Customer Reviews

Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First, read Robert Morris' thorough 5-star review to get an overview of this book's contents.

The author's frustration at not being able to persuade New Orleans' leaders of the risks of a hurricane inspired this book. I appreciate the passion. However, I came away confused, feeling that perhaps the passion was driving his writing faster than he could evaluate what actually reached the page; that perhaps there were more thoughts behind the words than were actually communicated by the ink on the paper.

Points:
p7: "Innovate differently, and win, or continue to innovate narrowly, and lose." Has Werbach not read The Innovator's Dilemma? "Innovating differently" is an enormous challenge to established companies and isn't going to be solved by exhortation.

p. 20: "Nature obsesses over protecting its young." No, only for some vertebrates. Not for oysters, or pine trees, or any of the bazillion R-strategist species, which have better survival profiles in unstable environments than the K-strategists that invest heavily in gestation and nuturing babies.

p. 20: "Integrate metrics. Nature brings the right information to the right place at the right time. When a tree needs water, the leaves curl." Huh? This is the place where I began to wonder whether there was some major additional thinking behind the words because the words didn't make sense to me. How on earth are curling leaves metrics information to the tree? Curling leaves are a survival "behavior," and perhaps metrics to someone with a watering can. But I don't water trees...

(There's actually a whole lot more on this particular page that leaves me scratching my head, pondering how the author's view of nature-as-business-model is different from mine. Population explosions in many species, followed by famine-driven die-offs, are pretty common in the nature I know.)

The story about Circuit City's failure on p. 26: "The company's human resource strategy failed." Did the strategy fail, or did they fail to follow the strategy? Maybe it's a nit, but this is a book about strategy.

Strategy #7: "Only the truly transparent will survive." OK. I'll allow that as a premise. However, the example provided is how the totally opaque functioning of AIG and its mortgage-backed securities drove the collapse of the company. I don't see that this example proves the point.

Enough already. I think this book makes an important contribution, and I wish I didn't have to work so hard to figure it out. Being sustainable is hard enough.

I'm really torn about this book because I think the author is clearly brilliant and he is exploring a point of view that is unique, or, at the very least, the first of many authors to publish books in this vein in the coming months.

If you are a business executive with a disposition to sustainability, this book will speak to you and is a must read. He does a pretty good job comparing his perspective to other thinking, such as that of Jim Collins (Built to Last, Good to Great, How the Mighty Fall).

But he opens with an anecdote of how he couldn't reach the leadership in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina and he feels professional regret about not being able to frame his argument in a way it would be received.

I think that's noble and he has tried very hard to be persuasive--speaking in the language of the receiver--in this book, but he almost overly does so, pulling every business and societal buzzword (down to transparency) as conditions to be successful in meeting business and sustainability goals. Heck, actually, sustainability itself is a buzzword these days.

So, what comes out is a well-thought thesis for action, and, despite my headline, a potential roadmap. But, it's potential in that it is theoritical. I think he knows this--hence, the "Manifesto," in the subtitle. "Manifesto" worked for Jerry McGuire, though, and this author evokes similar passion.

Temper your expectations, and I think you'll be impressed with the book and retain--even apply--many of the ideas. Look to this at the ultimate prescription for sustainability in business, and you'll be disappointed.

Overall I really liked this book. While Werbach clearly has an environmental streak, he really does a good job of showing the reader that sustainability is more then just environmentalism, and how his long term strategies can help anyone build an enterprise which is successful in the long term. He encourages people to develop what he calls "north star goals" - goals that can be accomplished in 5-15 years and have a beneficial effect on the enterprise and society. His main strategies that he tries to drive home are (summarizing from page 19):
* Diversify across generations
* Adapt to the changing environment
* Celebrate transparency
* Plan and execute systematically, not compartmentally.
* Integrate metrics
* Improve with each cycle
* Right-size regularly, rather than downsize occasionally
* Foster longevity, not immediate gratification
* waste nothing

Unfortunately his organization could use some work. His best definition of sustainability actually comes in the conclusion of the book! (Sustainability means meeting your needs now, while not compromising your ability to meet your needs in the future). There are also a few acronyms he invents that he doesn't define until after they've been used.

The most glaring omission in the book is that while he has loads of examples and ideas, he focuses almost exclusive on the manufacturing sector of the economy, and ignores the service sector. He does mention that his ideas can be applied to the service sector too, but it would be nice to see him give more than just lip service to that notion.

Overall I don't want to dwell on the negatives too much, because there really are some great ideas in this book, and I'm convinced that enterprises which follow his roadmap will certainly be better off in the long term, as will our society as a whole. He celebrates transparency and encourages enterprises to listen to their outside critics as well as work with their partners to mutual benefit. I would certainly recommend this to anyone who is thinking about the future of their enterprise and is ready to think long term instead of just to the next quarterly earnings report.

As Adam Werbach explains in the Introduction, all companies have the opportunity to formulate and then execute a strategy that will enable them to avoid severely damaging if not fatal problems such as those encountered within the last 12-18 months by major corporations such as AIG, Bear Stearns, Chrysler, and General Motors. This book, he adds, "is about developing and executing a company's strategy that takes into account all aspects of sustainability but that is useful enough to be implemented today. It's about involving employees and the community in every part of the process. And it's about survival." He asserts that true sustainability has four coequal components, all of which must be accommodated by the strategy that is require: social (i.e. acting as if other people matter), economic (i.e. operating profitably), environment (i.e. protecting and restoring the ecosystem), and cultural (i.e. protecting and valuing cultural diversity). "In building a strategy for sustainability, companies must accept that a constant state of change is becoming the status quo. Sustainable organizations celebrate positive action in the face of bureaucracy and indifference." More often than not, positive action encounters culture resistance, what James O'Toole so aptly describes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

Readers will appreciate the fact that Werbach is a diehard pragmatist. He bases his observations and recommendations on a wealth of practical experience, on an abundance of empirical evidence, and is almost wholly preoccupied with understanding and then explaining what works, what doesn't, and why. He is also an idealist in that he passionately believes in what can be accomplished if a sufficient number of principled and determined people work together in a movement (actually a mission, if not a crusade) to achieve sustainability in all dimensions of humanity that include but are by no means limited to business activities. He identifies and then discusses what he characterizes as "Nature's Simple Rules" as a basis of strategy and execution. They are:

1. Diversity across generations to support long-term species survival.
2. Adapt and specialize to the changing environment with precise navigation and adjustment to changes of climate, food, and predators.
3. Celebrate transparency by knowing where and what are dangerous as well as where and what are not.
4. Plan and execute systematically, not compartmentally, by devising solutions that optimize the entire system rather than individuals.
5. Form groups and protect the young by developing strengths and resources that are sufficient to the threats.
6. Integrate metrics as Nature does by obtaining the right information, applying it in the right situation at the right time.
7. Improve each cycle because evolutions can be harsh "but it's a strategy for long-term survival."
8. Right-size regularly, rather than downsize occasionally, because "organisms adjust to be as small or large as necessary."
9. Foster longevity, not just immediate gratification, because Nature "does not support unlimited growth or inefficient use of resources, but it does foster longevity."

And then one of Werbach's most valuable insights:

10. Waste nothing, recycle everything, and borrow little. "One organism's waste is another's food. Some of the greatest opportunities in the twenty-first century will be turning waste (inefficiency, underutilization, energy waste) into profit."

He also identifies and then discusses what he characterizes as "Seven Tenets of a Strategy for Sustainability":

1. Natural resources will become increasingly scare and expensive. Companies need to take full advantage of ecosystems services that are already available.
2. Massive demographic change is occurring. There will be three billion more people on the planet by 2040, mainly where humanity has not yet achieved a stable standard of living. There is a compelling need to alleviate "global inequities that destabilize business and society."
3. People are the most important renewable resource. "When nature right-sizes, it tends to weed out the weakest, not those with the most wisdom and experience." Organizations that achieve sustainable success are meritocracies.
4. Cash flow matters more than quarterly earnings. Companies must not focus on earnings because they do not account for the cost of capital, because there are so many acceptable ways by which to calculate them, and because they do not include additional capital that a company will need for future growth.
5. Every organization's operating environment will change as dramatically in the next 3-5 years as it has changed in the last five. Werbach notes that the process "for developing strategy must accommodate nonlinear, lockstep change. Traditional strategy making and execution is linear."

Note: He recommends a five-step process: First, Discover: Assess the business context, establish a mission, vision, and values. Next, Define: Define competitive advantage and establish goals. Then Plan: Translate the strategy into an operations plan with measurable objectives. Next, Execute: Execute with cult-like passion and excellence. Finally, Measure: Measure, review, and refine.

6. A chaotic external world requires internal cohesion and flexibility. "Organizations with high initiative fatigue frequently suffer from the failure to build a powerful leadership coalition and lack an engagement effort that connects the initiative to the daily routines of the affected employees."
7. Only the truly transparent will survive. "Opacity is the enemy of sustainability (and, as we have witnessed lately, an incubator of managerial paranoia, incompetence, isolationism, and corruption). You must have pertinent, accessible, and engaging information available inside and outside the organization."

Through his narrative, Werbach makes brilliant use of reader-friendly devices, including checklists such as these as well as mini-commentaries such as "Does `Built to Last Mean' Sustainable?" (Pages 38, 41-42) and Tables such as "Comparison of a built-to-last strategy with a strategy for sustainability (Pages 39-40). He explains how to formulate a different way to formulate a business strategy, how to map available opportunities, how to "set a North Star" and initiate the "TEN" cycle, how to use transparency to execute strategy, engage individuals throughout (and beyond) the given enterprise, how to establish and strengthen a "network of sustainability partners," and how to develop leadership at all levels and in all areas. My frequent use of the phrase "how to" is intentional, correctly emphasizing Werbach's pragmatic approach throughout the book.

He concludes with an especially appropriate excerpt from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series: "If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; `life,' something that had a mysterious essence about it..." Given that, what does Adam Werbach suggest? "When a situation seems too complicated grasp, grasping it isn't always necessary or even possible - so do what you can, when you can. Act now."

Those who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out Werbach's Act Now, Apologize Later as well as Mark Gottfredson and Herman Saenz's The Breakthrough Imperative: How the Best Managers Get Outstanding Results, Dean R. Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success, and Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.

This is one of those rare business books that it is worthwhile to read all the way through, carefully and repeatedly. That means it is about 1 in 40 or so, in my experience - the ideas of most others can be read in the introduction or even on the book flap. This one is dense, informative, and occasionally inspirational.

Warbach argues that, with ecological crises and internet technologies creating instant communication, the world is changing in ways that corporations will need to address. First, he says, with their command of capabilities and power to execute, multi-national corporations are uniquely positioned to take action, such as the great accomplishments of Wal-Mart to bring supplies to devastated communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Second, there is a new focus on sustainability, that is, managing resources better, with an eye to future generations as well as critics and stakeholders. Third, a handful of smart corporations are beginning to bring sustainability concerns into the heart of their business models, not as philanthropy or PR, but as the basis for new strategies that will ensure their futures as well as preserve the resources of the planet.

These are, in my view, the assumptions at the heart of the book: if you accept them as valid and believe that corporations can actually do good (i.e. promote sustainability) and well (i.e. make money) at the same time, then the middle section will interest you a great deal. It is about the techniques that companies are employing to pursue these win-win-win strategies.

Most important, Warbach argues, is to set a "north star" goal, an over-arching strategy that will connect sustainability to the core business of the company. This is certainly possible, in my view. For example, Clorox created a new "green" brand that was better for the environment, just as P&G created detergents that can be employed at far lower temperatures for better results. Warbach stresses that companies should systematically map out their sustainability opportunities.

In addition, Warbach argues that companies must become genuinely transparent, not as a way to promote themselves as good guys, but by really opening up to allow meaningful collaboration with critics. This will, he believes, enable corporations to get better information via a kind of bottom up network of critics whose ideas will feed into the core strategy of the company. Companies must admit mistakes quickly, celebrate successes, etc. Finally, companies must engage their own employees through such techniques as contests, "personal sustainability projects", and the like. He provides many examples that are interesting and appear convincing.

That being said, I remain unconvinced that the whole sustainability movement represents either a revolution in the ways companies will formulate their strategies or that, even if they do, they can make as much of a difference as Warbach hopes. It is, I think, far too idealistic about what corporations are willing and able to do. In my experience, I think it is very difficult to distinguish between PR, greenmailing, and genuine accomplishments that help the environment. Moreover, I wonder how many companies will be capable of merging their business models with sustainability concerns: the examples Warbach chooses may represent isolated cases that are hard to repeat or scale up.

Indeed, from my own work, I think that Warbach accepts the point of view of corporations a bit too easily. For example, he quotes a man with whom I worked for over 8 months (I was an independent case writer not in his employ), who boldly claims his company has embraced "transparency" as a core component of its modus operandi. Now in the work I was doing with him at about that time, I know that he lied to me during the entire project, taking the decided-upon PR explanation for a key change in company policy. His boss cheerfully admitted as much to me at the end of the project. This points to a key problem at the heart of the book: it lacks the skepticism that a journalist would have and at its worst ends up rather self-congratulatory, as a consultant's manifesto.

Nonetheless, even with my skepticism and doubts about the ultimate impact of these ideas, there are definitely people within companies that will want to apply these ideas. They will, in my view, be able to accomplish some very good things, however far they may be from saving the planet. These people are worth cultivating in the search for windows of opportunity to accomplish complex social and environmental goals. For example, I have investigated several stakeholder-corporate collaborations that taught both groups a great deal about how the other thought and even opened up opportunities for both. We should not cynically dismiss this or everything that corporations try to do to make the world better.

Recommended. This is excellent food for thought even if in need of some hard skepticism.

Former Sierra Club President Adam Werbacn has written an outstanding book that business people at all levels would do well to read. Werbach explains why being a "green" company is not adequate; he refers to being "blue" (since most of the planet is covered in blue) as being truly sustainable.

Using examples of companies that have chosen to create goals based on natural resources, society and technology, Werbach details his platform of true sustainability: making information transparent, engaging people outside your company, and leveraging networks of customers, suppliers and communities.

Werbach is at his most engaging when he is sharing success stories from companies that viewed corporate social responsibility as more than just slapping a "recyclable" label on a product. There are some parts of the book that are a tad dry, which is why I dropped a star from the rating. A good leadership book should hold the reader's attention all the way through, and a couple of times Werbach lost me. Ultimately, the book is worth sticking with, as employees at any level will benefit from the information.

(Review based on uncorrected advance copy.)

This is another business cookbook. Adam Werbach gets high marks for the lofty goals he sets and the high social standards he is trying to help companies adopt. The first 3/4 of this book is directed at CEO's and very high senior management. There is very little in those first pages for regular people in a company. The last quarter is directed at employees or middle managers, the regular people of a corporation.

The F in this book, is the problem with most business improvement books, they preach, they love acronyms, and they are repetitive. This is not the kind of book a person just loves to read.

Sustainability, a word that is so overused and so poorly defined, it is almost meaningless. Werbach admits this early in his book. He tries to provide a more holistic and important definition of sustainability. Its not green alone, its how does a company make a profit, be socially responsible, improve the environment, and exist for a long time? Sadly this word is used about 500 times in this book, and frequently I thought Werbach reverted to the simple green version of the word. It got very confusing when the word was used so frequently and not in the best context.

The style of the book is very much like most business books. Definition of terms in the beginning. Create a bunch of new acronyms, TEN, STaR, and PSP; each with 4 to 10 steps to success with those acronyms. He then also talks about North Star Goals and Transperency, (more on this later). Then banty those terms around in all different combinations, and give 'real world' examples of companies that have done these things. The net effect is supposed to be, gosh that would be a great idea to use and why don't I start that at my company? And then conclude with a statement akin to, well go and do it now.

The good part of this book is Werbach himself. He is an environmentalist. He is trying to make a difference in how many resources companies use to manufacture their products. He is trying to make a difference in how consumer use products so as to reduce our environmental footprint. His intentions are really great. He shares some nice examples, especially in the last two chapters of how one voice can move many; and how small deeds can have large impacts. He is inspiring in his quest for people to make small incremental changes to improve the environment.

It almost seemed that the book was written with a set of company examples in mind. Those stories are pretty decent, engaging, almost enjoyable to read - they are stories, they should be fun. Then Werbach tried to string them together with some structure, some point he was trying to make. The examples are sadly very surface, and are mostly a data point of one to make some broad sweeping conclusion. Clorox Green Works is one of his early examples of a success. How a company that made a lot of very environmentally not friendly products, would now make environmentally friendly cleaners. Green Works hit with a big splash a few years ago, was probably a very big success then. If sustainability is truly his measure here, its pretty hard to find Green Works products still on the shelf. It made everyone at Clorox happy, filled a wonderful niche for some time period, but failed miserably at the long term, make a difference concept of sustainability. Its a slippery slope to choose company / product examples and not treat them to in depth analysis.

Stonyfield Farms was another success. Prior to their purchase by Dannone, Stonyfield made some of the best tasting, true yogurts around. Now, they simply make an organic version of the homgeneous yogurt put on the grocery shelf. Have they really succeeded? Has the CEO of Stonyfield really achieved his North Star goal, or even gotten closer? I doubt it sincerely. Tide - cold water detergent and more concentrated liquids. How many more laundry detergent versions are necessary? Has this really helped? His analysis of the American automotive industry is interesting in his spin on why things went so wrong and so right for Asian car makers. Sadly, it is simply too early to really make conclusions from the information.

One phrase surprised me, a company president said that he wants to be a 'carbon neutral' company in the future. Again, with surface treatment of the issues, how can a company possibly manufacture anything and not use carbon? In the book, this statement just kind of hangs out there. No matter what a company does, they have to consumme carbon or energy, there is no free lunch, there is no perpetual motion machine, no spontaneous creation of matter. This is an impossible statement. But yet, the phrase seems to be repeated.

The entire chapter on Transparency befuddled me, or why was I hit over the head with a sledgehammer repeating the word transparency over and over and over? Werbach used some good examples of how opening up your manufacturing or processes to outsiders can be a powerful, positive, and profitable thing. The MacDonald's rain forest / soy collaboration with Greenpeace. Nike working through the sweat shop stigma and then quietly, internally, without advertising reducing their carbon footprint dramatically. Timberland with their shoe ingredient label. Method cleaners with their innovative packaging and look at environmentally friendly products (this story would have been worth the price of admission if the whole book had been about this company). What confused me was why this all had to be called something special. It was all about doing the right things and not backing away from a threat. In fact turning that threat into an opportunity to do better.

This book belongs in the hands of CEO's. It would be wonderful if a few companies simply applied half of what is in here (its the small things that matter). Even better if companies didn't ever talk about the things in this book in the way the author would like them done (TEN, STaR, North Star Goal...). It would be wonderful if companies could quietly do those wonderful things like Nike or Method or Seventh Generation. If the word Sustainable or Green were never used again, companies just did those things.

The last one fourth of this book belongs in the hands of the general public, of average employees. We all need to take on a personal goal to reduce our waste, do better for the environment, and support companies (small and large) that do these things. Werbach got it so right when he talked about one person doing a small thing can make a difference.

I have to agree with Mad Max (see other review) on the downsides of this book regarding the idea of more privatization solving future environmental problems. However, since the downsides are already discussed in detail by other reviewers, I would like to comment on the positive things I found in this book. Werbach, for example, mentions the importance of leadership when it comes to sustainable practices. In most books you can find chapters about how other companies achieved energy conservation or how they marketed their company green(er), but only a few authors write about the importance of individuals and their impact on the success of a sustainable strategy. I've experienced entire company cultures coined by one executive. If an individual in such a position is able to pass on his positive attitude towards sustainability and environmental friendly business practices to his employees and colleagues entire business models can be turned upside down.

I think it was about time that Werbach picks up this topic. These soft issues like employee motivation and personal identification with an organization's overall goals might not be considered (how Werbach puts it) a "Strategy for Sustainability" by everyone. However, strategy is a ductile term and depending on the definition you find, engaging employees and getting your staff aboard with your corporate values and goals can definitely be considered a strategy. Out of my opinion, getting everyone in an organization to fit into the overall sustainable framework and empower them to identify themselves with a green strategy is vital for gaining a sustainable competitive advantage.

- Frank Roettgers, author of Going Green Together - How to Align Employees with Green Strategies

This is a fascinating book on how to make businesses truly sustainable. What the authors means by sustainable is "Thriving in Perpetuity", and it focuses on many different aspects. The idea is that true sustainability has four equal components: Social, Economic, Environmental and Cultural. The book lays out how these areas are important and how to make them sustainable.

Then there are "seven tenets of a strategy for sustainability" which lays out the changes happening in the world and how they relate to keeping your company sustainable. There are ways laid out to map your progress as well as detailed examples from a few companies that are using these models successfully.

A great book if you are looking to make your business truly sustainable.

The book does go on a bit long at points, confusing certain aspects where simplicity would suffice. As a new business owner who is striving to be sustainable in all of our business practices, I found the 7 strategies suggested in the book to be useful, either directly or indirectly, and I think about them from time to time as I evaluate progress, opportunities, and challenges. Overall I had some challenges getting through the entire book, but did enjoy learning about the general strategies...just ignore the drivel that goes on beyond the first few pages after each one.