive way to make sure your company
and your organization can live to see tomorrow; Sustainability is a proactive way to
make sure that your company can live forever.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 15