Ten tips for writing a great sustainability plan
Step 1 [tick] – you’ve agreed you want to make your business more sustainable.
Step 2 [tick] – you’re aligned on what ‘sustainability’ means to your business, your level of ambition and the impact you want to have.
Now it’s time to move from talk to action … this is when you need a plan. So what does a good sustainability plan look like?
Here are ten tips…
1. SET CLEAR OBJECTIVES
Everyone should be clear on where you want to get to. To make sure there’s no room for interpretation, the objectives should:
Be as specific as possible
Be clear on timelines and deadlines
Include unambiguous metrics that you expect to hit
2. CREATE INTERIM TARGETS
When you create your plan, be clear on how you will measure progress and when
Delivering impact (whether environmental or social) often takes a long time. So it’s helpful to have interim targets that create urgency and drive immediate action. These should also be specific, measurable and have a clear date against them.
3. SET A BASELINE YEAR FOR MEASURING PROGRESS
You need to measure your progress against something – that something is your baseline year. Once you’ve agreed a baseline year:
Explain why you’ve picked this as your baseline.
Calculate your key metrics for that baseline year using the assumptions and methodologies that you plan to keep on using for ongoing measurements and targets. You should strip out and explain any unusual items from that year that might skew the figures.
If your assumptions and methodology change further down the line then restate the baseline year numbers.
4. SHARE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS AND METHODOLOGIES
Every business is different and we don’t yet have a consistent way of reporting and measuring all the different elements of sustainability. You’ll need to make some assumptions and pick some methodologies to use, especially when it comes to setting targets and measuring progress. Share these so there’s no ambiguity.
If your assumptions and methodologies change then your progress measures might change. Let people know they’ve changed and restate historical figures (including the baseline) and future targets.
5. BREAK DOWN ACTIVITIES INTO MANAGEABLE CHUNKS
Your objectives are likely to be broad and wide-ranging. Break them down into:
Work streams or separate projects that can then be further broken down into activities and then actions.
Phases (e.g. by quarter or year) with clear objectives and targets for each.
Enabling or foundational activities (e.g. putting in place a sustainability policy) and activities which will deliver impact (e.g. shifting to a renewable energy supply).
Once you’ve broken things down like this, it can be much easier to share responsibility for the project among different team members and external suppliers.
6. AGREE BUDGET AND RESOURCE
Delivering a plan takes time, skills and money. To create a deliverable plan, you need to understand who and what is available, at least for the next phase of the plan.
Agree who’s available to work on the plan and how much time they have. Identify any capacity or capability gaps and work out how to address these.
Agree how much budget is available to deliver the plan.
7. EVOLVE THE PLAN
As you deliver your plan, you’ll learn a lot. In parallel, the world outside your business will be changing – new technologies will appear, competitors will take action on sustainability, new regulations will come into force, collaboration opportunities will emerge.
Your plan should be ever-evolving. As you measure your progress, learn what works / doesn’t and you observe the changing external environment, you’ll realise that your original plan isn’t the best way to deliver your objectives. Be comfortable evolving your plan in real time where necessary and schedule in regular review points to do this more formally (e.g. every quarter).
Because your plan will evolve, I like to think of it as more of a roadmap, especially the further out it goes. You need clarity on what you’ll be doing this week. And you need to be pretty clear on what you’ll be doing this month. But you can’t know exactly what you’ll be doing in three years time – so your plan that far out will be more of an outline that you flesh out as you get nearer.
8. BE AMBITIOUS AND CREDIBLE
Your plans should be ambitious, delivering a step change in what your business is doing and the impact it’s having.
And they should also be realistic. Create stretch goals but don’t make them so audacious that no one believes them.
9. MAKE YOUR PLAN DO-ABLE
A plan is all about action. Could someone pick up your plan, understand it and use it?
10. MAKE IT PUBLICLY AVAILABLE AND UNDERSTANDABLE
A lot of your external stakeholders are interested in your sustainability activities. Sharing your plan with them can be a great way of engaging them. Make your plan easily accessible (e.g. all in one place on your website) and present it in a way that’s easy for a member of the general public to understand (no jargon, visual).
Your plan will be unique to your business. There’s not a blueprint for how to do this and the sustainability journey will look different for each organisation. But if you follow these ten tips then you’ll end up with something useful, impactful and affordable.
For more practical advice on how to get clarity on what steps to take to scale up your impact, check out my FREE Scale Up Your Impact Guide: