If continous improvement for organizations is important for growth and competitive advantage, then what about people. Especially people in the growing area of Sustainability, it is important to continously learn and keep up to date with the latest thinking. This needs to be supplemented by ongoing action at the work level.

Emma Clarke writes about this need for purchasing and supply chain professionals, however, the ideas can be used by anybody.

Professor Richard Lamming…claims that if senior purchasers want to drive change, instead of simply achieving best practice, they must take a more rigorous approach to continuing professional development. “Most development comes from consultants,” he says. “But wouldn’t it be nice if companies could do it all for themselves?”

Personal development begins with reading, says Lamming. “You have to create space to read. There’s no substitute.”

In addition to SM, professionals can subscribe to CPO Agenda, the international business review aimed at chief procurement officers and senior purchasing and supply chain executives. Broader business titles include Harvard Business Review, a research-based magazine.

Academic articles can also be of use, adds Lamming. While many of them may not be written for a practitioner audience, readers could still find the kernel of the idea, particularly if they have a masters degree.

Another way of tapping into the output from academia is by getting involved in a local university’s research projects. “It doesn’t cost a penny to become a case study or to put a person on to a think tank,” says Lamming. “This will help put purchasers into contact with new areas.”

Senior purchasers should also recognise that they do not have to be the originator of all new thought, says Sutherland: “I have never had a good idea in my life,” he claims. “I have always been reliant on networking to find out what other people’s ideas were.”

And, for most, networking is the key.

Read the above article again replacing purchasing for ‘sustainability’ and it is ready for ‘us’.

There are some nice ideas in that article. For me personally, I have the following strategy.

When I took the decision to work in the Sustainability field, the first thing I did was to update myself with the work in that area and this was achieved mainly through academic courses and reading books.

I took the “environmental economics” course in my MBA which provided me with the basic principles used in the green world from the Stern Review to Carbon trading and Kyoto. This was supplemented by a practical self-study model in Environmental Accounting focussing the life cycle of products and the office environment. I added Project Management and Entrepreneurship to the mix to back up my experience with academic knowledge to start “green projects” in various types of organizations in the future.

Also, in all the courses I completed in the MBA (strategy, finance, leadership and change etc) I always concentrated on sustainability when trying to understand the concepts and figuring out a way to apply the knowledge.

A second supplement to the academic courses is books. I read the following books.

More on the way,

Adding to this principles and ideas, I am reading business strategy and sustainability books.

One source of book ideas was my personal interaction with Amory Hunter Lovins who provided me with her reading list for her MBA class. (thanks Amory Hunter!)

Supplementing this is general reading of news articles, academic articles, searching and news alerts through Google News, sustainability blogs etc.

My work provides with a platform to test some of the ideas and principles. However, it is a mighty challenge to say the least.

In the end, this blog is providing me an avenue to bring all of this together. It is providing a medium to synthesize by learning and opening up new avenues of knowledge.

The quest of sustainability is also the quest of personal improvement. Excellence in one area will lead to excellence in another. I have a long way to go but I believe I am on the right path.