Considering your next move into sustainability? That’s a good thing; however, there is a lot to consider because your competitor is probably thinking the same thing. How will you differentiate yourself in this all-important, emerging marketplace and successfully develop and implement an authentic sustainability strategy without running out of money, alienating your stakeholders, or greenwashing your message? From the outset, you need to apply principles of good business sense and learn the language of the triple bottom-line of sustainability. It’s now a business imperative to understand how to prioritize and implement a customized strategic plan to meet stakeholder expectations while ensuring the most economical pathway to the best possible goal.

Any successful company, somewhere along the way, has developed a critical business relationship. Whether you strike a deal with your supplier for better terms on payment, bulk payments, and exclusivity or you provide your customers perks, lay-away, and weekly specials—the relationship helps you become more successful. What happens if you disrupt the business relationship by seeking another supplier based upon local or less toxic materials? For any company thinking about improving their carbon footprint or implementing green initiatives across their enterprise, serious consideration needs to be made to ensure the bottom line does not interfere with the triple bottom-line to the degree that nobody wins.

I remember during the early dot-com days when companies were deciding whether or not to get a website how many opted not to have one. Even with overwhelming potential gain in marketing reach and changes in consumer behavior, many companies continue to invest very little in their web presence. This “wait and see” and “just good enough” behavior persists in the present day regarding sustainability. Climate change regulation is in the pipeline, and many companies are not prepared to comply with the new requirements. Meanwhile, consumers, buyers, and other stakeholders in the market supply chain are beginning to demand more accountability from their business relationships. Your response now will affect how your company performs in the long-term.

While opening a sustainable home renovation store may fly in Portland, OR, it may not have the same appeal or staying power in rural North Carolina. The concept of the Level of Greenth simply means discovering where you and your community are at on the spectrum of sustainability awareness and choosing practical, achievable goals to steadily move up the spectrum to ensure stability and the ability to follow through with increasing changes year to year. The regional needs, economic conditions, type of biosphere, and the level of understanding of the principles of sustainability determine a region’s “Level of Greenth”.

You’ve seen the list: 100 ways you can go green. Whether you’re a homeowner or a business owner, at first glance this list looks like a good idea. The problem is, among the 100 things you could do to go green, there are at most one or two things you should do right now-based on more than just a desire to do something green. In the rush to go green because of the pull of customer demand and the push of new compliance rules, many organizations leap before they think and spend energy, money, and valuable time for green initiatives that may have nothing to do with their business.

Try something else: Rather than deploying your green initiatives in a spray and pray method, hoping something sticks with your stakeholders and you can reclaim some of your cost, take a few baby steps first to prevent losing time, money, and possibly respect from your employees, customers, buyers, and other stakeholders.

When expenditures for the basics of business are largely frozen after a slew of layoffs and budget cutbacks, what’s left over for continuing your sustainability strategy? We often consider each sustainability initiative on the same financial level: A recycling program is just as good as a new roofing system which is just as good as a new waste water treatment system. In fact, there are hundreds of things to go green but that doesn’t mean you implement the first five in the list. What you need is a plan for the right project at the right price.

Most organizations today focus on creating value through improving the efficiency of organizational processes. They measure their success through changes in mass-manufacturing economies of scale, savings benefits garnered through hyper-efficient distributions systems, Six-Sigma quality control programs, and so on which all contribute to enormous value creation in organizations. Organizations will get progressively better at designing and managing processes to improve efficiency, but such initiatives no longer have break-through value-creation potential. They are already witnessing diminishing marginal returns when it comes to the incremental value creation possible through improving efficiency.

It’s actually common knowledge. Successful organizations have good strategy alignment. Most leaders in business and any institution for that matter will agree, the degree by which their vision is communicated effectively to each member of the organization in order that their contribution is aligned with the financial outcomes determines the success of that organization. Unfortunately, [...]