I can emphatically recommend this book. And as a student of Carol’s, I can personally attest to the capabilities and power within her work. 

The Responsible Business provides a clear road map for making ALL business practices authentically healthy, regenerative and simply GOOD. It is an enlightening, instructive and inspiring book and it is also incredibly accessible – Carol illustrates new paradigms with the use of clear, concise and compelling case studies from her 35 years of consulting experience.

Here are just a few examples of some of the the results she shares:

• As apartheid was coming to an end in South Africa, Stelios Tzesos, who had partnered with Carol in Europe, led Colgate-Palmolive.  Tzesos courageously initiated a community-building process both inside and outside the company and actively engaged with workers in their communities, and encouraged service in Nelson Mandela’s newly established township councils.  Workforce strikes, which were universal in South African factories at the time, never occurred at Colgate’s plants. And in the span of six months, the company leadership changed its racial consistency from majority white to 98 percent black. Within the three-year effort, the profitability of the business doubled.   Twice.

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• Early in his tenure as a maintenance manager, Chad Holliday was attracted to working with the technology outlined in The Responsible Business, as it offered more authenticity in communication on all levels. So, after 25 years, when he eventually worked his way up to CEO of DuPont, he became a champion of transparency and stakeholder education for the business as a whole.  He set up advisory boards for a number of DuPont businesses and actively recruited a diverse group of scientists, ethicists, environmentalists and medical experts to join them at the table simply because “it makes the company better.”  On a global scale, Holliday even helped to design the UN Global Compact – a voluntary initiative for multinational corporations that required all participants were to communicate annually on their progress with regard to human rights and environmental responsibility.  As a result, Chad Holliday’s efforts drastically transformed the field of corporate governance.

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• Even though Seventh Generation had begun as a producer of environmentally responsible consumer products, the business ironically still had a significant ecological footprint as a result of their operations. Drawing from the leadership of Jeffrey Hollender and others in the business, they turned their focus away from reducing the harm of their products and instead began asking how they could “do something that is genuinely healthy and healing.” As a result, they eliminated the use of synthetic fragrances and replaced them with organic essential oils – a change that was safer for their workers and supported small specialty farmers and businesses and advanced their position in the markets they served.  The company had achieved fundamental changes in their work simply by changing their focus and the questions they asked themselves.

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This last story from Seventh Generation illustrates maybe the most important and compelling part of Carol’s work and writing.  Within the book she demonstrates that businesses can be GOOD, not just LESS BAD.

Most “green” and “sustainability” efforts are focused on the first half of the work by looking at how to make a business, municipality or organization LESS BAD by:

• Curbing carbon emissions.
• Removing toxins.
• Generating less waste.
• Disturbing fewer forests and wetlands.
• Subjecting employees and communities to less harm and hazard.

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This is LESS BAD work.  And while it’s vital and important, it’s not enough. This LESS BAD work is only the first half of the sustainability equation.  When we are simply “solving problems” in the way we are used to, we are really only working on one piece of the puzzle at a time.  Working with just one piece at a time will never get us to workable solutions.

This is why this book is so important.  Carol has shown us how we can work with the whole of a business or community to be GOOD:

• We can enable healthy experiences for our customers.
• We can advance the wellbeing of those we work with.
• We can positively contribute to the health of the Earth.
• We can support the health of the communities we’re a part of; and
• We can generate financial wealth for investors while doing so.

All of this is possible.  And it can be done at once. (Really.) This is the work of being GOOD.  When we are working on being GOOD in the way that Carol illustrates, we gain the ability to see the entire puzzle.  We also gain the ability to work together in a way that draws on the core essence and unique characteristics of each business in order to change the whole damn puzzle (and not just the pieces).

Please.  Pick up this book and give it a read.

And when you do, be sure to be ready for a change in the way you see business in the world.

• A tree is not “sustainable.”
• A shoe cannot be “sustainable.”
• A building should never be labeled as a “sustainable building.”

Why?

• Trees rot.
• Shoes wear out.
• Buildings fall down.

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Every thing eventually dies and disperses.  We can’t sustain individual object forever.  It’s just not possible. No one thing can ever be “sustainable.”

These things, however, CAN be part of “sustainable systems.”

• Sustainable forestry is possible as long as we are able to sustain a system of harvesting of wood without degrading the health of the forest as a whole.
• Sustainable manufacturing is possible as long as we are able to sustain a system of making of new sneakers while not degrading the source of new materials.
• Sustainable development is possible, as long as the creation of a new a building can provide ways for us to continuously and positively contribute to the health of the economic, social and ecological systems within our communities. 

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This isn’t just a matter of semantics.  This is a subtle, but important change in mindset to achieve the jump from focusing on things to focusing on systems.

In the midst of our research studying the applicability of systems thinking within the urban design and development process, Tim O’Riordan of the UK Sustainable Development Commission managed to really drive it home for us.  He said: “By looking at just the building project, and not the larger whole, you are inherently promoting non-sustainability.”

Our focus on systems, rather than just things comes from the study of systems thinking. System thinking is a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past sixty years to make full patterns and structures of a system clearer so we can see how to change them effectively. It challenges us to view things in relation to the larger whole, rather than seeing static snapshots of a situation.

Systems thinking acknowledges that reality never unfolds in straight lines – rather, actions we take within systems are constantly reinforcing or balancing each other. The relationships between people and things within a system can be expressed as feedback loops – reinforcing loops promote consistent and accelerating growth, while balancing loops seek stability through actions that counteract one another. In this way, we can study the health of a whole forest, the viability of an on-going manufacturing process or an entire community.

This way of working together holds far more potential because it helps us see not only the parts that are already right in front of us, but also possibilities and pitfalls that were not visible to us before.  We can find vast potential by working with the ‘whole’ and focusing on measures that have multiple benefits.

Simply put, the use of systems thinking can help you avoid risk and make better use of resources all while helping while contributing to the health of your community as a whole.

We can make it to sustainability.  As long as we’re able to sustain the systems.

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This post was adaped from a summary of research entitled “An Introduction to Needs Based Design” by Nat Haltrich, Ella Lawton and Geoff Stack completed in the spring of 2008 for the Masters in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability program at BTH in Sweden.