N.37 | What do you measure when you want to change in your company?

An old managerial adage reminds us that "if you don't measure, you don't manage", the concrete implications, however, are not always put into practice in companies. Companies often declare "sustainability strategies” but stop to identifying performance indicators of economic and financial origin (for example Budget, Cash Flow, Return on Investment, etc.). If a sustainable development is to be pursued in a systematic way, it would be necessary to identify indicators of Sustainability and Social Development and of Environmental Sustainability. However, the introduction of "new performance indices", which complement those already in use, lead management to measure and make explicit in the short term the "cost" of pursuing sustainable development strategies. And paradoxically, this does not encourage them to change. 

Much work has been done to identify new investment evaluation indices, think of "specialized" investment funds, the so-called "Green Finance" which has developed alternative models for evaluating performance. However, it is a fact that a significant part of the "green" investments have been made possible in large part by significant public support (which making them more advantageous or less expensive for the individual company made it possible to start by minimizing the risk on investment).

In daily life, what indicators do we use to measure the result of a project? Can we identify not only economic indicators for what we want to undertake? A good operational contribution, which we recommend, is given by the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards.

Regenesi has developed an operational support methodology for companies that always starts from concrete problems. Let them create value from warehouse waste or from production process waste rather than rethinking internal communication or training processes. Once the problem to be tackled has been identified, the timing, result indicators and resources necessary for the solution are defined. Only at this point is it decided whether to proceed or not. In our experience we have seen that the inspiration for a change is often the result of an ethical or aesthetic reflection (for example that it is bad to throw those things, that wasting leaving those products in the warehouse rather than beautiful would be if…) however the business decision of changing something is typically economic (it is useful to me, it is not useful to me). And you, do you have any changes in terms of sustainability that you would like to make in your company?