Framework

Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development

Created and refined over 35 years by an international group of researchers and leaders in public and private sectors.

FSSD is a robust framework designed for strategic planning and decision-making towards goals modelled to be attractive as well as truly sustainable, applicable to all types of organizations. It integrates rigorous scientific knowledge of sustainable development with a proven planning method to drive transformative change.

FSSD has been embraced by organizations globally, demonstrating its effectiveness in uniting diverse stakeholders through an efficient and creative planning process.

This framework equips organizations and stakeholders with a shared perspective and language, defining sustainability at a robust principled (re)design level. The principles are created as generic boundary conditions for (re)design of any goal regardless activities and scale. Any goal within the boundary conditions is scalable at the global level, any goal outside is not! This empowers organizations, or any topic, to devise optimal strategies for addressing current challenges and strategically, with better ROI from upfront, sustain their respective transitions.

The FSSDs Operative System comprises the following main components:

  • The funnel as a metaphor to explain the self-benefit of systemic, systematic and strategic change.
  • The eight boundary conditions for sustainable (re)design of goals, at the opening of the Funnel.
  • The ABCD strategic planning process towards such goals.
  • This Operative System ‘ABCD-in-Funnel’, is generic to create cohesion and increased value between all the ‘App’s’ out there, e.g. UN SDGs, Planetary Boundaries, Circular Economy, Footprinting, Science based targets and so on. There is only one such Operative system, designed for planning, monitoring, communication and choice of App’s.

“Unsustainability means systematically destroying the system ‘Civilisation in Nature’.”

Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Founder of FSSD and Professor of Strategic Sustainable Development at Blekinge Institute of Technology

The Funnel

Opening of the funnel to a more sustainable development.

While the past century has brought extraordinary improvements in health and material well-being to many people, the side effect of our progress has been the destruction of nature and social systems, often far away from where the benefits are enjoyed.

Life-sustaining natural resources, such as productive ecosystems, and clean air, water, and soils, are subject to systematically increasing deterioration at the global scale. At the same time, trust between people, and between people and their public institutions, is eroding, at a time when we need trust to cooperate for a sustainable world, more than ever. When trust is eroded in society, as is currently happening in many parts of the world, we get higher occurrance of corruption, segregation, criminality and even armed conflicts. This severly undermines the capacity of all parts of society to meet our needs, including the capacity to adress the ecological challenges we face.

It’s as if our civilization is moving deeper into a funnel whose narrowing walls symbolize that there is less and less room to maneuver. Here follows the inevitable consequence and business case from the funnel, seen through the eyes of any organization: if you gradually transform the organization towards the opening of the funnel, rather than to its walls, this is a winning strategy regardless what other organizations are up to. What will resources cost as we keep loosing them? What will happen to insurance costs and waste management costs if you are, relatively your competitors, a large part of the problem? And what will happen to your opportunity costs, as markets will inevitably evolve, innovatively, to help people live decent lives further ahead in the funnel? Is it a good or a bad idea to learn how to provide real value to markets at lower and lower resource demands?

The strategic conclusion from this is clear: it is a winning strategy to lead the way towards sustainability at the opening of the funnel. Not too fast in order to assure enough return on investments in time. And not too slow to avoid losing market opportunities to competitors. Just surfing ahead of the game, at the cutting edge, is the winning strategy. To do this, you need to know how to define sustainable development.

The Eight Sustainable Principles

Environmental

In the sustainable society, Nature is not subject to systematically increasing:

  1. Concentrations of substances from the Earth’s crust (bedrock). For example from fossil coal, oil and metals.
  2. Concentrations of substances from society’s production. For example, nitrogen oxides, brominated flame retardants and hormone-like chemicals.
  3. Degradation in a physical way. For example, overharvesting of forests, overfishing, and urban sprawl.

Social

…and people are not subject to structural barriers to:

  1. Health. For example, through dangerous working conditions or insufficient rest from work.
  2. Influence. For example, by suppressing freedom of expression or neglecting opinions.
  3. Competence. For example, through obstacles to education or insufficient opportunities for personal development.
  4. Impartiality. For example through discrimination or unfair selection for positions or through not considering future generations.
  5. Meaning. For example, through the suppression of culture or obstacles to the co-creation of meaningful conditions.

Backcasting from the Principles

Four step guiding process for systematic thinking

The FSSD includes a planning approach called “Backcasting from principles”. Backcasting is a methodology for planning that involves starting from an imagined successful outcome in the future, and then linking today with that successful outcome in a strategic way: “what shall we do today, and further ahead, to get there”?

The four-step “A-B-C-D” process provides a systematic way of guiding this process.

Although the process is described in terms of an organization, it can be applied at many different levels, from single projects to a nation. It can also be applied to product and process design.

A. Awareness and Visioning: A shared understanding of what sustainable development is, as well as the business case thereof, fundamental when starting to analyse, plan, innovate and co-create a Vision of success. You simply need to know where you want to go in order to get there. The Principles are equipped with instructions for how to model any Vision/Mission of success within the boundary conditions for sustainability while fulfilling the core purpose of the organisation.

It is better to engage large parts of the organization in this process in order to make a shift of mindset to get as many as possible involved. Through a shared understanding, it becomes possible for an organization to become a truly learning organization, where different departments and sectors can draw much more effectively from their respective fields of expertise and thereby discovering synergies and finding innovative cross-sector solutions. People who are part of such co-creation also “own” the process, meaning that decided things have a tendency to get done.

B. Baseline: The next step is to make an assessment of today, first by looking at all policies, goal-descriptions, level of sustainability competence, current flows and practices to identify the gap between today and the envisioned future. Assessing today also includes consideration of all assets and strengths that are in place to deal with the problems, as well as various concepts for decision support and communication the organization likes to use.

C. Creative Solutions: Possible solutions and innovations for the future are generated and listed in creative brainstorming sessions.

D. Decide on priorities: Priorities amongst the proposed solutions and innovations are made, and smart early moves and concrete programs for change are developed. Innovative possible actions are prioritized by screening them through the following three questions:

  • Does it move us in the right direction with regards to the envisioned future and the eight Principles?
  • Is it a flexible platform, i.e. serving as a stepping stone toward future improvements by serving as a platform from which more ideas from the C list can be launched?
  • Does it provide an adequate return on investment to seed future investments?

ABCD Method in the Funnel

Creating a funnel of declining resource potential for a successful civilisation with successful organizations.

The framework’s Operative system ‘ABCD in the Funnel’ helps putting any organization into this funnel of systematic decline to, through ABCD processes, systematically become part of the solution while getting better returns on all resources. From upfront, and because of this.

Attractive futures are modelled within generic boundary conditions, shown and symbolized by the small circles in the figure.

Analyzing, planning, monitoring and communicating this way creates cohesion and helps increasing the value of all methods, regulations and laws out there – UN SDGs, Circular Economy, Foot printing, ISO14001 and so on. This happens in a very intuitive way indeed. Once an organization has created an A, B, C and D assessment, it can cross-read this plan against any “App” it likes, to see if this brings anything more to the table. Perhaps by pointing at things that are forgotten and could be added to the ABCD assessment.

 

A. Attractive organizational goals. Modelled within boundary conditions.

B. Current assets and challenges in relation to goals.

C. List of optional measures and investments to reach goals.

D. Priorities of optional measures, into a stepwise plan.