Plan fundamentals
Sustainability requires ‘joined-up’ thinking and an understanding of interrelationships - for example between health, well-being, economy, climate, transport, food, pollution, community development and wealth inequality. To create and implement a good sustainability plan we need to work across silos of departments, industries, supply chains and stakeholders to ensure joined-up solutions.
OnePlanet makes it easy for you to create and implement joined-up plans, and to engage staff, customers and your supply chain in a coordinated way.
Each Action Plan is built around Outcomes, Actions and Indicators
First start by taking time to think about what you really want to achieve. Then build your plan using:
Outcomes – what you want to achieve
Actions – how you will achieve your Outcomes
Indicators – how you will track progress
Once you have created your plan you need to implement the plan and track your progress. OnePlanet has inbuilt monitoring and reporting functionality. Take a look at our Features tab to understand more about this.
Creating your Plan – inputting information
You will see that one of the key features of the platform is that you have three separate ways of working:
Mindmap view
Table view
Document view
These three views are completely interlinked and can be used in different ways. For example:
Mindmap View allows you to input and link up OAIs. This allows you to visualise and communicate the relationships between different Outcomes, Actions and Indicators.
Table View allows to you see all information in either a simple table or a Linked View (where you can see which Actions are contributing to which Outcomes). This View is good for managing Actions for example and it can be easier to upload some information in this View.
Document View is the best place to finesse your text and then Publish your Report to our Showcase webpage or download your report in PDF, Word or Excel. If you need to download all your information, this is where to do it.
When creating your Plan you can allocate any or all the OAIs to a One Planet Living Principle (or an SDG Goal if you are using a Pro account, or other framework ‘lens’ which you can purchase). You can use the One Planet Living framework to help structure your Plan. You don’t necesarily need an Outcome for each Principle but it will help you identify where there are gaps.
As you start to link up the OAIs you will begin to see how integrated or ‘joined-up’ your Plan is. You might notice that some Actions impact on many Outcomes, or that some Outcomes are a bit ‘disconnected’ from the rest of the plan. You might realise that some Outcomes or Actions are in conflict with each other. You might then see ways to change Actions or modify your Outcomes to more joined-up so you are not solving one problem by creating another. This will help you see how you can strengthen the plan by adapting, creating or even removing Actions so that Plan becomes more robust.
Mindmap view
Table view
Document view
Publishing your plan
You can publish your plan, which makes it public for anyone to see on oneplanet.com's Futuremakers/Published Plans section.
Simply click on the Publish Plan button on the plan's dashboard. Once you publish, it will be updated live on oneplanet.com.
In the Published Plans section, click on View on a company's card. Scroll down to see their Interactive Plan, if they have made it public.
Just as you can see your plan in Mindmap, external viewers will see your plan, are able to change lens and visualise the information you have added in the Additional Information section.
Some resources to help you with your Plan
Before launching into creating your plan you may want to review the resources that are available including:
We recommend that you take a collaborative and creative approach to creating your action plan. This may involve:
Reviewing plans and strategies you already have in place
Assessing your context, such as key issues at the global, regional and local scale that you need to respond to
Running a workshop with staff. This may include staff, clients, suppliers and other interested parties
A visioning session to identify what future you want to create.
This information and process is covered in Bioregional's One Planet Living® Action Plan training.
Creating your plan – getting started
Context analysis
The goal of the context analysis is to understand:
The full impact of your project or organisation, both positive and negative
How your organisation sits in the network of other projects and organisations – its ‘ecosystem’.
Impact
It is important to consider the full impact of the project or organisation, not just looking at the narrow area of the project where you have control.
To give some examples:
For the restaurant the largest negative impact may be the clients driving to the restaurant and the largest positive impact might be the ability to influence a change in diet.
For a building contractor the embodied carbon of the construction materials that you buy may have the largest negative impact
An insurance company may have the largest positive impact by influencing the behaviour of its customers.
Below lists some questions that may help your thinking.
Already doing
Some key things which come to mind which you are doing already – you can structure this against the One Planet Living Principles, the Sustainable Development Goals or another framework.
If you have performance data, for areas like; energy, water, waste etc. gather this information.
Needs
What are the key needs globally, regionally and locally
How we feel?
How do you feel about what you are doing?
Positive impacts
What do you think are the main positive social and environmental impacts of your organisation or project, now or in the future?
Negative impacts
What do you think are the main negative social and environmental impacts of your organisation or project, now or in the future?
Future trends
Brainstorm future trends
What trend will be important to your project over the next say 20 years. E.g. changing demographics, changes in wealth distribution, technological innovation, climate change, increasing urbanisation, resource scarcity, increasing interest in health and well-being, increasing need for transparency
Opportunities
Brainstorm opportunities
What are the global and local opportunities you think you can take advantage of? E.g. Does the low carbon economy or an ageing population offer opportunities for job creation in renewable energy or healthcare? Can a local traditional industry can become a tourist attraction? Are there local opportunities for wind power? Is there a local company or community group who might make good partners? The future trends you have identified might provide some opportunities.
Challenges
Brainstorm challenges
What are the global and local challenges your project might face? E.g. Global issues might be the global economy, or climate change; Local challenges might be local political issues or unsupportive regulations. The future trends you have identified might provide some challenges
Your ecosystem
Think through who are all your key stakeholders including:
Internal stakeholders – staff, board etc.
Your suppliers
Customers and clients
Governmental bodies
Key interest groups
You can begin to order your stakeholder, for example for suppliers you can identify:
The scale of the impact of their service – does it have a high or low impact on the environment
The scale of your influence – are you an important customer for them? Do you influence through other networks?
In this way you may identify a few stakeholders that it is worth engaging with to try and align your Outcomes.
Workshop
Once you have done your context analysis you can run a workshop with your key stakeholders. The aim of the workshop is to:
Creatively explore the vision for the organisation or project
Identify some specific Outcomes
Start to identify Actions and Indicators
While it may seem challenging to invite external stakeholders to a workshop – especially where they may not agree with you – co-creation of solutions can unlock many barriers.
Vision
Whichever metric you use to look at the state of planet Earth it is clear that the planet is unhealthy, and the situation is getting worse. So clearly what we are doing isn’t working, or to quote Einstein:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Therefore we need to thinking in new ways – and this requires a creative mindset.
As adults we often find the concept of creativity unnerving. If you ask a child to draw a picture or write a story – they’ll get started, if you ask an adult they are liable to look at you as though you are mad. Generally as adults we are more comfortable using the tools we use regularly, and probably the one we used most recently – which is why we need different tools, such as OnePlanet Mindmap, to help us think differently.
Fundamentals of a Plan
Each Plan is built around:
Outcomes – These are the goals that you want to achieve
Actions – The steps you are taking to achieve your Outcomes
Indicators – How you will track the progress of an Outcome or Action.
(Note: We have Plans called Ecosystem Plans which can be shared between departments and/or between organisations. These can have Outcomes and Indicators, but not Actions, as Ecosytem Plans are shared collectively and Actions need to owned by one specific department or organisation).
While Indicators can be used for tracking Outcomes and Actions. We also do not think you need an Indicator for all Outcomes and Actions. Often you can track progress via Stories – and this may be a more effective and engaging way of monitoring progress.
Thus Outcomes, Actions and Indicators, or ‘OAIs’, form the basis of Plans on OnePlanet.com.
Once you have created your Plan you need to implement the Plan and track your progress. OnePlanet has inbuilt monitoring and reporting functionality, and inherent within this is the ‘Story’ functionality - the ability to add an image with a caption (eg ‘Here is an image of Joe installing an energy efficient light bulb as part of our Zero Carbon campaign’). While sustainability can involve detailed analysis and monitoring, engaging people at an emotional level is also important to success, and Stories facilitate this.
Have any questions?
We here to help, please feel free to send us an email with any questions you may have!