The sustainability concept, as well as its application in Corporate Responsibility has been evolving at Atitude. In each new project, in each experience we live, we learn another detail of what are the real difficulties in the implementation of a sustainable management, where are the fissures along the way, the dilemmas, etc… Also fruit of our experience, being the human component the key and base for all transformations, results in our services being directed more to the people who are searching to implement a sustainable management, than the companies they work for.
Therefore, besides helping them in identifying the development stage in which they are on the way to sustainability, our services help promote cultural changes inside, aligning the top, working with the middle and finally educating the base, thus reflecting in important additions to the strategic planning, bringing benefits not only in social environmental issues, but in conventional matters as well.
It is important noting that our prior experience, as executives or entrepreneurs, has taught us that consulting work is only effective when built by four hands. In other words it is necessary that an inside team be responsible for conducting and closely following up so that the resulting knowledge be applied and properly transferred to their coworkers. We are not sellers of beautiful presentations or nice words, but facilitators of processes.
The graphics below illustrates how the matter sustainability has been evolving in the corporations and what kind of tools are people now looking for:
We believe the manner in which they are applied to be fundamental in order for these tools to be really exercised and work as propellers to sustainability. It is necessary to be conceptually aligned; it is indispensable to reflect the process constantly, utilizing any tool elaboration process itself as learning point for its implementation. For example, the elaboration of a sustainability report ethical code made in non participative form, results in their non legitimization in face of the various publics and, consequently, less effectiveness. An engagement process with external publics which is not followed by a revision of the relationships and internal beliefs looses credibility and so on. Therefore, we offer services which target bettering the effectiveness of available tools in the marketplace, such as:
Conceptual alignment in an integrated and participative form - nothing is taught all is learned - therefore, we utilize argument methods which allow concepts to be revealed inside out, being learned by people who take over this knowledge and may start to apply it immediately thereafter;
Process facilitation for the utilization of tools such as the elaboration of Sustainability Reports; the utilization of Dow Jones and ISE (BOVESPA - Sao Paulo stock market) questionnaires - we facilitate planning the utilization of such tools, in both conceptual and practical points of view; helping the selection of people who should participate, facilitating argument processes for these to reflect on the company's real stage in a most effective way, thus contributing to the internal learning of the process.
Support on the elaboration of Sustainability Strategic Planning - we instigate internal debates and research along the various publics in order to draw the company’s sustainability way, mapped with actions of short, mid and long terms.
Support and implementation of stakeholders engagement processes - we cooperate with the company from the moment of mapping which are the priority stakeholders to the start of engagement itself, walking through the design of the adequate engagement model and the training of internal people involved.
Elaboration of Business Cases as tools for indicators development, internal communication and support to strategy formulation - always with the constructivist philosophy, we use the Sustainable Business Value Matrix* as basis to identify risks and opportunities brought up by issues tied up to sustainability, collaborating to formatting strategies. The Matrix is also an efficient tool to communicate the organization, in practical terms, what is sustainability to the company, helping in the internal and external communications.
Green Buildings - as in the case of a company, a building, house or any other edification may be built permeated by a new concept, a new acting manner, resulting in smaller social environmental impacts, promoting the well being of circulating and neighboring people, without generating loss to the financial profit of the venture. Therefore, the green building tendency is only a continuation of everything that has been said about sustainability, applied to the civil construction business. In this context, Atitude's team has been studying the USGBC books and manuals, having participated in workshops in the USA with the intention of becoming LEED AP and consequently, empowered to help even further the professionals involved in such undertakings.
Our methodology We believe the HOW to be as important as the WHAT. Therefore, we believe that more than elaborating maps, matrixes, tools, indicators and reports, the "form to build" could ultimately be the organization propeller to a higher level in sustainability. We bring up experience, knowledge and business culture (vision), but it is the company's people who perform the work and the tools end up serving as assistants, not as specific goals. Our work helps the companies understand that a paradigm change is mandatory since current mental models are normally obsolete in the sustainability scenario. The aspects inherent to the process are shown as needed along the way; people who participate on the transformation feel learning the process and end up bringing the new concepts to their sphere of personal relationships outside the company, contributing to the dissemination of the new culture. Within this model, behavioral individual issues are brought up, spiritual development courses are suggested, people learn to breathe, to listen and than dialog, to perceive how mental models act, and, consequently, to really know how to transform the way they act. A bilateral gain is than reached - the company gives and teaches, the employees learn to distinguish how they acted in the past, how were their previous mental models, (theirs and their colleagues', family' and friends') and end up teaching as well, the company becoming responsible for a wealthier human condition inside and in its adjacencies.
* The Sustainable Business Value Matrix was initially created by SustainAbility, a British consultancy, and later adapted for emerging countries by the IFC (International Finance Corporation), SustainAbility and the Ethos Institute. This matrix has a Brazilian version released by same actors and with the participation of Atitude, who elaborated all the criteria for Business Cases elaboration, raising and deepening its knowledge of the tool's utilization amplitude.
