APPROACH: how to take your first steps

Leadership and Vision Phase

The overall purpose of this phase is to raise awareness of sustainability issues and how they may affect the organisation’s quality and performance.

The first step for leaders in the FE system will be to clarify and revisit their strategic mission and vision in the context of sustainable development. As a first step the actions contained under the leadership and vision phase in the SIGMA table are a useful guide:

• To secure board level and senior management understanding and commitment to integrate sustainability into core management processes and decision-making
• To identify stakeholders and consult them on key impacts and approaches
• To develop a business case for sustainability
• To formulate a long-term sustainability vision and high-level strategy.

The World Wide Fund for Nature's document ‘Learning for Sustainability’, The Earth Charter, and The Land Based Colleges National Consortium Sustainable Development Learning Pack, all provide useful suggestions. All three will help your organisation define sustainable development and think about the approaches you should take.

Key questions that you should be asking yourself (ves) are:

• How sustainable are we?

• Do we need to carry out a baseline review? A suggested resource is SIGMA’s Performance Review
  

• What do our key stakeholders think e.g. staff, learners, employers, governors? (The section on Community and Business provides good guidance on stakeholder engagement).

• Are governors and managers aware of the strategic and tactical implications of a more sustainable approach?

All of these questions will be based on an assessment of where the organisation currently is in relation to its sustainable development objectives and the need to review progress and track trends.

Who needs to be involved?

Initially, this will be the senior management team along with governors or board members.

You may choose to establish a dedicated team or appoint key individuals (e.g. sustainable development champions).

Key activities

Formulate the (business) case for sustainability. One suggested resource is
Project SIGMA; also see the CEL’s September 2007 publication: Leadership for Sustainability, Making sustainable development a reality for leaders; as well as the Community and Business section.

Raise awareness and begin the process of cultural change throughout your organisation through meetings and workshops.

When do these activities start?

Now is a good time!

Expected outcomes

• an internal business case for sustainable development.
• a revised vision and mission statement
• a communication plan for the revised vision and mission
• a stakeholder consultation report

Useful tips for this phase

If you choose to develop a separate vision and mission for sustainable development they will need to be clearly linked to the overall vision and mission and ultimately they will need to be integrated. You will need to think about what your organisation’s limits or boundaries are in relation to sustainable development and identify any trade-offs.
For example existing building fabric may mean that there will be limitations as to how sustainable a building can be.

The Sustainable Development Education Panel, produced a good step-by-step guide to estabishling a Sustainability Management System (external website), which you may find useful at this stage.

                                                                                                   Next Setion: PLANNING