Table of Contents
Condensed TOC
Foreword
Introduction
1. People
1-1 Discover and Manifest Purpose
1-2 Engage Your Employees
1-3 Cultivate Customer Relationships
1-4 Benefit the Community
2. Planet
2-5 Measure and Report Impact
2-6 Venture Beyond Green Teams
2-7 Design for the Planet
2-8 Green Your Operations
3. Prosperity
3-9 Reduce Cost
3-10 Shift Your Business Model
3-11 Collaborate
3-12 Manage Change
Conclusion
Take action
List of contributors
Acknowledgments
Expanded TOC
Part 1: People
The People bottom line gets short shrift in social sustainability: it’s hard to define and measure; it’s intangible and complex; it’s not as sexy as caring for the environment and it’s not as immediately profitable. However, people-centered purpose is intrinsic to the best sustainable companies. Whether it’s employees, customers, or the community at large, good companies work to empower their people and enrich their social capital.
How has your company benefited humanity with a social purpose? What have you done to motivate and inspire your employees to realize their potential? Why is cultivating deep relationships with your customers central to your business success, and how have you gone about it? How has your business done good in the community and thrived?
In Part 1, Portland’s socially responsible business community reveals the secrets behind its social focus.
1-1 Discover and Manifest Purpose
Social purpose is becoming the mainstay of successful companies. It focuses on benefiting stakeholders, instead of shareholders and takes into account the social context of business. However, taking a compelling “why” at launch and living that purpose in day-to-day operations can be a challenge.
How did you discover your venture’s people-driven purpose? In what ways has it served others? How have you communicated from your social purpose? How has your small business put people before profit?
1-2 Engage Your Employees
Your company is primarily a network of people, not a legal entity or physical place. Your employees are the front line of your small business brand. They keep your company going.
What methods or tools have you used to help your employees succeed? In what ways do your employees have a say in the company and how do you keep them happy? How have you motivated employees to do their best and enjoy their jobs without feeling like their work is drudgery? What benefits has your company realized from happy, healthy employees?
1-3 Cultivate Customer Relationships
Sustainable businesses satisfy real human needs. Central to accomplishing that is building and maintaining long-term relationships with your customers. Not only is repeat business less expensive, it makes you a part of your customers’ lives and a part of their community.
What creative methods or tools have helped you to cultivate meaningful relationships with your customers? What methods or actions inspire trust in your customers, and motivate their loyalty? How have you turned your company into a responsible member of the community?
1-4 Benefit the Community
In addition to employees and customers, the community also benefits from your company’s social purpose. Supporting causes, devoting time and resources, even shifting your business model toward the greater good can create tremendous positive impact. You can do well by doing good.
How has your small business fit into the context of your community? What avenues of doing well by doing good have you explored and what benefits have you received as a result? How have you used your company’s resources to benefit the community?
Part 2: Planet
Environmental sustainability should come easiest. Of the three bottom lines, this is the most explored, applied, and publicized. It’s thanks to “going green” that sustainability has entered the mainstream. But putting a recycling bin in the copy room or turning off the lights is just the beginning.
How have you measured and publicized your achievements in making your business more environmentally sustainable? What else have you done to green up after picking the low-hanging fruit? How have you designed your products, services, processes, or operations to Reduce – Reuse – Recycle?
In Part 2, members of Portland’s small-business community share their experiences of delving deeper into environmental sustainability.
2-5 Measure and Report Impact
Making your business more eco-friendly is one thing, demonstrating impact is another. Environmental claims require substantiation and documentation. Measurement, analysis, and reporting are the foundation of your Planet bottom line.
How have you measured your environmental efforts? What reporting methods or frameworks have you used? With whom and how have you shared your measurable outcomes?
2-6 Venture Beyond Green Teams
You reduce, reuse, and recycle. You compost. You encourage alternative transportation. You’ve gone as paperless as humanly possible. Your company’s Green Team has picked all the low-hanging fruit.
What’s next on your company’s eco agenda? What else have you done to make your business more environmentally sustainable? How have you greened the world around your company?
2-7 Design for the Planet
Whether it’s physical goods or intangible services, they result from design and require energy and materials. Designing products, services, and processes for minimum environmental impact requires forethought, planning, and creativity. Both environmental sustainability and design start with the right intent.
How have you put design to use for environmental good? How have you incorporated the Reduce – Reuse – Recycle hierarchy into your business? What have you done to continuously innovate in designing for the Planet bottom line?
2-8 Green Your Operations
For true sustainability to occur, business operations need to adapt, evolve and incorporate appropriate practices. The operation of your small business offers a multitude of opportunities for greening up. In fact, operations may be the best place to start the process.
What changes have you made in your business operations to include green practices? What were the biggest obstacles to incorporating sustainability into your operations and how did you overcome them? Who championed the shift in your business operations and how did they make it happen?
Part 3: Prosperity
Wikipedia defines “prosperity” as the state of flourishing, thriving, success or good fortune. Beyond economic factors such as wealth, prosperity encompasses correlated elements such as happiness and health. In business, prosperity goes beyond profit by taking a broader, systemic view of financial success.
How can sustainable practices reduce business expenses? What novel ways of sustainably generating revenue have proven to work? How has your company teamed up with others to take advantage of your respective special expertise, resources, experience, or scale? What does the transition from the profit motive to the prosperity mindset entail?
In Part 3, Portland’s small business leaders share stories about how they made sustainability work for them financially.
3-9 Reduce Cost
Sustainable practices tend to result in direct savings in many areas. Reducing your company’s energy and material intensity can lower the cost of doing business -often dramatically- while leading to positive impacts in the People and Planet bottom lines. Sustainable practices can pay long-term dividends for everyone.
What have you done to reduce your expenditures by implementing environmentally or socially sustainable practices? How have you leveraged your cost savings to affect further change?
3-10 Shift Your Business Model
Generating revenue through sustainable, future-oriented innovation must also meet social and environmental goals. Today, many companies — start-ups and established firms, alike — include social profit in their pursuit of financial profitability.
How have you developed or changed your business model to incorporate sustainability? What novel business models have you applied in your business? How has your business focused around a social or environmental mission?
3-11 Collaborate
Companies don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re embedded in larger economic and social systems. Long-term success has come to mean collaboration with suppliers, service providers, and even competitors to achieve common goals. Working together can bring tremendous benefits to all parties as well as the world at large.
How have you put collaboration to work in your business? What have you achieved through collaboration that you couldn’t have accomplished alone? What methods, processes, or tools have you used to join forces with fellow business leaders?
3-12 Manage Change
Change is hard, even when you embrace it. Changing a business can be even more challenging because you must motivate a multitude of stakeholders and alter many processes and habits. Aiming to change your business toward sustainability is a long-term commitment.
How have you made the case for sustainability to your business partners, employees, or customers? What has worked in expanding mindsets from narrow profit to broader prosperity? What methods or tools have you used to manage change in your small business?
{ 3 comments }
I’m going to send in my Contributor Agreement in a few minutes and just wanted to let you know that I’ll be submitting in the Engage Your Employees category.
I assume the 400 words will also include an introduction to who is writing? Or will there be an intro to who is writing somewhere else (end of chapter)?
Thanks, Renee. We look forward to your contribution.
You will include your bio with your chapter on the wiki. The bio doesn’t count toward the word count.
Greetings Peter (& Megan),
Thanks for your email reminding me about the PDX Bottom Line project. I checked out the website a little while back then himmed and hahhed and moved on to other things. I like the idea. Count me in. My contributor agreement is in your email inbox.
{ 1 trackback }