My implicit understanding of sustainability aligns with the organisational practice of growing more resilient over time. This is extraordinarily difficult – both conceptually and practically. We have broadly been doing the opposite for a long time, and are starting to pay the bill. Nonetheless…

I’ve been tinkering with this 5A framework for several years now. It is genuinly starting to support to my sustainability integration work, which is primarily as a thinking partner with listed companies. When I work, I have this framework and the more detailed cheatsheet (see below) in the back of my mind. When I share it, people seem to find it useful too.

Yip – no numbers and no arrows. It does not promise three simple steps to anything or anywhere. Every organisation already addresses these elements – to some degree – whether consciously or not.

We start at what appears to be the most useful place (which could be anywhere); we often work on several things in tandem; our destination becomes clearer along the way and depends on how we make sense of things. Despite the messiness, it is invariably useful to position our effort on this framework. For example:

• The Exco is suddenly aware that ESG ratings are falling behind those of your peers: focus on Account, while tracking the other areas.
• Sustainability integration is gaining traction, but there are hundreds of projects on the go and people are feeling overwhelmed: can you Align things a little better?
• You’ve ticked the reasonable boxes and know intuitively it’s not enough: find funding to Accelerate your effort with safe-to-fail explorations.

Here’s the more detailed cheatsheet which provides guidelines on how to approach each of these elements within your organisation.

Positioning sustainability as a movement towards resilience will sooner or later confront us with polarities: including the need to change and remain stable at the same time. This is possible; how we do it depends on context. That’s why I gave up consulting in favour of flexible thinking partnerships.

The 5A framework is informed by the Cynefin Framework and other insights from Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Co.

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