Key considerations
- Should you develop a stand alone or integrated sustainability strategy?
- How wide ranging is your scope?
- Can you achieve buy in from stakeholders within the organisation and beyond?
1. Should you develop a stand alone or integrated sustainability strategy?
As with any other corporate strategy or planning process on a cross cutting issue, coordinating a sustainability strategy with the range of other strategic and planning processes in any organisation is a challenge. Producing a comprehensive multi-dimensional sustainable development strategy in a single document is the option that many organisations tend to prefer in developing their strategy. This has the advantage of providing a single overarching reference point. However, other valid approaches might include:
- Developing a series of sectoral strategies – this would involve focussing on a specific issue such as transportation or buildings management. Such an approach might work best when the organisation as a whole is not ready to undertake an overarching strategy or if there is evidence that a single area is sufficiently pressing that it merits early or exclusive attention in its own right, or
- Integrating sustainability into existing strategies – i.e. there is no separate sustainability strategy; rather it is integrated in to existing strategy documents and processes. This has the advantage of being potentially the most joined up approach conceivable but in most cases if it has not been preceded by a stand alone sustainable development strategy or sectoral strategy it runs the risk of potentially diluting the extent of challenge and change that is integral to sustainable development
2. How wide ranging is your scope?
Sustainable development should be integral to the core activities of an organisation – with full consideration being given to the achievement of the organisation’s economic, environmental and social objectives and impacts in an integrated way. It should also be an integral part of their building and estates management . That is through the running of the organisation itself, for example through water and waste management processes or social initiatives.
3. Can you achieve buy in from stakeholders within the organisation and beyond?
The extent of participation in developing and implementing a strategy defines the ownership of the strategy. To achieve buy in to the vision and activities implied in a strategy and to give it the best chance of success will require a participative process that works with and obtains the feedback of all stakeholders. If the organisation is reliant on partners to deliver its strategic objectives it is clear that those partners need to be consulted and worked collaboratively with so that they are part of the objective setting process.
By involving key players from the start you can help to raise awareness, educate, overcome cynicism and create greater support for your identified solutions. Before approaching people you should consider what style of approach is most likely to be effective. How will you make it relevant for them? What might motivate or inspire them?
This could involve demonstrating where a company has lost money by not addressing sustainability, or making reference to external pressures including public, political and non-governmental activity and legislation. Examples of specific tools include:
- Delivery of an iconic project - focussing on one specific project, product, or service and demonstrating what can be achieved by applying innovation around sustainability
- Benchmarking your organisation or products against others, this can sometimes highlight a need for action
- Facilitating a direct discussion between the decision maker and key stakeholder groups.
Obtaining clear unambiguous senior level support for the strategy is essential. The Department for Work and Pensions through their high level Sustainable Development Policy, which was signed off by a minister and their permanent secretary in 2006, provided an example of organisational leadership providing unambiguous direction on what the department and its staff were committing themselves to achieve.
Are there any key considerations we haven’t included? If so, please let us know.