By Paul Barnard

Keywords: environmental sustainability, values and behaviours, relationships, treatments, risk analysis, integral approach, survey instruments, strategic applications, leadership style, 360 degree views, community engagement, corporate governance, capacity, feedback loops, continuous improvement, triple bottom line, community ownership, interdependent reality, best practice, intrinsic motivation, aspirational excellence.

Abstract: This report supports a corporately driven continuous improvement program to evaluate the on-going effectiveness and implementation of an organization’s Environmental Management Strategy (EMS). The EMS is the principal strategy document that supports the triple bottom line approach of orientating businesses to best practice and sustainable environmental, social and economic values and outcomes. In its own right it is a comprehensive analysis and plan to address existing environmental challenges and is supported by a team of specialists within the organisation. The report chronicles the development and relative success of past strategies, the incorporation of community feedback and the merits of adopting an international auditing standard for environmental issues. By far, the most revealing integral aspect is the ‘health systems check’ that deals with the current competency and capacity to deliver the EMS, based on the intention, behaviours, cultural mindset and shared actions and systems in place. A significant component of the enquiry methodology and report presentation are based on the AQAL four- quadrant approach to enable the issues to be reflected in their complex and interdependent reality, encouraging the development of more sophisticated strategies and remedial treatments. The EMS is only effective when the people (internal and external stakeholders) develop positive relationships and transparent and accountable processes to implement the actions from the high level strategy. A visual integral presentation of the results powerfully displays opportunities for improvement. The results reflect the importance of paying attention to all four quadrants as they arise. Management has comprehensive, reliable data and an effective tool to engage everyone in a positive dialogue for the best way forward. [Co-Director’s note: This piece addresses the quadrants aspect of Integral Theory. – Barrett]