New Book Excerpt: Sustainability’s Engagement Strategy

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.” ~ Henry Ford
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Learning how to adopt Sustainability principles to produce a corporation’s awareness of resource consumption like carbon, water, and electricity in order to run their businesses in compliance with existing laws and regulations is based on “lessons learned”.

Sustainability promotes awareness.
Awareness promotes learning and values.
Learning promotes forward thinking to anticipate the future.

If trends continue, Sustainability will be the new competitive tool for business in the 21st Century. It is an internal, external, and a forward facing conviction that embeds and integrates disruptive business practices and technology. Internally, it coordinates your Core Assets that are based on common values. Externally, it addresses externalities and builds outside relationships with those entities. As for forward facing facet, Sustainability always interacts in a dynamic environmental, economic and social environs. Last, but critical to success, is the evolution of innovation that is designed to fit you business needs. It should continue to adapt and provide services to produce products wanted by your customers and address marketplace opportunities based on Sustainability.

If ethical decision making is not part of your due diligence analysis, it should be. For it can be the bridge from your corporate values to the actual “go-no go” decision for a variety of projects and initiatives. It can help steer efforts into avenues that could otherwise be overlooked. Addressing Sustainability and Stewardship in context of approving funding would help ensure your strategic directions are met and align with other business constraints (i.e., ROI, cost reduction, new product development, etc.).

Understanding ethical standards, consequences in violating standards, and the impact on your core assets can have a positive effect on your corporate culture was implemented and enforced prudently. This regarding those values, can have an  underlying  perception that those values are not genuine. Regular discussion, execution for ethical issues in applying those issues and business cases are helpful in ensuring sustainable development and stewardship.

This is an excerpt of my new book “Building a Bridge to Benefits”. Publication date is scheduled for November 2013 and is planned to be available on Amazon. More to come …
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Jarvis Business Solutions, LLC
Contact Information
Email: Ralph.Jarvis@JarvisBusinessSolutions.com
Blog: http://horizons.JarvisBusinessSolutions.com
Web site: http://www.JarvisBusinessSolutions.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/corporatesocialresponsibility/

Lead Smart, Endless Opportunities when Sustainability is driven by Lean Six Sigma
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Doris Kim Sung: Metal that breathes – TED Video

Published by TED. Doris Kim Sung is a biology student turned architect interested in thermo-bimetals, smart materials that respond dynamically to temperature change.

“[Skin is] the first line of defense for the body.  Our building skins should be more similar to human skin.”       ~ Doris Kim Sung

Modern buildings with floor-to-ceiling windows give spectacular views, but they require a lot of energy to cool. Doris Kim Sung works with thermo-bimetals, smart materials that act more like human skin, dynamically and responsively, and can shade a room from sun and self-ventilate.

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Corporate Social Responsibility: Distinction or Distraction? – Repost

Published by Newsweek, August 09, 2012, Steve McKee is president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland and author of When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You’re Stuck, and What to Do About It.

Is it more socially responsible for U.S. businesses to protect American jobs or provide employment for impoverished people in developing countries? To shun genetically modified foods or endorse their role in ameliorating malnutrition? To power their fleets with petroleum or use electricity generated by coal? More …

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5 Sustainability Reporting Issues on CSR Executives’ Minds – Repost

Originally published on http://www.triplepundit.com.One of the main issues that came up at the Responsible Business Summit was sustainability reporting. Even with all the progress we have seen so far, reporting continues to be one of the most challenging issues for CSR executives. Still, just like CSR, reporting becomes more focused, strategic and smart, and there’s even a continuous search after its business value. The journey of sustainability reporting is still a long one, but listening to the CSR executives in the summit it became clear to me that companies now understand the significance of reporting more than ever and try to figure out how to utilize it in the best way possible. More …

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The Top 10 Trends in CSR for 2012 – Repost

The Top 10 Trends in CSR for 2012

Originally published by Forbes, January 18, 2012: This article is by Tim Mohin, director of corporate responsibility for Advanced Micro Devices and author of the forthcoming book Changing Business From the Inside Out: The Treehugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations.

Top 10 Trends include:

1. Going Global

2. The Triumph (or Tyranny) of Transparency

3. Employee Engagement Emerges

4. Political Pitfalls

5. Collaboration

6. Sustainability Shoppers

7. Occupy From the Inside

8. Social Media Rules

9. Human Rights

10. Earth at Seven Billion and Growing

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We have a heritage of Sustainability: Part 1

President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front. Deutsch: Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten von 1901 bis 1909, Friedensnobelpreisträger des Jahres 1906. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over one hundred years ago, our then president, Theodore Roosevelt, was particular interested in our natural resources, the people and cultures of our country and the need to remind everyone that we should improve those resources for future generations. Please keep in mind that the term Sustainability had not been coined, but the desire to to the “right thing” was so clearly embedded in Roosevelt’s thoughts and deeds.

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”
~ Theodore Roosevelt

“To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”
~ Theodore Roosevelt

“We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.”
~ Theodore Roosevelt

I wonder what Roosevelt would have said in today’s context. Would he have been an environmental activist, a commander of industrial leaders, a rebel who would have had indigestion with international organizations and NGOs? We shall never know, but one thing we do know now is his love for this country, its people and the resources that stretch from one ocean to the next.

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We have A Choice, Really? Part 3 of 3

The Future Is Our Choice
The 21st century will be a century of change, transformation, new ideas and innovation, and discoveries that will enrich our society.  We have entered a new industrial revolution.  An industrial change that acknowledges our environment, our current generation’s needs, our need to revisit best practices, our business need to transform and prepare our legacy to meet the needs for succeeding generations.

We currently have, in place, a budding Sustainability industry that will continue to grow, mature and expand in the next 20 years. This is not a siloed approach,  but an integrated solution approach that is tailored to fit each organization’s needs.

Ray Anderson, an industrialists and sustainability pioneer, once said; “I also believe that it doesn’t happen quickly … it happens one mind at a time, one organization at a time, one building, one company, one community, one region, one new, clean technology, one industry, one supply chain at a time … until the entire industrial system has been transformed into a sustainable system, existing ethically in balance with Earth’s natural systems, upon which every living thing is utterly dependent.”

Ideas will come from man-kind and “nature” will show us the path.  We will see a dance between Technology and Science that will build our economies as nothing before.  and Technological arrays, will focus on issues resolution through the use of technology. From science, biological and “natural” views, will focus on how to restore our environment. It will continue to build on array and matrix foundations, which will holistically support industries, countries and the world in the transformation to a sustainable planet.

Technological arrays will interconnect technologies for remediation of Sustainability issues (i.e.,  Transportation, Traffic, Internet, Water Purification, etc.). Environmental matrices will produce biological and “natural” views will make solutions for converting waste to bio-nutrients for the purpose of environmental restoration. This is a long-term mending and nurturing strategy to restore our planet.
We also have that heritage reflected in what Theodore Roosevelt said over a century ago; “To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.” We are at a crossroad to decide what direction we want to go.  Should we continue with the current direction with a dismal future or we decide to take another route that eliminates waste, understands how the environment natures us, transforms our businesses, industries and countries into sustainable societies for future generations of mankind? We do have a choice.

The Choice Is Ours To Decide
In this century, business will be the true catalyst for pragmatic Sustainability transformation.  This is a systematic approach of eliminating waste, improve efficiency,  addressing customer needs, and recognizing corporate social responsibilities. Sustainability is a systemic framework to address economic, environmental, social and technological issues, to create a sustainable world and avoid declining ecosystems and the extinction of mankind as we know it. The business community has begun to implement Sustainability and has proven that change can indeed be profitable.

What do we need? The wisdom to recognize our changing world, the understanding of the actions we need to make, and knowledge that hesitation will only prolong the consequences of a poorly appreciated and abused  resource, Our Earth.

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