What is Sustainability?
At its most basic level, it just simply means that you want your vision for a business, organization, or lifestyle to continue onward. You want it to: sustain. In Accounting world, it's called Ongoing Concern.
From a business standpoint, the interpretation is a Triple Bottom Line approach or “TBL”. We know what the first bottom line is in business: Profit. But in Sustainability, there are Three Ps: People, Planet, and Profit.
People first.
Being Business
While you may connect business sustainability efforts to climate matters these days, it's not that narrow.
The scope has increasing depth and specialization that requires attention.
Businesses like to measure efforts to ensure there is value for stakeholders. And now stakeholders are demanding ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) as well as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) reporting to best position financial or impact investing. These measurements and reporting are becoming increasingly more technical, specialized, and compliance-oriented.
Being Holistic
This is where TBL starts coming together and creates that excitement to be free to embrace Sustainability through a tailored Vision.
An organization or individual can absolutely include the People and Planet pieces holistically (more broadly measured). From that perspective, you may wish to accept the cost, as is, and place more emphasis on the impact of the People or Planet strategy to ensure it aligns to your Vision.
You remove the compartmentalization from your organization or lifestyle and embrace more of the fabric of life. Reduce the silos! Increase community!
Being holistic creates an organic Vision that adapts to emerging needs without losing sight of the impact that you want to make.