Tip 2: Sustainability is not an eco event

The topic of sustainability is gaining more and more attention and not even a global pandemic is supplanting it – the problems and challenges we face are too important for that. And therein lies a trap that companies can fall into: a (too) strong focus on ecological aspects, which are very often associated with high costs and low returns, and too little attention to the economic aspects of sustainability.

In our consulting we always start with profitability, because only economically sound companies can also take responsibility for the ecological aspects of our actions.

Sustainability is a smart and economically successful management concept for companies. Above all, it is about making the relationships (see tipp 1) with all partners and members of the value chain(s) fair, stable over the long term and for mutual benefit. In business, especially in the last few decades, partners have only been selected on the basis of purely economic aspects. When a competitor came along that promised even more cost-effectiveness, they switched. In almost all contracts of our time there are termination clauses and sanctions – what is completely missing are mutual obligations, how crises can be mastered together in such a way that the relationship is maintained and improved.

As a result, relationships very often only last for a short time and companies miss a very important opportunity: through long-term joint work, to develop increasingly well-established processes, joint quality management and joint improvement management and ultimately to develop joint excellence. This is the only way to achieve outstanding profitability.

So our tip #2 is: build your relationships to last. In conflicts, the goal should not be separation, but rather coping with the conflict together. Long-term shared excellence to the benefit of both parties should be the goal of relationships. This results in economically sustainable success.