Sara Schley is co-steward and one of the original
architects of the Society for Organizational Learning's
Sustainability Consortium, a group of companies whose
purpose is to create sustainable enterprises. With her partner, Joe
Laur, she runs the international consulting company,Seed
Systems
Over the years, many people devoted to sustainability have
used the phrase "the triple bottom line" to articulate strategy.
They don't focus solely on economic bottom-line activities:
profitability, financial performance, or even the capacity to make
a living.
Instead, they judge success according to social and
environmental results as well: by their ability to improve the
natural environment and make people's lives better in society as a
whole. The "triple bottom line" concept represented a great
improvement over the constraints of a purely financial point of
view, in which environmental and social results (including such
business needs as customer satisfaction) were perceived as costs or
externalities.
But ultimately, the triple bottom line is not
sufficient. Initiatives based solely on this concept as a rationale
- for example, efforts to change a company so that it can
consistently produce "triple-bottom-line results" - often seem to
falter. Moreover, the focus on the triple bottom line may draw
people away from the qualities and attitudes they need if they are
to genuinely make a difference in developing sustainable
organisations, practices, and communities.
There seem to be two reasons for this.First, the way that
most people operate with the triple bottom line ignores the real
synergy among its three dimensions - social, economic, and
ecological. In practice, efforts tend to be fragmented; companies
institute "social policies," "green practices," and financial
reporting systems without ever linking them together. By contrast,
projects with deep linkages can be powerfully effective.
One example is the initiative by Dr. Macharia Waruingi to
eradicate malaria in his home country of Kenya. This project
connects investment in local businesses (which builds economic
infrastructure), with the development of business capacity to make
and sell mosquito repellent and bug nets, the reduction of
environmental toxins, and the creation of local community
support.
The second reason that a focus on the triple bottom line
alone isn't enough is that it allows people to ignore the "inner
work" - the personal practices and disciplines that provide the
perspective and internal stability needed to make a difference in
the long run. The very ideals and aspirations that lead people to
an interest in sustainability can also drive people into a frenzied
cycle of "fixes," actions, and imperatives, ultimately leading to
wasted efforts and burned-out people.
For our own sake, and that of the results we hope to
produce, we need to prevent this from happening. The answer lies in
the inner work of sustainability. A reinforcing process is set in
motion when people start to deliberately slow down their lives to
cultivate broader awareness and reflective practice.
The cycle, if we were to map it in systems thinking terms,
would look something like this:
Deeper awareness of the connection to all
life
In college physics, years ago, I learned that the equation
for gravitational attraction on the planetary scale is virtually
the same as the equation for gravitational attraction on the atomic
scale. In other words, "as above, so below." The structures at the
largest astronomical scale are echoed in the structures of our
cells. These correspondences are not obvious to the naked eye, and
they may not be predictable, but they are far more powerful than
people often expect.
Awareness of the underlying interconnectedness of life,
wherever it started for you, may well lead you to feel a greater
sense of responsibility for the whole. At heart, this represents a
shift in mental models.
You and I may start to see that our lives are
interconnected with the lives of all living entities on earth, from
microorganisms to all people to the ecosystem of the planet as a
whole.
We may gain a humble awareness that the small choices we
make, day by day - what to consume, how to handle our garbage and
waste, how to conduct our work, and how to spend our time - do
indeed have effects on the larger systems around us. We may also
start to recognize that our ability to care about others -people on
far-flung continents, people in unfortunate circumstances, people
caught in disasters, or people anywhere in the chain of life -
makes a difference.
We have creative and destructive capacity; we can act to
contribute to life, healing, and generativity, or we can act with
violence and fragmentation. When writer Janine Benyus said, "We
have to fall back in love with nature," she was speaking in part
about the importance of embracing this sense of interdependence. In
my view, it makes an enormous difference to anyone's perspective
and capabilities when they not only intellectually see
interconnection, but emotionally feel it.
Creative
tension
Awareness of our connection to all things is a kind of
vision; it leads us to wish for a better quality of life and equity
for all people on the planet. At the same time, as this sense of
connection to others increases, we become more aware of the
suffering and problems that exist around us.
Despite the success we may experience in our own
individual professional and private lives, we come to recognize
more coherently the gap between the world as it is and the world as
it could be.
Stronger awareness of the gap, in turn, leads to one of
two responses. First, as Joanna Macy and Dana Meadows have noted,
it leads to denial and despair; people often throw up their hands
and retreat into a shell. But confined spaces are boring, and
sooner or later many of us emerge, aware of the gap that needs to
be closed and interested in learning how to do our part to close
it. We may have an increased desire to take coherent action to
bridge the gap for others, and for life in general.
People who feel this desire are then more likely to take
action "in service of life," with a more intensive
desire to improve the economic, cultural, social and environmental
well-being of all.
In the process, people learn, bit by bit, to live with
emotional tension, that is, to tolerate the fact that the gap
between vision and current reality exists. And then we allow a
different kind of tension in ourselves, the natural movement to
close the gap, to come to the surface.
Coherence of
actions
Creative tension leads to better results. If we are
attuned to the gap between vision and current reality, we pay more
attention to the signals that come back to us in response to our
actions. Either our actions have produced the results we want and
moved us closer to our aspirations, or they haven't.
And if they haven't, we will pick up those signals, and
our actions will become more effective and coherent. As people's
capability and awareness grow, they choose to do better things -
things naturally more in line with the aspirations of an integrated
triple bottom line.
These actions are inevitably more diverse than the
habitual behaviours of people acting primarily in terms of their
own self-interest. More coherent actions produce a wider variety of
feedback - responses from the world - which naturally leads people
to want to make sense of those responses, in the mind, body, and
heart.
This increases the value of the contemplative state.
Personal contemplative practice Most of the successful people I
know in the sustainability field regularly follow some discipline
of contemplative practice. In workshops on sustainability, my
colleagues and I often ask, "How many people set time aside for
reflection or contemplation in some disciplined way?" Lately,
nearly every hand goes up.
Like the individuals who practice them, forms of
contemplation vary dramatically. People might practice prayer,
meditation, yoga; walking in the woods, running on a track, or, in
the case of one CEO we know, beekeeping.
But all such practices have this in common: They quiet the
mind, decrease the static in our systems, and allow us to put the
treadmill of everyday life on hold. They sharpen our ability to see
current reality, and act in accordance with our aspirations for
self, family, community and world. Midwife and Buddhist teacher
Terri Nash says that actions that are not grounded in contemplation
do violence; to the extent they are grounded in some form of
reflective practice, they become more coherent. The reverse is also
true. As actions become more grounded and coherent, the quality of
contemplative practice goes up.
In turn, as personal consciousness (developed through
whatever reflective discipline is chosen) increases, a person's
innate awareness of the connection to all life increases. Anyone
who has practiced contemplative work recognizes this. And thus the
reinforcing cycle is closed.
Contemplation is a critical part of the cycle, not just
because of the mental process of reflection, but because of the
cessation of the normal cycle of activity and
consumption.
One common practice, observing the Sabbath or Shabbat, is
taking a day of rest, but not just from work: from other everyday
activities such as shopping, talking on the telephone, and using
e-mail. I know people who practice this faithfully from Friday
evening to Saturday evening every week. That day is spent in
awareness of the perfection of creation. No one buys anything
because nothing is needed. No one talks on the phone or travels
because perfection exists where we are, and with whoever is nearby.
There is no television, Internet, or other media. The day is spent
taking walks in the woods, exercising, meditating, connecting with
family members and friends, dancing, conversing, laughing, and
sharing meals.
It adds up to a taste of the world to come. The boundaries
set around that day make it a day of tremendous freedom. And
observing Sabbath or Shabbat influences habits for the rest of the
week as well. On Sunday morning, the reasons for anxiety and
stress, so overwhelming on Friday, are difficult to
remember.
The impetus to make needless purchases is gone. That in
turn makes it easier, during the rest of the week, to resist
otherwise addictive drives to push, grow, and consume.
The Role of
Emotions
My colleagues and I have noticed that, for many people,
the journey to sustainability begins with emotion. We may hear a
report that 30,000 children will die of starvation after a natural
disaster has occurred. There may be reason to believe that global
climate change is involved in triggering the disaster. And we feel
not just a sense of connection, but grief (mourning the loss),
anger ("How was this allowed to happen?") or fear ("Could this
happen again?") We may also feel the sense of joy that naturally
arises when people are connected to each other and to the natural
environment.
For a variety of reasons, although we may have ignored
these emotions in the past, we find them compelling us now. The
reader may be used to thinking of emotions as
destructive.
Emotions can emerge in destructive ways. But emotions can
also be expressed in constructive ways. Primary emotions have
evolved in the human species over millennia. Anger and fear are
hardwired in our biological systems, as are grief and
joy.
When we disown these emotions, we deny ourselves vital
information that can be used to stay alive and achieve our
aspirations. In many situations, emotions can be valuable as a kind
of barometer - an indicator that there is something we need to
reflect upon and figure out if we want our actions to be effective.
Emotions also play a critical role in organisational life. There is
always a temptation to view businesses in an industrial-age way, as
machines with people operating in the cogs; in such a view it seems
appropriate to devalue emotions. What machine feels? Corporate
cultures have developed a stoic resistance to emotions: People are
supposed to "suck it up" and not express anger or fear.
The mental model is that emotions make it harder to get
work done. But not only is that a mistake, it's not possible. We
are basically emotional beings. When a colleague says "I'm not
angry! I'm just determined," stay tuned. As that individual tries
to suppress his or her emotions, they will leak out in other
ways.
Once you start to experience corporations and
organisations as living systems, populated with living people, you
then see that emotions are already playing an integral role in any
serious sustainability effort there. Making emotions more explicit
can have value. Without making our grief explicit, how can we find
the motivation to get involved in efforts to save the 30,000
children who will otherwise die of starvation?
Without exploring the anger we feel at the injustice of
thousands of infants being born with mercury toxicity, how can we
act to change that outcome in our industries and our
regulations?
Without naming our fear of the consequences of polar ice
caps melting, how can we take the actions necessary to create clean
and renewable energy sources?
And without taking the time to draw forth the joy we feel
in celebrating our achievements, how can we have the strength to
endure?
Emotions exist in all of us; they can provide an important
source of initial energy and insight for any action-oriented
learning process. It is time to reclaim them. Emotions also give us
feedback on the potential direction of our efforts - or those of
our organisation.
For example, if anger is present, there is a good chance
that there is some injustice in the system that needs to be
addressed. If fear is present, there is a good chance that we need
to raise our awareness of some imbalance in the system. If grief is
present, we may have lost or be about to lose something precious.
And if joy is present, there is a good chance we're on the right
track.
The trick is learning to distinguish the source of the
anger, fear, grief, or joy. For example, is fear a justified signal
of impending troubles, or an exaggerated personal fear reflected
outward? Our work is to increase our capacity to understand and
interpret our emotional systems.
The value of coaching often comes in helping people
discern the many faces of grief, anger, joy, and fear and seeing
what "wants" to happen - how do those emotions link to actions?
Suppose, for example, that you are outraged and angry about a
report of those 30,000 children dying of starvation.
Your emotions may lead you to open your heart and write a
check to Oxfam or some other trustworthy agency. But what can you
do, from the vantage point of your life's work, to make more of a
difference - or to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the
future? It will take time and attention to design such an effort. A
true commitment might mean leveraging your job; if you are an
engineer at an oil company, that will take a certain form; if you
are an editor at a non-profit newsletter, a different form; a
marketer at a consumer products firm, still another. It will mean
defining your commitment; what is your vision for children? Is it
simply to avoid starvation, or are you committed to doing what you
can to provide life, food, caring guardians, and
education?
Since time and capabilities are limited, which children,
in which contexts, in which ways, will you work to help? How much
effort and time can you realistically put in without infringing on
other commitments important to you?
Will you be acting alone, or can you marshal the efforts
of other people, either in an existing organisation or in a group
that coalesces for that purpose? Or is there an existing endeavour
that you would do better to join? You want a planet where your kids
and all kids can thrive.
As your vision for life grows, and as your awareness of
current reality deepens, you may feel some despair at the vastness
of the gap between the two. What can one person possibly do to make
a difference? At the same time, you may also see a compelling need
for new, more effective actions.
As you increase your commitment to creating a planet where
life thrives, you will find that a deepening understanding of your
own emotional energy is essential, as is time for quiet reflection.
And as your skill, intelligence, and heart for working in these
domains grows, so does your capacity to be a wise, compassionate,
and effective leader.
These qualities will be reflected in the actions you take
in service of sustainability, small and large, day to
day.
This article is reprinted with permission from Learning
for Sustainability by Peter Senge, Joe Laur, Sara Schley and Bryan
Smith (SoL, 2006). For more information, go to http://www.solonline.org/lfs.