Teen sex and corporate sustainability

Marc Gunther tells a joke comparing corporate sustainability and teen sex - you can find his original article here. The joke goes:

"Corporate sustainability is like teen sex. Everybody talks about it. Nobody does it very much. And when they do it, they don't do it very well."

So why is it that few companies "do" sustainability well? The entry points into sustainability seem (to me) to be simply good business practice. One focus, for example, is on managing resources efficiently, whether that be energy, people or other raw material inputs. How many businesses would argue that managing costs is of no concern?

Another is being a responsible citizen (for example, taking care of your waste outputs by either reducing or eliminating them). And in these days of social media, whereby a product or brand can be (and have been) slated by their consumers, causing significant impact on sales - why wouldn't a business want to be seen to be doing "the right thing".

Perhaps it's the label - "sustainability" - that causes business managers to shy away. Maybe it seems too esoteric, or tree-hugging, not related to the hard day-to-day problems that concern them. Such as where their next sale is going to come from, or how to keep their costs down...

Many companies seem to see sustainability as something else that they have to do - rather than it being part of who they are and how they operate. And because that something else isn't part of the core business - guess what? It either doesn't get done, or where it is done, it's done poorly.

I would argue that the reverse is actually true. That consideration of sustainability in company operations is integral to the long term survivability of an organisation.

In today's markets with today's networked customers, a company that considers sustainability as something extra is a company with a limited future.