Doing Business on a Sick Planet

Most of us in business carry on with the daily tasks of running our business without too much thought for the longer-term future. We don’t think about the effect our business has on our surroundings or the impact of our surroundings on our business.

But the planet we live on and do business on is sick. Although we don’t need to look too far to recognise this, we still don’t factor it into our business decision-making either in the short or long-term.

Here in the UK, our weather is becoming more extreme but we’re fortunate that we rarely experience hurricane force winds or torrential, tropical-scale downpours. We’re seeing more episodes of stronger and more damaging winds, heavier rainfall leading to more frequent flooding, prolonged dry periods and more damaging heat. But it’s only when we or our business premises are affected by these events, that we factor them into our decision making.

At Foggy Outline, we’re trying to address this. We’ve put together a new on-line learning course called “Doing Business on a Sick Planet”. As the multiple environmental and social crises continue to escalate, we need fundamentally to change the way we do business. This is to reduce the harm we’re causing but also to make our businesses more resilient and able to cope with the mounting crises.

However, before we can do anything about the harm we’re doing to the earth through our businesses, we need to understand what we mean by “the environment”. You probably have an idea, but could you explain it to a business audience, to your work colleagues, or to family members? To introduce you to “Doing Business on a Sick Planet” and to help you understand the importance of our surroundings on everything we do, we’ve put together a short introductory video. This explains what we mean by “the environment” and how it relates to the things we do in our businesses and in our lives.

“Doing Business on a Sick Planet: 9 reasons why you should think about the environment when making business decisions” will be available soon. In the meantime, if you’re interested in finding out more about this and would like to see how we present our courses, have a look at our taster video where we make it clear what we mean by “the environment”.