Written in 2017 with Elizabeth Reaves: In short, you could say that systems leaders tend to the “soil” of the social field. Just as soil on a farm contains a web of microbial and bio-chemical interactions, the soil of the social field contains the web of relationships among farmers, businesses and governments, and the sharing of knowledge among farmers that enables them to support each other’s appetites for innovation. It’s our belief that the earth’s soil will be healthy when the social soil is capable of seeing, aspiring and acting for the health of the whole. But what exactly does it look like to aspire and act from the health of the whole?

To take just one perspective, the corporate perspective, it might look like this: companies will need to move from a least-cost approach to a true cost-shared value approach wherein they internalize the risks of the current system and share costs and risks with supply chain partners.

Written in 2017: A senior sustainability leader commented the other day that sustainable sourcing programs might be in danger of hitting their targets while missing the point. As sustainability is operationalized, we might be in the weeds of compliance and lose sight of larger goals.

Sustainable sourcing generally requires asking suppliers to complete self-assessment questionnaires that can be spot checked and thereby verified. Unilever has its own code, as does Pepsi, and SAI Platform has created the industry standard “Farmer Sustainability Assessment.” Some companies ask that farmers enter data into a calculator rather than completing a practice questionnaire, and calculator results can contribute to a baseline of current practices and impacts. A few companies combine a quantitative calculator with a practice-based checklist.

The industry has come a long way from the times when sustainability was marginal or a feel-good greenwashing exercise. Nevertheless, it’s useful to ask ourselves the question our colleague asked, “Are we hitting the targets but missing the point?”