Is Your Value Stream Leaking? (News from Natural Logic)

August 2012

Greetings!

Summer has often been a quiet season at Natural Logic. Not this year!

We're hard at work on several juicy systems/design/innovation engagements. We're continuing to grow our Big Brand Promise, Rapid Diagnostics, Sustainability Roadmap and Strategic Coaching offerings -- as well our my exclusive Inside Sustainability briefing service. (The next private briefing is Friday morning, so please join right now if you'd like to be a part of it.)

We have a few other cool things up our sleeves for you right after Labor Day. Meanwhile, I'd like to give you a window into some of the most exciting work we've been doing in a long time.

With my best regards,
Gil

PS: Be sure to see your invitation (and discount) for The New Metrics of Sustainable Business at the bottom of this email!

Is Your Value Stream Leaking?

Value stream mapping (thank you, Wikipedia) "is a lean manufacturing technique used to analyze and design the flow of materials and information required to bring a product or service to a consumer. At Toyota, where the technique originated, it is known as "material and information flow mapping". It can be applied to nearly any value chain."

And it's a powerful tool for systems design for sustainability, one which Natural Logic has been applying to great effect with a growing number of clients -- and one which can uncover the massive potential economic value of well-design sustainability strategies.

A typical value stream map "shows the current steps, delays, and information flows required to deliver the target product or service." A sustainability focused Value Stream map also shows the energy and materials that flow into and out of each process along the way.

(Some of you may recognize here the "metabolic atom" that's been the kernel in our approach to ecometrics and sustainability indicators and our seminal sustainability dashboard software. I'll dive into that in more detail next time.)

A typical value stream map looks at which processes add value, and which don't. In our maps, we identify the value leakage at each stage -- Sailor struggling to fix leak

the loss of physical materials and energy quality, as well as economic value, at each stage. These could include, for example, excess energy use and spend, insufficient product yield and excess non-product output, hazardous products or non-products, lost sales, unrecovered resources, and more -- anything that doesn't add value to customers, shareholders, stakeholders and/or the earth's living systems.

Then we quantify, prioritize and look for synergies -- the strategies and tactics, spanning everything from product design and manufacture to sales offerings and contract terms that can reduce or eliminate value leakage and, if the wind is right, generate substantial new value.

It's a new level of life cycle thinking that in conjunction with footprinting, life cycle assessment and appropriate querying of accounting and ERP systems can start to identify the scale of opportunity that could be represented by stopping those leaks. (In one instance, the value leakage was the same order of magnitude as the company's current revenues. Nothing quite like that to focus the executive mind! (Even without considering the unmonetized externalities that Puma and others are starting to capture with their ecological P&Ls.)

The value stream exercise also supports the selection of relevant performance metrics, and the development a of comprehensive strategic roadmap to guide your organization to capture all that potential value.

Of course this is easier said than done. It takes inspired leadership, an engaged multi-stakeholder team, and the experienced, integrative and, yes, provocative approach that we bring to all our engagements.

I'll go into metabolic atoms in more detail next time. Meanwhile, call me if you'd like to explore how these approaches can help your company find out how much value you're leaking, and chart a course to capturing that value.

Strategic Sustainability Coaching

Natural Logic's strategic coaching service - confidential Gil Friend - by Sari Goodfriend - 100px

conversations directly with CEO Gil Friend - helps sustainability executives and managers clarify and advance both your company's and your personal sustainability goals.

This opportunity might be for you. Or it might be for one of your colleagues. Or employees. Or your boss. It's for someone, someone you probably know, who is extraordinarily committed to making sustainability happen in their company, their community and their life - and the world. Someone who, despite their skills, experience and accomplishments, isn't satisfied with how well they're doing that.

If you're ready for the next step in your business strategy or your own career (and for some deeply experienced tough love), you can learn more here, or contact me today for a no-cost sample session. (And be sure to ask about our summer special.)

You can also use the "forward email" link below to share this offer with colleagues who might be interested.

Helping companies take sustainability seriously -- and take it deep.

In This Issue:

Is Your Value Stream Leaking?

Strategic Coaching

Your Biggest Brand Promise

Meanwhile...

More Summer Reading

QuickLinks

Your Biggest Brand Promise

Fifty years ago, Buckminster Fuller asked, "If the success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on who am and what I do... Who would I be? What would I do?"

Today, I'm inviting you to rise to this challenge, by facing these questions:

* What is the biggest brand promise your company could make around "sustainability"?

* What business opportunities would this for you and your value chain?

* What can you do to realize that value?
* Will you?

My invitation to you:

Bring your senior leadership together with our senior leadership for one intense, focused, working day to examine the risks and opportunities that face your business, your current commitments and aspirations, and your reason for being -- and to create the biggest brand promise to the market that you can possibly make -- and deliver on.

Then, if you're prepared to move on that promise, we will stand shoulder to shoulder with you -- with your CSO, or as your CSO -- to help you do just that.

We're inviting just ten companies to take this challenge. Call me today if yours might be one of them.

Meanwhile:

1) Download the Declaration of Leadership for Sustainable Business.

It's the closest we've come to a manifesto that tells the whole truth about path ahead.

2) Subscribe to Inside Sustainability -- our new exclusive, private briefing service delivering cutting edge insights on strategic sustainability to a select group of leaders.

3) Learn how our Step By Step consulting services & our comprehensive Full Cycle Sustainability™ program can help your company design, implement and measure profitable sustainability strategies.