As Jeremy Hope and Steve Player explain in Beyond Performance Measurement: Why, When, and How to use 40 Tools and Best Practices for Superior Business Performance, sustainability is not a passing fad. “Nor is it a public relations exercise. It offers a host of new opportunities to reduce waste, cut costs, and develop new and exciting products and services. But it means rethinking deeply ingrained management practices, such as the way firms set financial targets and budgets that collide with many principles of sustainability.”

The aim is to cut waste both within and beyond the organization and in a much wider ecosystem. That will require new thinking, obviously, but also new strategies, tactics, processes…and products. With all due respect to economic and operational incentives, I feel very strongly about the importance of “good citizenship.” It is no coincidence that the companies that are annually ranked among those most highly admired and the best to work for are also among those annually ranked among the most profitable and having the greatest cap value within their industry.

Here is what Jeremy Hope and Steve Player recommend.

Actions to Avoid

o  Stop paying lip service and take sustainability seriously.
o  Challenge economies-of-scale thinking.
o  Be wary of short-term budgets and targets.

Actions to Take

1. Examine the evidence. (Check out exemplars such as Nokia, 3M, and Toyota.)
2. Embrace lean (or systems) thinking.
3. Measure what’s important.
4. Start measuring the triple bottom line (i.e. economic, environment, and social).

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For a thorough discussion of sustainability and 39 other major business topics, I highly recommend Hope and Player’s aforementioned Beyond Performance Measurement, published by Harvard Review Press (February, 2012).