In preparation for our upcoming CircadiaOne workshop at the Sustainable Enterprise Conference, I am doing a little reading on “Habit Change,” and this is a nice summary of some good pointers. I think it could be a little simpler, but it is still very useful.

It is useful to think first about the work of Ichak Adizes, who wrote The Corporate Life Cycle in 1988. He notes that similar to biological systems, organizations are “born,” they learn, they peak, then they (can) fade. He talks about the Business Function of Organizations, and how the needs of the organization change over time. He also talks about how by understanding where your organization is, you can figure out how to give it the “nutrients” (my words) it needs to re-energize.

The Corporate Lifecycle, by Ichak Adizes (1988)

This slide to the side summarizes his ideas. When an organization is in the early stages, it is merely focused on performing services. “Just do it!!” is the idea. As an organization matures, it becomes more and more necessary to focus on how the service is being provided. After that, the organization is looking to be one step ahead of the curve – how can we anticipate the competition. Many best practices have been established in the organization, but the organization must not rest on its laurels. Finally, the organization moves on to integration – whether through vertical or horizontal mergers, externally, or through looking to its people, and thinking about their long-term success.

It is easy to see this pattern in an organization I have been a part of for the last several years, the Sustainable Enterprise Conference. The process that it took to get the conference to be the success it is now very much mimics the path that Adizes notes.

2005: The conference started when Robert Girling, a friend and colleague, went to a large conference in Marin called Bioneers, and came back with the idea of having a conference in the North Bay. He invited a number of people to come brainstorm with him – community activists, Sonoma State & Green MBA professors, business people who were interested or working in sustainable business. I was in that organizing meeting, and ended up being the “Director” for the conference, organizing the efforts of the many volunteers over the course of the next several months. In April, 2006 we thought we would get 150 people – we were shocked when we “sold out” at 220, turning people away.

That year, there was a huge learning curve – and boy was it a rock & roll roller-coaster as we learned about sustainability, how to run and market a conference, how to work together, and clarified, over the course of time, what our true purpose was. In terms of the Adizes model, we implemented systems as we could – but really, the focus was on producing that one day. We had to prove the “business” of the conference was a success.

In 2007, the second year, I was director again. We decided to expand the conference to two days, and to increase our number of targeted guests. That year, I became much more organized; we structured the work differently; there were many more volunteers who had much more ownership. My job became more manageable as a result, although I found myself working much harder as volunteer coordinator than I had the first year. When I compare that year to the Adizes model, we were clearly in stage 2, Administer. Systems became much more important; we didn’t want to “reinvent the wheel”. We were much more focused on fine-tuning.

In 2008, I decided that it was time for people who had a different set of skills to take the director-ship. As a group, the Steering Committee had decided it didn’t want to rely on volunteers as much; it wanted professionals to take the helm on logistics, coordinating sponsors once we had made contact, and otherwise managing the flow of the conference. So, we hired two “co-directors” of the conference, Deborah Grace Kraft & Stacey Ward, and one marketing director, Ryn Longmaid, in addition to our steadfast webmaster Oren Wool & graphic artist Alana Jelinik. These people brought specialization in detail & event management, in marketing; and Oren & Alana were benefiting from having worked in their capacity in previous years. The team took the “Administer” stage of the Adizes model to a new level; writing policy, clarifying decision-making processes; establishing strong working relationships.

As we prepare for 2009, we are clearly in the Entrepreneurial stage, with forays into the Integrative Stage. We are attempting to figure out what is “cutting edge.” Particularly now that “sustainability” and “green” are mainstream words, the question is, how do we help our local enterprises continue to push and challenge their own edge.  We are also re-examining our organizational structure, something we do every year, formalizing different committees and roles that are greater than function, and speak to the purpose of the conference.  More on that later.

Where is your organization?

In the next article, we will talk about how knowing where your organization is can help you design systems that will help you work most effectively and efficiently.

One useful term to discuss is the idea of the Triple Top Line.

Particularly over the last ten years, as practitioners and companies have started to put sustainability into practice, additions to the definition have also been added. A couple of years ago, a colleague Ed Quevedo (professor over at the Green MBA, and long-time consultant in this work) first introduced me to the term “Triple Top Line”. The idea of the triple top line is that there are opportunities as well as savings to be had in sustainability; that instead of only looking for efficiencies, we can actually find new products, we can redesign processes that actually increase value, not just efficiency. Very intriguing from a strategic point of view – CEOs can begin to set business direction by looking for “Triple Top Line” ideas.

For example: At the recent (May 2008) Sustainable Enterprise Conference, Autodesk talked about their process of sustainability. Three years ago, they actually started with marketing and sales, sponsoring a green event in New York. That led to looking at their own operations, seeking new efficiencies along the lines of energy and water.

And then their Product Development department joined in the fun. You see, they have a product called AutoCad that the vast majority of designers in the building industry AND the landscape industry use to design our physical landscape. And now those smart, creative software creators are innovating to make it easier for the incredible number of designers that use their product to design in congruence with the natural landscape, to incorporate passive solar and green elements.

An excellent example of a Triple Top Line Opportunity

Not only is this little story an incredible example of finding the unique leverage point that that organization is positioned to use, but it is also an interesting example of how a company looked for the top line opportunities first. On their website, their marketing department has done an excellent job of highlighting all of the exciting designers who are using AutoCad to “Innovate in Green.”

Triple Top Line is very exciting – it moves beyond the idea of sustainable development, beyond Triple Bottom Line, it finds more than the operations folks in an organization listening; you start to find marketing & sales, CEOs, and product development paying attention. Plus, it is a very positive term – lets look for opportunities for growth, not just cost-savings.

However, Top Line advocates have the same challenge that Bottom Line advocates have – they still get fuzzy when they think about the “People Part.”