Which Flavor of Sustainability Will Your Business Include in its 2011 Planning Cycle?

For many businesses, it is that time of year when businesses are beginning their budget planning for the coming year.  Companies, large and small, are laying out budgets, strategies and work plans that they feel will help their businesses prosper in 2011.   Generally, most companies aspire to grow in size and increase profitability each year.  In some cases, through divestitures or restructuring, a company may also choose to decrease in size based on its annual business strategies.  In both cases, financial success is not exclusively evaluated, internally or externally, based upon an absolute comparison to the previous year’s results.  Like these financial measures, shouldn’t business sustainability targets be evaluated in the context of business growth? 

The post, Choose the Right Flavor: Ice-Cream, Sustainability & Business Innovation, the author and green supply chain expert, Dave Meyer, equates choosing your flavor of ice cream to choosing your brand of business sustainability.   In a nutshell, act on what inspires your organization to get the proverbial sustainability ball rolling.  Specifically applied to small businesses owners concerned about resource constraints (falsely) associated with implementing sustainable business strategies, it's about taking it bit by bit but incorporating environmental and social awareness as both short and long term planning.  "The “look” and “feel” of sustainability then, depends on the level of enlightenment that a company has, the desired “end state” and on the depth of its resources to execute the change (see Joel Makower’s recent post in Two Steps Forward)."   For larger organizations, how does planning factor into the 2011 budget? Click here to continue reading.  

Home to one third of the earth's trees, the Taiga is the largest land-based biosphere and encircles the globe. Its immense oxygen production literally changes the atmosphere and refreshes the planet. It is this continuous renewal that has shaped Taiga Company's vision to drive similar change in the business world. Taiga Company seeks to be the "oxygen for your business".

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