Getting Started with a Sustainable Business
The starting point is always the hardest. You don’t know where to look at in the first place, and you end up looking just everywhere, quite often starting with the end and then starting again. But as soon as you build at least a high-level map of the place you want to reach and how you’ll get there, everything gets much easier. That’s what I suggest you to do in the context of sustainability as well.
Basics of a Sustainable Venture
Build a map, first. The mindset behind the sustainable approach would be your landscape. It will connect all the dots for you later. And for me, it starts with understanding of your stakeholders. If you think from sustainable perspective, they are everywhere. Apart from such important people as your partners, contractors, and clients, those can be found in your community and your natural environment. And then, there’re people that you don’t know and places you have never been, but they may also experience the consequences of your work. Therefore, they’re also your stakeholders.
Don’t try to tackle all stakeholders at once. Start with the closest and move on from there, ensuring everybody is on the same page. And this is what we’re going to do in this article, moving forward. We’ll look into how to start building sustainable relationships particularly with your business partners and employees. Also, we’ll touch the topic of your resource usage so that you have some food for further thoughts.
The Purpose, the Vision, and the Roadmap
Everything starts and ends with the purpose, and so does the company. You may be a solo founder or you may have co-founder(s). In any case, being solid and clear on your purpose is the most important thing not only at the beginning but along the road. And your job #1 is to to be clear on this with yourself and your partners if there’re any.
If you decide to approach the topic of purpose seriously enough, you’ll discover that there are multiple facets. And if you want to have a sustainable business, your purpose would be just as multifaceted. The main question to begin with is “Why does my company exist?”
Then, you would have to take into account consequences of your personal wishes and try to make long-term projections. What do I want my business to look like in 5–10–15–20–50 years? What do I want the world to look like with my business as a part of it? Answering these questions is an essence of creating a vision of your company.
The next thing is “how”, which might eventually become a foundation of your roadmap. How am I going to get there and live my purpose? It doesn’t mean you can only answer this once and then live and work accordingly. You can and you should adjust this to the reality. But you also need to know the price of the adjustments.
Your answers will be governed by the set of values and beliefs that you’re living. And it’s extremely important to be transparent about those with yourself and people who will depend on your choices from the very beginning. This will keep you from a whole bunch of troubles.
It’s good to be in agreement, but by no means make it look like you agree with your shareholders if you think differently. Don’t rely on the alternative future, in which you get used to that and all turns out well for everyone. The chances of this scenario are super low. Having the power to change things but making others falsely believe that you agree with them is the worst way to start any venture.
It doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind. Of course, there’s a power of discussion. Sometimes you get sufficient information and you shift your ideas. If this is what happens after the conversation, then great. Otherwise, find out the way of working even when you have different points of view.
Sustainable Choices to Begin With
People
Now, you need to make sure that your “why”, “how”, and “what” are well communicated to your employees. This is the job #2. They need to understand why you’re doing this, where you’re heading, and what values will guide you through this journey. And this should be a part of their viewpoint. As your team expands, you may want to develop your way of introducing your values to new people and getting to know theirs.
There’re many ways to find out whether there is a match and there’s a golden rule to begin with from your side: don’t try to make something up of yourself and your company that you both are not. Whatever picture you give, it will be quickly tested in the real-life environment. The further it was from the reality initially, the worse would be the real impression of you in the aftermath. Keep asking yourself: “What kind of impression am I trying to make? (Honestly) Does it reflect the reality?”
Next step is to be clear and honest about who you see in front of yourself: “Does this person share the values I have and want to nurture in my company? Do I see this person with the company in the long run, and what would that look like?” I know this doesn’t sound as easy as just finding people who have sufficient skills to do tasks that you need to get done. And it shouldn’t be this easy. Because you’re going to build a sustainable company. And for me, synonyms of sustainable are lasting and thriving. So if you want to last and thrive, you need to find ‘your’ people, which sometimes isn’t much easier than finding a spouse.
Resources
So far, we’ve only touched the human part of the business. But what about other resources you may need? First of all, you need to get a sharp and clear vision of your actual needs and the reasons. Let me tell you an example of a “resource”.
You’re going to build an app and you would need to host it somewhere. The server you will end up with eventually (be it in a cloud or a physical one in your facility) is one of your resources. Another example is a physical space. Let’s imagine that apart from your offline operations, you’re also going to do offline training sessions. In this case, your physical space would also become a resource.
All the stuff you and your team are using in your work office or home office or anywhere else where you do your work are resources that should be counted. You may buy new things or rent those. As well, you may approach utilization of those things differently. At the beginning, make sure you count all of them and have a clear picture of what you’re using.
Make sure you have as detailed picture of all the resources: how much they cost, how much natural resources they consume, how actively you are using them. When you get there, you need to give a hard look at this picture and think about where you can do better. You don’t necessarily need to get rid of something, but there might be options to choose alternatives that would be better for the environment and your wallet.
Let’s look at the particular case where you can use this thinking. Imagine you try to decide how hybrid work should be arranged in your team. What would be the best option in terms of efficient usage of resources? To answer this question, you need to have a whole picture of the resources and how they’re used in different scenarios of your team work (less office, more office, etc.). Then, there’s another layer. You would also need to caluculate the best option from the perspective of mental comfort of your team and afterwards bring all that together and find out a way to balance all the consequences.
In Conclusion
We’ve touched basics, and, hopefully, now you have some ideas to think about. The main starting point for me is about understanding that making sustainable choices isn’t a sacrifice, it’s about your and your company’s thrival. What comes next is your choice to be honest and mindful about your actions with yourself and the world around you to the best of your ability. And, according to the study, the evolution will reward you for that.
