Why Bother With a Sustainable Strategy?
By Jack Mixner
Over the years, I have worked with many companies to create strategic plans. Very rarely did we address ecological concerns in our planning. The focus was mainly on some form of corporate financial success. Ricoh Electronics always comes to mind when we do consider such a strategy because of all the effort they have made into reducing scrap and emissions (while at the same time increasing profitability).Now I have a resource that lays out all the environmental problems we all may face in the next years. Normally my attitude is that changes in the weather will take time. I have assumed that we have time to address the carbon buildups in the atmosphere and all will work out in the end.
Head-In-Sand Thinking?Eugene Linden presents compelling evidence that climatic change will not occur over millenniums but rather over years or decades. He describes convincingly the reasons for the collapse of a Mayan civilization and the advance of the ice ages during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Europe.
The book is interesting - read that gripping and scary, cannot put it down reading - for the way it lays out the problem. All of us need to consider the implications for our society.Short term, there are all sorts of ways to strategize. Some of them are not necessarily sensible (Friends from the mid-west were talking about buying into an ethanol plant. I would wait a bit if I were them.) Longer term, sustainable strategies make good business sense - and good social sense.
Strategic ImplicationSustainable strategies will increase profitability and company valuation when incorporated in the overall corporate planning process. They make sense to consider.
ReferencesLinden, Eugene. The Winds of Change Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations. Simon & Schuster. 2006.