In 2003, Dexter Dunphy and his colleagues published The Phase Model, which mapped an organisation’s response to issues of corporate sustainability. Rejection and non-responsiveness progressed through compliance and efficiency to strategic proactivity and ultimately to the sustaining corporation. It is a journey from denial to acceptance.

I'm coming down from having attended the World Business Summit on climate change at Copenhagen, still working through my thoughts.  There is much that was good, some great, but what was missing is the sense of business being part of a movement for change of the kind required to not only deliver a good outcome from Copenhagen later this year, but also to drive building tomorrows low carbon green economy.  Then this arrived, providing many of the missing pieces, the Commencement Address given to the class of 2009 of the University of Portland from the awesome Paul Hawken.   Read it, and weep - with tears of joy, despair or both, but whatever, read it
 

The essentials for running and developing a sustainable business.

I wanted to tell you about an event we are hosting with the Telegraph Media Group to really shake a stick at the Old World of Work. We all know that social, political, economic and demographic change is transforming global commerce, organisational structures and individual freedoms. As we enter a world that is more fluid, less centralised and less certain about old assumptions and old models, the only way to survive in this rapidly shifting environment is by becoming more collaborative and focused on outputs – survival means being excellent, in other words. There is no middle ground. I love that. I might even say it again! Survival means being excellent. In other words, there is no middle ground!