Welcome to the latest update of what's new at Natural Logic.

What we do | Latest News | Featured Offerings | Talking the walk
Recent publications | Allies | Staying in touch

Two questions

Did you know: the productive output of the US economy is only 6% of the material that flows through it? (Call me for the source of that staggering number.)

Do you know: the percentage of product and "non-product" for YOUR company? (Do your shareholders know?) Do you know what to do about it?

We can help. Read on.

Natural Logic helps companies and communities prosper -- by embedding the laws of nature at the heart of enterprise. Our tools and advisory services propel our clients to build profit, competitive advantage and quality of life through exceptional environmental performance.

Our playbook: nature's four billion year experience developing efficient, adaptive, resilient, sustainable systems. After all, why reinvent the wheel, when the R&D has already been done?

Our promise: Sustainable performance you can take to the bank.™

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Latest News

Common Wealth! CEO Gil Friend will speak on "Risk, Fiduciary Responsibility, and the Laws of Nature" at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club April 6. This will be a provocative evening, looking at "the state of 'sustainability'" and why Boards of Directors, CEOs, and CFOs -- not environmentalists -- should be leading the sustainability revolution. Please join us if you'll be in the area -- and please feel free to invite your colleagues.

The Sustainable Business Rating System, sponsored by StopWaste.org, begins its stakeholder dialog process next month. Building on the best features of both GRI and LEED, the SBRS responds to the growing interest from companies and public authorities to not only purchase "green" products, but to purchase them from "sustainable" companies. The question then becomes "How do you know?" That's what we're attempting to answer, in a rigorous, replicable and scalable way. For background, see Sustainable Business -- A Vision Statement.

CSR reporting: Working in cooperation with SustainAbility -- which periodically ranks the quality of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports -- Natural Logic asked how the leading reporters compare with the leading performers. Is quality of reporting an indicator of better management and performance, or of communications resources? We analyzed the companies in one key sector, and found that the answer is: Not necessarily.

CSR Reporting Survey: Late last year, we conducted a survey of corporate environmental and social responsibility reporting, in conjunction with our friends at GreenBiz.com. We've analyzed the results, and will post them soon at GreenBiz.com and NatLogic.com.

Regional Metabolism: Together with our colleagues at EeCom, we've just completed a regional metabolism assessment (RMA) of Albuquerque, NM. This analysis -- using the same value-based approach that underlies our Business Metabolics key performance indicator system -- discloses key trends, risks and opportunities for regional economic development. The Albuquerque report hasn't been released to the public yet, but you can read about our methodology, and download our RMA for ten Virginia counties -- the first ever in the US, as far as we know -- here.

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Featured Offerings

Natural Logic's key services and tools focus on helping our clients set compelling goals, implement them, measure progress, and generate continuous improvement.

We say: It's time to shift your sustainability initiatives from noble, but peripheral, activities to significant, and profitable, strategic business drivers. And it's time to transform your CSR report from -- let's face it -- a very expensive press release into a powerful management tool that helps your people think smarter, communicate better and coordinate more effectively.

An effective program will have multiple components, including assessing your present state, designing your prefered state, and implementing the systems that can get you from here to there -- quickly, effectively, and economically. You'll need to address them all, individually or in combination, with our assistance or on your own. But fortunately, you can enter this opportunity at any of these starting points, as appropriate to your situation and needs.

The challenge of 'sufficient' goals. How does your organization set its sustainability goals? Are they sufficient to the challenge -- and the opportunities -- at hand? Do they communicate powerfully to the world, provide sufficient clarity and challenge to your work forces and supply chains, and sustain the cultural DNA that influences the company as much as any boatload of management systems and directives?

Just how good are your metrics? Do your CSR performance metrics do the job? Do they communicate well, present your performance meaningfully -- and in context -- tell story you want to tell? Do they leave out important information, or even mislead the reader? Our experience in performance analysis, management cybernetics, and information useability can help you evaluate strengths and weaknesses, and chart a course to improvement.

The Measures That Matter™. This hands-on workshop brings together your cross-functional team (and, ideally, external stakeholders) to map, prioritize and select key performance indicators that are relevant, meaningful and actionable (which certainly should include these, but what else?) and to map out a data management process that can actually work -- whether or not you decide to use our tools to implement.

Managing The Data Morass. If you're a CSR reporter, you know the pain -- and the expense -- of data collection, management, and analysis. Want to reduce that pain? Ask us to evaluate your information systems, and engineer a streamlined process for gathering and managing your CSR data. You can use our design to develop your own solution, or engage us to implement it for you, using Business Metabolics.

Business Metabolics™. Our web-based key performance indicators (KPI) system will significantly reduce cost, delays and errors in gathering and managing data for your company's CSR report -- and will deliver live, interactive KPIs to any users you designate. Please call for details, and to arrange a live demo for your key decision makers. (If you represent a consulting firm, and would like to make our tools available to your clients, please ask about our Channel Partner program.)

Product? or NonProduct? Your company's "product to non-product ratio" should always be one of your key sustainability indicators, yet few companies even know what theirs is. We can help you determine the ratio for your company and facilities, compare performance between your facilities and across your industry, and use that comparison to drive profit discovery and drive continuous improvement, from the ground up.

Cooperative Benchmarking. All too often, performance improvement is bottlenecked by managers who say, in all sincerity, "We're doing as well as can be done." One of the best remedies we've found for that ailment: side-by-side performance comparison -- between faiclities within a company, companies in an industry association, or participants in a state or city level "performance track" or pollution prevention program -- that lets people see their performance along their peers. Because, as Kenneth Boulding said, "Existence is proof of the possible."

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Talking the walk

We've had a busy year on the speaking circuit, and this year is heating up. Keynote addresses in late 2004 included SRI in the Rockies, Coop America Business Network, Profitable Sustainability, Society of Organization Learning (including a pre-conference 'metrics' workshop), focusing on "The State of 'Sustainability'".

Recent publications:

Recent topics of New Bottom Line -- my monthly perspectives on business and environment -- have included:
• Risk, CFOs, and the Sustainability Business Case
• The long and the short of it
• It Began With a Dot: Product Regulation and Future Markets
• More on the Cost of Green: Why Green Building is Good Business
• CSR reporting and company performance: How closely are they correlated?

NBL is distributed by opt-in email subscription; subscribe here, or read it on line on the Natural Logic web site or at greenbiz.com. I also write a biweekly artcle for the "Sustainability Sundays" section of the outstanding WorldChanging.com web site. You'll find shorter and more frequent musings on my weblog. And watch for news of my forthcoming book!

Allies

Barua, Blok & Company provides rigorous financial and valuation analysis to manage economic risks and opportunities connected with sustainability initiatives.

Both financial methodologies tie in strongly to the physical world indicators tracked by Business Metabolics, and help companies more directly see -- and manage -- the linkages between environmental and economic performance.

Working with ally Technology Forecasters, which provides in depth benchmarking services and outsourcing expertise, and our friends at GoodByeChain, who provide the WEEEnet supply chain management software, we are helping companies get out ahead of the European Union's WEEE/RoHS directive -- profitably. See my recent article in Electronic Business: "Executives don't want regulators to lead their business around by the nose. Those who understand what's driving the EU directives could have seen WEEE/RoHS coming" -- and used them to their advantage.

Shareholder Value: This workshop -- designed specifically for CFOs and financial analysts -- assesses the impacts and prospects of sustainability strategies on shareholder value in selected industries. It's offered in collaboration with Natural Logic allies Technology Forecasters and Barua, Blok; please call for details.

Coming soon: Green Tags.

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Staying in touch

Please contact us at any time -- to share your experience and your challenges, or to explore how we can serve your company or community. (+1-510-248-4940, or "info at natlogic dot com")

We can respond to you fastest when you provide a descriptive subject line in your emails; but try the phone if our email response isn't fast enough.