Sustainability: Enhancing Current Success

When executives at Dell in 2006 realized that a good portion of the company’s success in operations efficiency, recycling, and Design for Environment were already in place to address customers' and other stakeholders' climate change concerns, this made it easy for CEO Michael Dell to make sustainability a key element of the company's strategy. What followed were a number of on-going sustainability philosophies that now make Dell, in most rankings, a business sustainability leader.

Building a business sustainability effort from scratch at a company like Dell would have been a monumental effort. Though progressive organization, the change management challenges would have most likely delayed progress for years. So instead of making ‘sustainability’ something external, a separate project or initiative, Dell’s management enhanced current business processes and highlighted predefined successes.

Within our sustainability consulting practice, we often encounter business owners searching for sustainability answers and solutions external to their organization. Too often, they view business sustainability as something outside of the company.   While an external solution can be one answer, sustainable development is a commitment to change that most often originates from within the organization.

Placing emphasis on internal business process changes rather than on external solutions, companies are able to accelerate sustainability concept implementation. In a recent post, Strategy for Success: Sustainability Plan for Small Business, we discussed internal eco actions organizations are taking for enhanced business sustainability success.

•    Engaging sustainability leadership at all levels in the business
•    Elevate internal eco awareness through ongoing education and training
•    Encouraging stakeholders in active dialog on business sustainability enhancements
•    Link environmental, social and economic responsibility to all business processes
•    Rewrite process and procedures to reflect your sustainability initiatives

Business sustainability is about making the organization stronger and more responsive for the future. The true value capture and accelerated implementation of business sustainability will come from the ‘unique’ and successful insertion of sustainability concepts and strategies into current core business functions.