Here you will find questions about conceptual approaches that you can implement in your organizational environment.
What concrete steps can your company take to operate in harmony with nature in a broader sense instead of continuing to contribute to exploiting, pushing back and trying to dominate nature (concept)?
How much growth makes sense for your business? Which business areas should grow? With which products should they grow? Which less sustainable businesses should be replaced step by step? How can your company consciously forego quantitative growth without suffering economic damage? Which values should take the place of quantitative growth? What can a transformation to sustainable contributions in the sense of qualitative growth look like in concrete terms (change roadmap)?
How can we avoid “living off the substance of the world”? How can the consumption of further resources be avoided in an economically justifiable way? How can your company contribute to higher use efficiency and more frequent reuse of raw materials? How can a way be found not to consume resources but to use them in closed cycles or to use them to such an extent that they can be made available to the world again? What raw materials can your company rely on in the future to operate sustainably (for example, plastics made from chitin, rubber made from dandelions, or biotechnologically produced spider silk)? Which company and research networks should your company be involved in in order to benefit from new developments or to promote them yourself?
What can your company do without? What is really necessary and useful? Beyond non-essential investment items, (i) the business model and (ii) the business process should be examined for their suitability for operating without quantitative growth and, in this sense, reviewed for obsolete components. How can bottom-line transportation distances be reduced (global sourcing, supply chain, travel, etc.)?
What contribution can your company make to changing people’s consumption habits (foregoing new purchases, higher value on service)? What qualitative growth opportunities are suitable? What intangible benefits can your company create?
What habits should your managers and colleagues break away from? How can this be done? On which contexts should you focus the attention of your executives and colleagues more? Where should your company focus its resources (management attention, employee time and attention, market performance)? How can the necessary change of direction be successfully managed? What parameters and tools can be used to assess the success of a change project?
Which new market services, which are in better harmony with the environment, should grow and how much should they grow (reasonable growth, growth in the sense of renewal, like the forest in which something new always grows without the forest as a whole growing)?
In addition to economic-material objectives, how can your company develop a multi-faceted system of objectives that also includes social and environmental objectives and is suitable for contributing to individual satisfaction and the stability of the organization?
How can solar energy, wind energy and geothermal energy be used more to meet energy needs? What applications are already available for this?
What messages should your managers and colleagues communicate to their employees (leadership)? How can potential and high performers be persuaded to adapt their lifestyles to the requirements of an era of mindful growth?
How can you prevent present problems from being carried into the future (immediate action, setting the course)?
How can your company find its way back to a balance between the use of material and intangible resources and the real benefits it generates from them? How can your company free itself from real, constructed and imagined constraints that limit freedom?
What do business models look like when raw materials, energy and the preservation of nature become significantly more expensive? Will human labor regain relative attractiveness? What will future jobs that replace raw materials and energy look like then? How can a roadmap to a future cost structure that is better adapted to the circumstances be described? How can home office workplaces be increasingly created using communication technology applications in order to avoid time-consuming, expensive and environmentally damaging commutes? How can private and business interests be better reconciled in the future? How can a higher proportion of freelance employment promote flexibility, independence and thus people’s responsibility for their employment and greater sustainable security on both sides? How can the rising educational level of employees be better utilized in the future and employees be employed in a more meaningful and fulfilling way?
How can people be kept productive and ready to work despite stagnating economic performance? What motivators take the place of quantitative growth and positioning through size and power? How can employees’ quality of life and enjoyment of life be improved (intangible benefits)? What meaning can be conveyed to employees? How can personal recognition and appreciation for social commitment be shaped? How can employees better contribute their imagination, creativity, enthusiasm and social talents to the business process? How can a sense of community be created? What should you offer as an employer to achieve this? How should the handling of different cultures in companies be (promoting diversity, overcoming demarcation, and fertilization through the coexistence of different ways of thinking)? How can older people be meaningfully integrated into the work process and their experience used? How can flexible working time models be implemented that make it possible to better combine private and professional life and bring new impulses into the personal experience of employees as well as into the company?
How can your company contribute to a much broader definition of education beyond professional qualifications and help employees “acquire” a background for their actions by learning about other cultures and philosophical approaches as well as economic and social science models?
How can people’s enjoyment of nature, interest in art and music, and the “social vein” be revived as important components of human coexistence?
How can stability be achieved by foregoing quantitative growth while developing flexibility and adaptability? What feedback mechanisms should companies implement to ensure the regulation of stability?
With these questions, you can provide executives with concrete ideas to think anew and take charge of your organization’s system-compatible and sustainable future. You can initiate targeted dialogs about the fundamental way of working in your organization.
Useful, practice-oriented suggestions can be found in the EN DIN ISO 14001 standard, which defines effective environmental management systems. The balanced scorecard concept provides you with a descriptive method to manage your company in a balanced way.
By means of Public Relations, the operations conform to EN DIN ISO 14001 can even be communicated the the market environment.