Can you give sustainability a colour? ♻️ Green.
Can you give sustainability a measurement unit? ☁️ Co2e.
Can you give sustainability a (one of many) quick solution? 🌳 Plant trees.
What does sustainability mean to you? 🌱 Environmentalism.
Did you know what just happened? If you’ve read Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow“, you’ll recognize that this is your brain “thinking fast” to look for a cognitive shortcut. This is our System 1 at play, where “Environmentalism” is a much easier answer to a complex sustainability question.
System 1 & 2
🔍System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional.
🔍System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.
In “Thinking, Fast and Slow“, Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior.
System 1 is an efficient way for us to process most of what keeps us alive in a world where we have to make speedy decisions, but it makes mistakes. Yet, we can’t stop it from influencing us. And the problem? When sustainability is simply associated with environmentalism or “just green”, people don’t see the equal sign between sustainability and business longevity. Everything “for the environment” belongs to the “sustainability team,” while everything else belongs to “the business.” This cognitive short cut undermines the strategic relevance of sustainability to the overall business operation.
This is System 1 working at its most natural state and making a mistake.
It is not only to do something good for the environment or for the society but also means to look at our business operations from a “sustainable” way in the sense that the business is set up for long-term success in every aspect.
Here’s a few System 1 perceptions to start adjusting in your company culture today:
💭 Think beyond the “product”
Most businesses believe that sustainability has nothing to do with them because it is directly associated at a “green product” level. If the product isn’t green, then we don’t need to think about sustainability, false.
💭 Sustainability is more about people than trees
Every company has people, and the sustainability of their livelihood is the biggest impact that is within a company’s control. Before you get there, no its not about poor workers in faraway places that are deprived of basic human rights.
Master the art of optimizing the value of employees from their loyalty and motivation, not fear and micromanagement. It is about not creating a hidden human resource cost to the company through constant hiring, onboarding, exiting – and the associated operational cost to the people that have to continuously double their work in training new people.
It is about figuring out a strategy that helps your team find meaning to their work, see professional progression, feel valued and treated fairly.
💭 It is not just a “cost centre”
Before jumping to conclusions that you can’t “afford” to do sustainability, figure out what the sustainability context of your business is. The “sustainability team” is a corporate service department just like finance, legal, communications.
It starts with process optimization, improving efficiencies that reduce both environmental and financial impact, and improve employee’s productivity and product quality. Finance, operations, human resources getting together with the sustainability team to make it happen.
ESG data needs to be used to support this progress and show things financial statements cannot, so that the value-creation of the business can be seen in a holistic manner by the management teams.
Then it shifts to increased value-creation. How can product and service design think more holistically? Designers, sales team, research, suppliers work on identifying resources that are less risky in depletion and cost fluctuation from scarcity, meeting client’s future demands and not just current ones.
📌Key concept: As SMEs, we must give “sustainability” back to its true meaning – ensuring the long-term viability of business without depleted resources.
Sustainability is not only to do something good for the environment or for the society but also to operate every aspect of the business – finance, raw materials, consumer base, workforce – sustainably.
Tools such as ESG data, B Corp certification, are all frames that help you ask the right questions internally to build your strategy. They are not the answer to “sustainability” yet they help you counter the urge to take “sustainability” as System 1’s face value.