Strategic Thinking for Sustainable Enterprise

Professor Jeremy B WilliamsDirector, Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise

@jeremybwilliams

Presentation to Dammam University students

Saudi ArabiaGriffith International

Brisbane, 27 August 2014

Objective of this session

To learn to think differently

Make a note of changes you can make in how you think and what you do when you return to work.

Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you’re thinking, in order to make your thinking better.

Richard Paul, 1992, Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World, p. 7.

Critical thinking

Characteristics of unstructured problems ...

Cannot be described completely

Have more than one potentially viable solution option

Generate controversy, even among experts

Have incomplete information that is subject to a variety of interpretations

… characteristics of unstructured problems

Have a variety of solution options with unknown outcomes

Often need to be addressed repeatedly over time as conditions change and better information becomes available

Can be addressed through a problem solving process that uses information in increasingly complex ways

© U21Global 2007

Content knowledge/problem solving skills

Identifying the unstructured nature of the problem

Framing an unstructured problem

Resolving an unstructured problem

Readdressing an unstructured problem

1

2

3

4The ‘stair-step’ critical thinking model (Lynch, Wolcott & Huber 1998)

Strategic thinking is about developing strategy

Strategy is about the future

Integrating the future into your decision making processes today by thinking big, deep and long.

So how might we define strategic thinking?

Maree Conway, 2009)

Big

Do we understand how we connect and interact with other organisations and the external environment?

Deep

How deeply are we questioning our ways of operating?

Do we operate from our interpretation of the past, or our anticipation of the future?

Are our assumptions today valid into the future?

Long

How far into the future are we looking?

Do we understand the shape of alternative futures for our organisation?

Leaders need to understand they are part of larger systems

Doing so shifts focus from optimising their small part of the picture to building shared understanding and a more holistic vision

Thinking Big: Systems thinking

Peter Senge, The Necessary Revolution, 2008

What might seem real to you may appear less real to another person.

How you filter information (the lens through which you view the world) to create meaning is critical to one’s understanding

Thinking Deep: Taking a world view

Thinking Long: Environmental scanning

Scan actively

Scan in ‘non-traditional’ places

Scan for diversity of perspectives (not right, not wrong)

Look for connections, collisions and intersections.

Trend

Impact

Problem Opportunity

March 2012

Could universities go the same

way as newspapers?

The Earth

… is full

Full of us …

Full of our stuff …

… and full of our garbage.

We’ve also changed the surface of the earth

We dig it up …

We chop it down …

… and we take as if there is no

tomorrow

We need 1.5 planets to sustain current consumption patterns

…

… with potentially devastating effects in the form of climate

change

Dr. Malte Meinshausen

The modelling conducted for the 2013 study produced larger budgets than indicated by the modelling of Meinshausen et al (2009) in 2011 Carbon Tracker work. That approach produced a range of 565 – 886GtCO2 to give 80% - 50% probabilities of limiting warming to a two degree scenario (2DS)

<20C Ian DunlopChair, Australian Coal Association (1987-88); CEO of the AICD (1997-2001)

?

“The 20C target is too high. It is now the boundary between dangerous andextremely dangerous climate change”

IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)

1: a project or undertaking that is especially difficult, complicated, or risky

2: readiness to engage in daring or difficult action

3:

(a) a unit of economic organisation or activity; especially a business organisation

(b) a systematic purposeful activity

sustainable enterprise

There is a multiplicity of organisational and business types that might be characterised as

Identifiable through desire to be part of an emerging, dynamic, innovative new economy, based on principles of social responsibility and ecological sustainability

Private sector

Public sector Civil society

For profit Not for profit

In transition Start-ups

corporate social responsibility (CSR)

≠ sustainable enterprise

sustainable enterprise is where:

stakeholders and investors see value creation opportunities and cost reduction opportunities in the strategic use of sustainability concepts, practices and innovation

• a clear understanding of its role in the creation of economic, environmental and social value

• more value is generated if it is driven by a compelling sustainability vision accompanied by the monitoring of performance relative to that vision

‘How much closer to sustainable success are we?’

is a much better question than:

‘How much less unsustainable are we?’

sustainable enterprise will have:

sustainable enterprise

sustainability opportunity

social-ecological problem

(with a viable business model)

Choose a company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadawul

No more than one from:» Banks and Financial Services» Petrochemical Industries» Cement» Retail» Energy and Utilities» Agriculture and Food Industries» Telecommunication and IT» Insurance» Multi-Investment» Industrial Investment» Building and Construction» Real estate and Property» Transport» Media and Publishing» Hotel and Tourism

Describe this company in 2034

What is its mission and vision? What key problems did it face over the

previous 20 years? What course of action did take and when? What criteria did it use to choose and

evaluate a course of action? How did this course of action coincide or

conflict with other goals/plans?

profjeremybwilliams