Assessments can sound pretty horrible – visions of a teacher sitting in judgement, waiting to find flaws in your performance.

Well, that’s not the point of an assessment as far as we’re concerned.  What we’re after is understanding how sustainability affects your profitability right now, in the next few years, and in the long term too.

Option 1.  Catching the Money-Leak

This is not a a full sustainability assessment.  This is an assessment of the costs to you of waste – what you’ve paid for but don’t use, don’t sell, but do pay to have treated or discarded.  Sound like too little a cost to bother with?  Every company we’ve worked with has been shocked by how much value they were discarding.  Its a great place to begin to get a handle on the financial value of sustainability, and is particularly useful in involving staff in making both incremental and revolutionary improvements.

• We interview your plant managers, office managers, finance responsibles, and any others who we need to contact to get the information;
• We write up the results, noting the strength of the numbers, and a high level sense of what the scale of reduction could be.

Deliverable:  Detailed report on costs, where they are incurred, and paths forward to reducing costs.

Option 2.  Turning Leaks to Growth

A 1/2 day workshop with your management team to cover what sustainability is, and what that means with respect to your business, plus interviews, data gathering and a final report.

• We lay out the four Big Principles of sustainability – these are your guidelines to test which of your practices are sustainable, which are not;
• We lay out how ’sustainability’ is being defined and used by the different actors in your value chain;
• Based on what we know, and what you know, we evaluate where unsustainability is limiting, costing or endangering your business.
• We list out the key information we will need in order to determine current costs/expenditures on purchased energy, waste, emissions/effluent controls, etc…

We gather the necessary data in conjunction with your staff.

• We add up the specific details on costs (purchased energy, waste, emissions/effluent controls, etc.);
• And tally the full (and true) cost (including the hidden costs)
• To enable the discussion about what to address, and when.

Deliverable: Baseline assessment report of the costs/risks of sustainability on your business in quantitative terms where possible, and qualititative.

Cost: As this is entirely dependent upon the scale of your enterprise, the amount of data you have on hand readily, the number of interviews we run, attendance at the workshop(s), etc. this needs to be determined in discussion with you.  Contact us to set up a free 30 minute discussion with us.

Option 3:  The 80/20 Profitable Sustainability Assessment

The 5 Steps:

#1: Know where you are.

We’re not talking metaphysically here. We’re talking about knowing where the impacts from your business come from. It could be the raw materials, your manufacturing operations, the by-products from your customer’s use, or… Hard to know unless you ask.

Your own team will know much of this. Possibly enough to start with. Then again, can they really know the impact of the manufacture of your raw materials, or distribution, or end-of-life? It may be useful to have a study done that will give you the scales of the impacts along the value chain, and a baseline to work from. Plus it will clarify the key impacts by type (e.g. CO2 and global warming potential, or chemicals and the ozone layer) and where, from raw-material to disposal, they show up.

#2: Know who cares.

Wouldn’t it be nice if science were perfect and the world was pure? Things would be predictable, your choices fully informed, and the playing field clear. But as climate change has shown us, the scientists and the economists are in a similar situation – they only have historical data to go on, the world is changing in unpredictable ways – and the debates are massive and include all kinds of stakeholders.

So you need to know who is driving the sustainability agenda with respect to your business. And what they really care about. This will give you a good sense of where your priority actions should be.

• Customers

• Their customers

• Government

• Environmental Non-governmental organizations

• Public opinion

n.b. You may also want to consider not just the issues they care about (climate change! Endangered species! Acid rain!), but the sectors they care about. What happens to your business if one of these groups pursues a key supplier of yours because of incidents associated with unsound practices? (child labour? toxic spills?)

#3: Know what that means.

A long list of environmental impacts is meaningless unless you know what they could mean to your business. So you need to to prioritise them by risk & cost benefit. Mapping your prioritised list against your stakeholder interests will highlight the areas of greatest sensitivity to you. And also, the areas that are easiest and most meaningful to manage.

So now you know where the impacts come from, who cares, and where your priorities are.

You feel ready to act!

Not so fast! You want to drive the agenda?

Then (#4) you’d better know where you’re going.

You don’t want to be chasing somebody else’s priorities all the time. Nor do you want to be slammed by theirs. So, you need to define what a successful, sustainable business would look like for you. That becomes the picture and the rationale for every action you take – so that when NGOs and scientists debate, you can make a compelling case for why you’re doing what you’re doing. After all, the best defense is a good offence.

(This, by the way, is the prime moment to develop a memorable vision that you can share with everybody – employees, customers, media…: Think of Toyota: “Our Aim: Zero Emissions”; or Tetra Pak: “We commit to making food safe and available, everywhere“. People will see the actions you take as moving you – and them – closer to that vision. And that will inspire gratitude, so that each time they hear what you’re doing, they will feel a slightly stronger bond, and soon they will love what you and your company and your products stand for…)

#5) Know what to do.

And now, you develop the roadmap. The actions you will take that start moving your company towards sustainability – on your terms, at your rate. And you will most likely start with efficiency projects (which you can now label climate projects) since these will be economically beneficial immediately. Then you’ll address some of the really big impact items that are manageable, so the changes were readily made. Finally – you have something to talk about, so you’ll engage communications and marketing and establish your positioning. And soon you’ll be creating products that are notably more sustainable, or even absolutely sustainable.

And build in support.

Actually, there’s another important element to add in here. All this time we’ve been saying “you”, and meaning you the company as well as you the reader. But this is a point where it makes sense to separate the two. And you the reader, you the person who will need to take this further, will need support: Support in navigating the political waters, building respect for the position, overcoming resistance, getting buy-in, and in continuously enabling change for sustainability. Ideally, you’ll get access to a group of peers – people who are in a similar position, trying to achieve results in a domain that’s not well understood.

Contact us if you would like to work with this approach, or discuss the specifics for your company.  Or, check out Coaching for Great Work – a programme that helps you create a more dynamic and enthusiastic working culture – in ten minute bites…  Click here.