There are several important questions with regard to using design to improve sustainability in organizations. The first is how does one take a large-scale ecosystem perspective to design while also maintaining a more detailed, linear value chain perspective. The second is what role does the customer journey and experience play regarding these two perspectives especially in large systems. This post looks at both of these.
The issue is simpler when dealing with a more limited enterprise. At this smaller scale as I have seen in the case of arriving at improvements in the provision of healthcare services, the customer journey seems to follow along the value chain while at the same time pushing out for needed support to the larger ecosystem. In considering how a clinic can improve the customer experience to the patient and his or her family, one can assemble all of the participants and stakeholders in a room and engage in the process of design of improved services. The vehicle of an Innovation Lab or a Decision Accelerator often work to accomplish this.
This becomes more of a challenge when one is looking at a value chain that crosses an entire business or industry and which involves issues of sustainability.
One difficulty is that the customer journey is no longer there as a guide. It seems like it is the customer journey, because it is so human, that opens up the ecosystem for consideration. When one is looking at the production of goods in the case of a traditional value chain, one follows the product through the value chain rather than the customer. Even in this case, there are occasions for reaching out into the ecosystem. However, the ecosystem stakeholders are no longer "ma and pa" but rather large community or regional segments.
Disposing of hazardous materials improperly impacts an entire community and downstream residents. Putting CO2 into the atmosphere impacts the global community. It is much more difficult to get all of these people into a room and into a decision making process. The Paris Climate Change Accord and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are examples that this is ultimately possible. It is then up to the owners of individual value chains to make the connections. See: Blueprint for Business Leadership on the SDGS.
It is far more manageable though still challenging to work with the specific value chain in terms of doing an energy or environmental audit to improve sustainability. One can look at how resources are used, how waste is produced and disposed of. One can assess this against an independent standard or a global environmental sustainability standard. Where does the actual use deviate from the standard and how can this be improved upon?
One can also assess this against the ideal standard shared with me by Zib Ellison from Blu Skye Sustainability Consultants which is that the use "should never take value, should add value or at least be neutral."
Zib also pointed out that there are difficulties in getting too far down into the weeds analyzing a value chain. One should look at the gestalt of the overall process. Is this a process that is not providing safe working conditions? Is this a process that is creating avoidable hazardous waste? There is likely a sweet spot where one looks at enough details to support finding remedies while working at a higher level of leverage.
Having a conceptual framework can be helpful here. In his HBR article, The Collaborative Imperative, Zib breaks down the picture into two aspects which I find helpful. One is the operational-process aspect which I call improving the value chain. This acts to "reduce resource consumption and waste and protect natural resources." The other, Zib calls "coordinated outcomes" which I see as the intervention into the larger environment. It is here that one can deal with the larger stakeholder community and the ecosystem through such initiatives as creating standardized metrics.
One example of the later is the case set out in the HBR article dealing with the Latin American Water Funds Partnership. This Partnership is an aggregation of 32 local funds totaling $27 million in a number of Latin American countries. The goal of this partnership is to "ensure both the quality and quantity of ecosystem services and reduce the need for expensive mitigation efforts in the future." This large scale ecosystem intervention does in turn impact the value chains of specific businesses while improving water quality in the ecosystem.
There is a role for the customer journey in this larger picture though it is still in the future. I think of it as deconstructing a soda bottle. The soda bottle sits in front of me at a restaurant. To factor in the customer journey when looking at this bottle, I need to start visualizing all of the steps in the process involved in the life cycle of this bottle. I need to see the source of the glass, the energy expended in making it, the chemicals used, the human workers involved and their working conditions, the waste along the way as well as what happens to the bottle once it leaves my table. This becomes my customer journey.
Though the impact of this one bottle is miniscule, I need this translated into numbers that are meaningful in terms of the overall impact on the commons, the environment and the community to which I am connected. Then I need to ask myself whether I am happy about the deal I have made in purchasing the use of this bottle. Is this bottle improving my customer experience?
I appreciate that this kind of customer journey is far less hands-on than the improvement of an individual healthcare clinic. One could map the narrative of this bottle and its environmental attributes back onto its value chain. This exercise may be more a motivator than anything else. The actions to produce the data which I hopefully can see at my tableside hologram of the life cycle of a soda bottle do act to engage stakeholders along the way and support utilizing metrics in the service of making improvements.
The exploration of this overall issue continues.
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