A few highlights:

Walt led off saying that business must have a “broader purpose in life” – employees and other stakeholders become much more excited if there is more to it than making money.  This is a natural human desire, for meaning – and it’s surprising in a way that somehow the “common sense” of business tells us to ignore something so fundamental. According to Walt, making money is great and essential, but – has to be a by-product of something bigger. Purpose really has to come first.

Lisa made the point that leadership includes understanding the full impacts of one’s decisions and actions, evaluating and driving reductions in negative impacts, and constantly engaging and communicating.  Ellen and Kim supported this with some very concrete examples of how they do planning, budgeting, and impact measurement in their respective companies.

I posed the question to the panel “In order to be sustainable, is a fundamentally different leadership style required?”

The consensus was that the style was not different, but additional.  Instead of thinking one quarter ahead, it’s having a longer term vision of the business in the world. It’s respecting the need to get buy in throughout the organization, to advocate for sustainability throughout the supply chain, and to act consistently from a set of sustainable values.

These are not in any way something antithetical to good business practice.  This deeper appreciation of time and complexity translates into concrete business results, including financial savings, brand protection, the ability to shape or avoid regulation, protecting resources needed in the supply chain, anticipating and meeting customer requirements.

Another question:  “Doesn’t this all make executive decision making much more complex, and thus more difficult?” The answers surprised me. Everyone said that it wasn’t actually more difficult, and in fact had very positive results. Walt felt that this approach increased employee involvement and satisfaction. Kim said it was hard to quantify but undoubtedly profitable. Lisa said it resulted in more integrated, deeper solutions.

Ellen described it as taking the process of due diligence deeper into the organization, including thinking longer term about potential impacts and risks.  She used the term “greater mindfulness” to describe this way of seeing.

In the end, culture is huge, the major driver of sustainable corporate behavior.  It means basing hiring decisions, rewards and incentives on consistent values – which in New Belgium’s case, includes a commitment to FUN.  (A simple concept they never taught me in business school!).  And Walt spoke of the most important skills for new employees being not technical – he says we can teach that stuff – but more fundamental attributes of passion, integrity and character.

Sustainable leadership is perhaps best seen not as huge and disruptive paradigm shift, but rather a more gentle and ongoing deepening of perspective.

Values are a key link between the “inner” and the “outer”. Values matter in an organization or a community, because they provide a consistent guide to decision making, in particular when one value may conflict with another.

In business, values are, too often, a set of nice sounding words on a plaque in the lobby.

Perhaps this is because we confuse values with ideals. People tend to think that values must represent the best of who we are, and of course must be positive.  But what if you work in a company where, for example, secrecy is a hallowed principle of management decision making, but we can’t admit to that without – well – violating that value?  Even if it doesn’t sound warm and fuzzy, isn’t that truly a value?

How do we incorporate values into the practice of strategic planning, and performance management?  The first step is to be able to actually measure values.

My friend and colleague Kathryn Alexander has developed a values assessment tool that links values to business behavior and performance outcomes.  This tool is the basis for a certification program she has developed, called Forever Green™, that provides a “maturity model” for business and other organizations working to improve ethical and sustainable performance.

Kathryn’s work over the years has demonstrated that the values that support sustainability correlate well with an organization’s  capacity for innovation and resilience. On the other hand, there are competing sets of values that will actively undermine a firms ability to achieve sustainability. These values also undermine the resilience and creativity of the firm. In the emerging business paradigm, a commitment to sustainability is just plain good business.

Why?  In a nutshell, sustainability thinking is inherently long term, acknowledges complexity, and addresses what are becoming key risk areas in an age of unprecedented transparency.

This is why tools for measuring values are critical.  How can these metrics be integrated into an overall strategy, using the Balanced Scorecard?

Here’s an example of how a values-based sustainability theme can be expressed in a Strategy Map.  In the Balanced Scorecard, the most foundational level – what we call Organizational Capacity – is intimately linked to leadership, culture and values.  And, thanks to the work of people like Kathryn, we can now measure the evolution of values over time in an organization.

For an organization to develop a sustainable business model, the most basic ingredient is a declaration by leaders that this will be so. This declaration is the basis of a culture that attracts and reinforces like-minded employees.  This builds a culture of people who enter creatively into the collaborative design and implementation of more sustainable products and processes.

This process also has an impact on branding – telling the story of the product, and of the way the company does business, in a way that attracts the attention of consumers whose values match yours.   This in turn results in enhanced customer loyalty and positive revenue results.