Many companies are well aware of the need to make your business more sustainable, but stumbled badly in that transition. Often, they mistakenly believe that the sustainability of the initiative requires a single, continuous efforts over many years, when, in fact, this will entail three stages, each requires different skills on the part of the executive management have led the effort. In phase 1, the stability of the leader must be able to communicate a compelling vision and get buy-in from key opinion formers in the organization. In addition, the leader should help identify, define and develop a specific set of business processes that are intended to control the previously unquantified risks and new opportunities. When a company goes out of phase 1, the commercial orientation becomes a key competence. The task now is to translate the high-level commitment to a comprehensive change program with clearly defined initiatives and hard commercial purposes. For this to happen, sustainability leaders in Phase 2 should succeed in achieving results, and they must have a strong commercial awareness. At the end of this phase, the stability of the organization is needed to keep track through the economic, environmental and social performance for a series of business planning. In Phase 3, the need for commercial orientation continues, but will be accompanied by a strong strategic orientation. Sustainability leader must be adept at predicting and assessing long-term trends of sustainability, identify new opportunities and develop strategies to change the organization benefit from them. The goal is to have a resistance of steel embedded in the DNA of the organization, such that one of the core values and the organization consciously proactive about it. "Hide
by Daniel Goleman, Christoph Lueneburger Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 9 pages. Publication Date: July 1, 2010. Prod. #: SMR355-PDF-ENG
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