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TABLE OF CONTENTS

§ Two Potential Futures
§ The Systems View of Business: Seeing Constraints as Opportunities
     Global Warning: Problem or Opportunity?
     The Automobile Industry
     The Logging and Power Industries
§ The Triple Bottom Line
§ Two Views of Sustainability
     The Fishing Industry
     The Sustainability Challenge as "Limits to Success"
     The Complexity of Sustainability Decisions
§ The Systems Conditions
     New Mental Models for Sustainability
§ Business and Sustainability: Success Stories
     Pollution Prevention
     Product Stewardship
     Clean Technologies
     Sustainability Vision
     A Closer Look at the Business Success Stories
§ What Next: Standing in Two Worlds

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sara Schley and Joe Laur are founding partners of SEED Systems, a company dedicated to promoting sustainable development in business through the principles of organizational learning, systems thinking, and basic science. Over the years, they have partnered with companies such as EDS, Philips Electronics, Shell Oil, Harley-Davidson, and others to build capacity in organizational learning and sustainable business.

Sara and Joe's work focuses on building client capacity and creativity in the areas of dialogue, shared vision, personal mastery, depth coaching, and systems thinking, and in integrating all these competencies in support of sustainable development as a long-term, strategic guideline for business. The authors are charter members of the Society for Organizational Learning and The Natural Step U.S., and collaborate closely with several other organizations and associates dedicated to sustainability in business and for the globe. For more information, please contact the authors at SEED Systems, PO Box 833, Wendell, MA 01379, (978) 544-0001 (phone), (978) 544-8223 (fax) or at their Web site: www.seedsys.com.

EXCERPTS

New Mental Models for Sustainability

Honing our awareness of systems conditions—whether on a community level or a personal level—requires a fresh look at our mental models. Mental models are those deeply ingrained assumptions and perspectives that inform the way we see our world and how we take action. In the industrial culture of the 20th century, several mental models have prevailed that do not support a sustainable future. Here are just a few examples: "Natural resources are limitless. All growth is good. The smokestack is a sign of progress. Big families provide economic security. We can throw trash away. Independence is the key to success. The machine is a metaphor for human existence."

What are some mental models that will help us move toward a sustainable economy? Possibilities include: "An ethic of interdependence. There is no 'away.' We are all in this together. Resources are limited. Our businesses are dependent on the natural world. Nature is a metaphor for human life. Things happen in cycles."

In order to create a different future reality, we must understand how our mental models influence our actions, and consider how we might reshape these assumptions about how the world works. Below are several predominant mental models, each of which is paired with a potential revised version that would support sustainability.

Mental Model: The Economic System Is the Entire System.
The economic paradigm that has prevailed in business schools and executive boardrooms often suggests that the economic system is the entire system. This view forgets that economic benefits are derived from the overall natural system in which a business operates. The social and environmental costs of doing business, such as consumption of natural resources and disposal of wastes, are often not included in a firm's balance sheet. If the real costs to the natural system were reflected in accounting practices, some companies that are currently considered profitable would actually show a loss.

Sustainable Mental Model: The Earth Is the Source of All Profits.
If you run an oil company, your profits are generated by petroleum extracted from the Earth. If you run a lumber company, your profits are generated from the forests of the Earth. Even if you work in the information industry, your profits are generated by providing knowledge or information to other companies that profit by producing goods from the Earth. Ultimately, we must recognize that the economic system is a subsystem of the ecosystem.

Mental Model: Industrial Processes Are Linear.
Most of us were taught in school that processes begin at point A and end at point B. This kind of thinking does not consider the systemic (cyclical) repercussions of our otherwise well-intentioned actions. We are therefore often surprised when our original actions produce dangerous consequences: The drums of chemicals that we buried "securely" beneath the Earth 20 years ago leak into and contaminate the local water supply, or the product that made our firm tens of millions of dollars in profits costs us hundreds of millions in environmental cleanup a few years later.

Sustainable Mental Model: Product Development Is a Cyclical Process.
By designing our product development processes in a cyclical fashion, so that byproducts are recovered and used in the production process, we generate less overall waste and lower our costs of doing business.

Mental Model: There Are Infinite Resources for the Production of Goods, So We Can Throw Wastes Away.
In the early days of the Industrial Era, when the world population was one-tenth of what it is today, the perception prevailed that physical resources were unlimited. Given an assumption of limitless goods and an infinite capacity of the system to absorb our wastes, there was no reason to focus on efficiency, reducing wastes, or reusing goods. We could generate wastes and simply throw them away.

Sustainable Mental Model: We Do Not Have an Unlimited Supply of Raw Materials
Therefore, we must be more efficient in our use of materials. In addition, we must recognize that the Earth is indeed a closed system. There is no "away" to throw our garbage-your "away" is someone else's backyard, water supply, or home. What waste we generate and are unable to reuse will become dispersed junk, which could have devastating consequences for human survival and the survival of other inhabitants of the Earth.

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Starting a Sustainability Initiative

We can think of an ecologically and economically sustainable business as one that continuously increases shareholder value—while simultaneously decreasing the energy and material density required by the products and services it provides. This is an ongoing journey. To begin a sustainability initiative, try the following:

· Develop a capacity for "find out how" in your business. That is, see your sustainability initiative as a learning journey during which people both imagine the company's future and create it.

· Develop a sustainability vision for yourself, your team, and your business. What is the legacy that you want your company to leave future generations?

· Challenge yourself and your colleagues to examine and shift mental models regarding your business and its relationship to natural resources.

· Increase your own "ecological literacy" by developing some personal mastery in this domain.

· Share new learning, visions, and attitudes with each other through formal and informal dialogue and conversation.

· Ask the strategic question, "What business am I in?" Answer this question from the perspective of what service your products provide. For example, Interface realized that they sell warmth, ambience, and aesthetics—not carpet.

· Ask yourself, "How can my business deliver its products or services in a way that is aligned with the Earth's natural systems?" Here are just a few ideas:
-Minimize throughput of energy and materials.

-View all waste as "food" for some other natural or technical process.

-Live on "interest income" from solar and other natural resources rather than by consuming the "principal" that gives rise to those resources.

-Maximize operational diversity in your business to increase flexibility.

-Assess the current reality of your company's impact on the environment by measuring how much it "takes, makes, and wastes." That is, determine the total amounts of energy and materials that come into your business and the amounts that leave as products, as organic wastes, and as toxic wastes.

-Recognize that a sustainability strategy can focus on both the short and long-term simultaneously. Short-term financial gains made from driving waste out of the business can fund longer term strategic investments in sustainable products and services designed to meet the demands of tomorrow's global markets.