Design for Organizational Sustainability

Leadership is about effectiveness! What is the right thing to do? Management is about efficiency. Management is essential but insufficient to "create" a sustainable enterprise. Strategic leadership skills are required to redesign how we run our enterprises to create sustainable high performance and value for the multiple stakeholders: customers, employees, investors, partners, society and the natural environment.

In his BAWB 2009 keynote Bill McDonough proposes that “design is the first signal of human intention.” Which begs his next question, “what is our intention as a species?” The corollary might be, what is our intention as leaders of organizations? And, what are the purposes of our organizations?

Bill uses a Sierpinski Triangle to illustrate the connections between ecology, economic, and societal aspects of design. The question then is how can this concept be used to enhance leadership system design? One way might be to incorporate it in the design framework for leadership and management systems. It appears to be useful during several dimensions of systems design including: the purpose and requirements of the system, understanding the context, and developing a systems perspective of the organization both internally and externally.

I encourage you to watch the keynote video. Unfortunately, the first five minutes are administrative conference announcements and introductions. However, if you can multi-task and get through this part, Bill’s keynote starts at about the five minute mark and it is packed with great questions, concepts, and tangible examples.

For more on the Business as an Agent of World Benefit: Manage by Designing in an Era of Massive Innovation conference visit the conference website.

For more on Bill McDonough visit his website.

Enjoy!

john