What is the Future-Fit Business Benchmark? A Roadmap for Sustainable Business

If you’ve been working in sustainability for a while, you’ll know that we need a massive economic shift if we are to meet our current needs – while also living within the bounds of nature. Our current socio-economic model of constant expansion will eventually fall apart. We need a systemic transformation. Yet how do we, especially as individuals, create such systemic change? 

After 13 years in international investment banking and 7 years in social impact investment, I was wondering the same thing. These experiences led me to realize the need for a standardized global mechanism for understanding the total impact – both good and bad – of any investment portfolio on society and the planet, to help investors make better and more informed decisions. Shortly after this, I co-founded a non-profit to address this challenge, and I recently shared with the ISSP community why we created the Future-Fit Business Benchmark.

What sets this benchmark apart

Let’s explore three viewpoints that differentiate this Benchmark from the mainstream:

• Positive actions in one place don’t offset negative impacts in other places. Real impact comes when businesses take a holistic approach—looking at how their operations influence society and the environment as a whole.

• We must go beyond the familiar “do no harm” approach to a more proactive stance. This perspective, combined with the system science that we built on, inspired these 8 properties of a business that helps our world flourish. The vision here is that businesses actively work to regenerate and restore.

• Change doesn’t happen overnight, and organizational roadmaps should reflect this. That’s why Future-Fit developed its suite of Break-Even Goals, which identify what a company must do to eliminate causing harm. A business can take these Goals a step at a time to help create a strategic roadmap for long-term business transformation. They are all mapped to U.N. Sustainable Development Goals as well. Of course, whilst seeking to eliminate any harm a business should also be seeking to create positive impact, for which we created a complementary set of Positive Pursuits.

CASE STUDIES

Now that we’ve covered the basics, I’d love to share how real-world organizations are meeting their sustainability goals by integrating Future-Fit thinking into everyday business strategy.

In the case of Viessmann Climate Solutions in Germany, they used the Future-Fit methodology to create a sustainability strategy that is truly remarkable – download the full report here. The Break-Even Goals were used to create a materiality risk map which fed into the development of the strategy’s core pillars, aims and objectives. The result is an integrated business strategy with a clear, long term destination, rather than one focused simply on temporary solutions.

Out of New Zealand, Tourism Holdings Ltd (see: annual integrated report) is working in a potentially difficult industry, where their key service – Recreational Vehicle rentals – involves large fleets of diesel or gas/petrol vehicles that drive long distances. They recognized however that their business relies on the beauty of nature, the conservation of which is essential for their own long-term viability, as well as for all life more generally. The senior leadership of THL embedded a Future-Fit vision into the heart of the organization, drawing in teams from across of the business and enabling accurate data collection to allow the tracking of progress over time.

How to get involved

If you would like to follow these organizations’ example, there are many opportunities. Firstly, the Future-Fit Business Benchmark is open-source and readily accessible online for anyone to utilize. We also provide a suite of open-source tools to help you get started on your journey. If you want to connect with others on this journey, consider any of the options below:

• Join the Future-Fit Changemaker Community, a free space for discussions, tools, webinars, methodology updates, and more
• Become an Accredited Advisor and gain official accreditation as a consultant specializing in the Future-Fit framework
• Join the System Changer program, a 3-step process to help organizations learn and embed Future-Fit thinking more deeply into their business strategy

As you can see, there are multiple paths to make an impact with your career. Yet they all start with one step: aligning business with the future we want to build.

Want to watch the 1-hour recording of this webinar? It’s available to ISSP members here.

 Meet the author: Martin Rich’s career started in international investment banking, where he worked for JP Morgan, HSBC, and UBS. He then transitioned into social impact investment at Social Finance Ltd. These experiences led him to realize the need for a standardized global mechanism for understanding the total impact of any investment portfolio on society and the planet. After a surprise conversation about this with a stranger in a coffee queue, he quit his well-paid job and co-founded a non-profit to create the solution… Future-Fit Foundation.