Where does your business sit on the sustainability scale?

“The term sustainability is widely used to express the need to live in the present in ways that do not jeopardize the future.”

This quote from Peter Senge in his article titled ‘Revolution Next’ got me thinking that past weekend. We broadly think about sustainability as an environmental concept, but in truth it is much more than that.

For businesses or the people who run them, it is also about the ways we operate, administer, hire, fire, deal with customers, manage our cashflow, generate profits, develop new products, and on and on. How does your business rate on the sustainability scale? Do your practices, policies and principles support your chances of survival into the future?

From the headlines of the past few months here are some examples of the wrong end of that scale:

If everything you do is geared towards short-term returns then chances are you don’t have a sustainable business; if your business is based on a single fashion or trend; if your culture is so toxic that no one wants to work for you for more than a month; if you squander the profits of the good times without anticipating they won’t always be there; if you treat your customers as if they aren’t there – then chances are your organisation isn’t sustainable.

We need to stop thinking about sustainability as an “environmental” issue and start thinking about it in terms of the “whole environment” of organisations and acting accordingly. So here’s a question for people to consider this week: what one thing can you change today that will make your organisation more sustainable?

See you next week.

Michel Hogan is a Brand Advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States, she helps organisations recognize who they are and align that with what they do and say, to build more authentic and sustainable brands. She also publishes the Brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment.