We all know that being sustainable is one of the most important things you need to do in business today. As long as you are doing this, you are going to be doing much better by the planet, and that is a major concern for everyone right now. Sustainability in business could even improve sales, because it is increasingly important to be able to say to people that you are sustainable, and that will often act as a vital marketing and branding boost, so that too is something to consider.
However, if you are struggling to run your business as sustainably as you can, the problem might be that you are too focused on other areas of the business, and that you don’t feel you quite have the attention span for it at the moment. In this post, we are going to remedy this situation, by looking into how you might be able to free up your attention so that you can focus on sustainability a lot more easily.
Balance Profit with Purpose
One of the things that can often subtly impede upon your approach to sustainability is when you are too focused or worried about profit. Obviously, the main reason people are in business usually is to make some money, but there is making money and then there is obsessing over making money. The fact is that unimpeded, endless money-making is very often the enemy of sustainability. This is due to the fact that it generally means producing more and keeping yourself focused on spinning those wheels, so that you are much less able to think about anything else, least of all sustainability.
So you might want to revisit your approach to profit as soon as you can. If you are always thinking about squeezing as much money out of the business as possible, it could be that you are not quite approaching it right – and a more balanced approach could be beneficial overall. You might even find that it is less stressful to run a business this way, so there might be other benefits to doing it like this too.
Outsource Your Technical Issues
Whenever you have some technical problems, it is usually wise to make sure that you are outsourcing them to someone who knows exactly what they are doing, and who can fix the problem as quickly and easily as possible. That is a good idea for a number of reasons, but mostly it’s because it allows you to have more time and space in which you can think about whatever else you want, including the ability to run a more sustainable business.
Essentially, if you are always running around trying to fix this and that technical issue, then you are not going to have any time for trying to improve things at a broader, more macro level. That can be quite damaging. It is therefore wise to find some good IT support who can help you out as and when, especially the kind where they are simply keeping an eye on your tech at all times, so you don’t have to.
Change Up Strategies
Do you have a corporate strategy? If so, is it one that you landed on purposefully, or did you just happen to come across it and it seemed to stick? This is a huge difference, and it’s one that you need to understand if you are going to have a good approach to business that really makes all the difference. If you are currently starting to think that a more sustainable approach to business might be sensible, then there are a lot of things you can do to ensure you are changing it as required. And a good place to start is often with the top-down corporate strategy.
This strategy might even just be implicit in what you do, rather than something you have definitely decided upon. If so, you might need to be careful about how you are going to identify it, so that you can subsequently change it. This change could then be as simple as trying not to harm the planet or even making some concrete changes to what sources and materials you use. It’s vital that you write down and make concrete your new strategy, so that you are more likely to actually see it through.
Improve Time Management
When it comes to being able to make big changes in your business, of course, that will always require time, and you therefore need to make sure that you have a decent approach to time management as well. This can often be quite hard to do, but there are a lot of ways in which you can change how you look at and use time in your company, and that is something that you are going to want to be aware of as best as you can be.
To improve your time management, make sure that you are not wasting time on any processes that don’t need to be in place. This is the first step, and it’s an important one, so you should make sure that you are doing all you can to focus on this as best as possible. Beyond that, it’s about planning out your days as well as your weeks and months, and being sure to use your time sensibly.
Once you have more time in place, you are going to find that making sustainable changes to your business is a lot easier and more manageable, and that you can start actually doing what is right by the planet as a result. That is obviously the whole point here, so make sure that you actually then make those changes.
As you can see, there are a lot of places your attention can get stuck, and a lot of ways in which you can then free up your attention in order to focus more on sustainability in your business. Consider these if that matters to you, as it could make a world of difference to everything.
Photography by Gladys Arivia
