I know this is a crazy post.

I know my blog has certainly helped me rise up. Other’s blogs have helped them rise up. I am going to an unconference that is going to focus on HR people who are interested in blogging. Someone may ask me if they should start a blog.

In the past, my answer was an unhesitant yes. Of course you should. Why shouldn’t you? The real question is how do we get you going and exposed as quickly as possible.

Now? My answer depends on a number of factors. In some cases though, my answer is going to be no.

What gives?

I haven’t soured on blogging nor do I believe the space is crowded. On the  contrary, I still think there is a lot of space out there for people to talk about business and talent. We’ve barely scratched the surface of possibilities. But I think there are also a lot of dead blogs out there and that sucks. It means someone put in a bunch of effort, got frustrated and left it behind.

That could have been prevented because while I don’t believe there is one way to blog, there are many ways to fail at blogging:

1. You aren’t passionate about the subject – You want to use your new blog as a tool to rise up but you aren’t passionate about the subject. Reverse course matey! Go back and find your passion and then blog about that.
2. You aren’t interested in improving your writing – Blogging has helped me improve my written communication skills immensely. Rarely do people come into blogging with that background. Are you willing to craft and recraft messages until you get used to it?
3. You can’t write on a consistent schedule – This is a big one. I say writing once a week is the necessity. That’s 52 posts a year. I’ve averaged two posts a week for over three years.  It honestly isn’t tough but if your schedule is rough and tumble, you’ll lose interest if you don’t post for a month.
4. You can’t do the other things that make your blog great – Keeping up on what other people are doing in the context of what you write is as important as what you write. Making comments, networking with fellow bloggers, and pushing stuff out to your network? That’s part of successful blogging.

So If You Don’t Do Blogging…

You can rise up in different ways. People have this tendency to assume that the path they take is the best path for everyone but that simply isn’t the case. Even with blogging. Now I believe that if you have those four traits, anyone can learn how to blog and do it very well. Seriously. Anyone.

There are other ways to rise up though:

• Through your company
• Speaking and volunteering through local associations
• Doing interesting things and getting press coverage
• Doing guest blog posts
• Using other social media tools effectively
• Start consulting and advising (even pro bono)

I am just scratching the surface here. My biggest point: don’t let anyone tell you that you have to blog. Should you have a findable, online profile? Absolutely. You can build that through any number of resources though that doesn’t involve a blog.

Almost a year ago, I reviewed what I considered to be the most entertaining career book on the market: How To Self-Destruct. I don’t know if anything will beat it in that department. Not only is it entertaining but it is also useful. Jason is also releasing a new book this month as well.

Jason is a generous but busy person and I know this first hand. So when I saw that he is giving away How To Self-Destruct, I knew I wanted to spread the word about it. Here’s the message from Jason:

General managers, HR VPs, training directors, event planners, team leaders, association coordinators, ambitious team members, and social chairpersons: I will send you a box of 38 real-life, hold-’em-in-your-hands copies of How to Self-Destruct—rounded corners, illustrations, red text, and all—at no charge. Give copies to your team members and watch them laugh their way to fearlessness, better decisions, and more collaboration. All of which means more dollars to the bottom line.

In other words: ZERO RISK, big potential upside.

Getting the books is super easy. You have 3 options:

Option #1: Find me at the Fail Spectacularly! party in Chicago on 11/4.

Option #2: Fill out this handy little form.

Option #3: Email me: jason@seidenleadership.com. (Include your phone number!)

Check out the post for more details but this is a pretty sweet deal. Get your hands on this book for free while it last (this Friday is the cutoff).

If you are in the Midwest, consider yourself lucky: I may be coming to a city near you! There will be content next week per normal but I will be driving a small rental car all over the Midwest while it automatically posts.

Here’s the agenda:

What am I thinking?

• I fly into Indianapolis Tuesday afternoon. I am planning on hitting some dinner with my buddy who lives there but I do have some flexibility.
• I drive up to Chicago Wednesday morning to go to Fail Spectacularly (yes, you can still RSVP and it is absolutely free). If you are in Chicago and you don’t have other plans, you should come and meet up. Seriously. I should have some time before hand too. (MeritBuilder is a sponsor of Fail Spectacularly)
• Thursday morning, I am driving over to Cincinnati (actually outside of Cincinnati) to go visit some family so I have some flexibility if you want to meet up. Those who can offer coffee will be given priority.
• Friday afternoon through late Saturday, I’ll be in Louisville for HRevolution. There are still tickets available. If you are close by, you should come. Especially if you are interested in the social media and future of HR parts of HR. Dustin, one of my cohorts at MeritBuilder, will be coming as well. Should be a blast!
• Sometime Saturday night, I will drive back up to Indy to grab a couple of winks and grab my early flight back home Sunday morning.
• How early? I get into Portland at 10:30am. I’ll probably be collapsing as soon as I get home.

It should be a blast. If you want to meet up, give me a shout out and we’ll try to work something out!

Editor’s Note – Today’s post is brought to you courtesy of Dustin Henderson, co-founder of MeritBuilder. Dustin went to HR Southwest conference last week to cover the show for us. You can follow him on Twitter. Thanks!

HR Southwest (the 2nd biggest HR show in the US) is over. I thought I would take a few moments and summarize my thoughts on the show. Luckily I tweeted most of the stuff that was on my mind because to be honest my memory is beginning to fail me. For the full twitter experience search twitter for #HRSW.

In hopes of making his recap a little more interesting I thought I would expand on some of my tweets. Unfortunately I could not fit it on to one post so you guys are stuck with a two-parter (see part one here).

79% of employees leave b/c poor trust and appreciation

Alice of GoToAlice.com quickly filled in for a canceled speaker. I almost turned and walked back out of the session – but she was at the door waving passers by into the room. I figured, if she was going to put that much effort into it, I should at least stay and listen to her. I am glad I did.

She was OUTSTANDING! Thanks Alice!

Until her session I was beginning to wonder if MeritBuilder would ever have an audience in HR but she affirmed what we at MB have been saying for a while. Relationships matter. Getting to know your staff matters. Trust matters. Appreciation matters.

Average employee talks to manager 2-5 times a day / m-gen text 80-200 times a day – who has more influence

This is one of those “m-gen” stats but it is an important one. I talked to several HR recruiters telling me about “helicopter parents.” Those parents who involve themselves in their 20-something child’s employment decisions. In some cases recruiters answered angry calls from parents wanting to know why their child had not gotten the job.

Bad ECONOMY or NOT, this generation is coming (BIG TIME). Are you ready? I think not, but don’t feel bad – no one is

Are lawyers what is wrong with what HR should really be trying to do? maximize the “human” resource

I attended a number of presentations by lawyers and I was once told, “If you want to go into business, DON’T ASK A LAWYER his opinion.” The primary role of a lawyer is to minimize your exposure to risk. Yet many believe their advice constitute how you should manage people. Please note – Law is the minimal not the optimal.

Understand the risks, accept them and then live your life. It is good to know that if you recognize an employee for a job well done then it might be hard to fire them later. That doesn’t mean you should not recognize employees, it just means recognize things that matter and document the crap out of it before you fire someone.

Change: most of what you fear never happens – it is made up to justify internal feelings about change – name the fear

There is a simple method for dispelling fear in life and organizations. Just name it! For example, when I started MeritBuilder there was the possibility that we would fail. That meant I would have to find a new job. If I could not find a new job, it would impact the family in a very negative way. Therefore I should stay where I am, right?

Wrong because if I was going to name the fear of failing with MeritBuilder, then I needed to name the fear of failing with my current employer. In my case, the impact of failure for my job or my new company was the same, but the new company had far greater upside.

Once you name the fear and weigh it against the alternatives, the fear tends to subside. Name your fear and push through the change.

Yesterday afternoon, I got on the phone with Dustin and we were talking about a partnership call we had coming up. The conversation transitioned into what tremendous untapped potential the HR and talent functions in organizations have and how exciting it is to just meet with people who understand that. How getting people together and pushing great HR ideas across industries is a powerful force.

In the past, I used to frequently have these conversations and then go back to regressive HR systems that took all the will in the world to just fight through on a daily basis. I imagine many of the readers that still possess that optimism are in the same boat too. Maybe they have them in places other than online (at meetings, in conversations during or after work). At the end of the day though, it becomes a stream of conversation or a pipe dream instead of reality.

I have the power to act now. I have an extremely supportive company that wants me to push the envelope when it comes to uncomfortable conversations about the future of HR and the future of the employee. It means I get to not only talk about great ideas but I get to help implement them in the real world. That’s so exciting to me.

Here’s what I realized though: I had the power to act all along. The problem was that those conversations were uncomfortable and sometimes seemingly impossible to fight. They were mine to fight though. Nobody else was going to do it for me. Only after failing spectacularly on several occasions did I finally realize that.

Now I realize this is my fight and that I have the power to act no matter the circumstances. I am happy to have a career opportunity that makes it easier but I know that won’t always be the case.

Are you ready to use your power? Do you know the name of your cause?

As many of you know, I went to Talent Camp last week and it was quite the experience. From getting to meet some of the great people to discussing some of the most important issues of the day to just spending some time out on the coast, it was a great experience to simply be a part of. I know people are dying to know some of the things we discussed and I wanted to share some of my key takeaways.

Did We Figure Out The Future of HR?

No. Figured I might as well get this shortcut out of the way. If that’s what you’re here looking for, you’re not going to be happy with the rest of this post. What we talked about are possibilities for the function.

The Idea of Freedom Versus Restriction

One of the things we talked about is the idea of freedom and tearing down barriers that make people work in less than ideal ways. Here’s the scenario:

You’ve got a workplace issue that you need to fix. Let’s say two departments aren’t speaking to each other as often as they should. What’s the first thought that goes through your head about how to fix it? You could create something that makes sure these departments get together on a weekly basis. That’s what I think initially.

What happens if you thought about the things that keep these people from naturally meeting and communicating? If, for example, the teams are in different buildings and they need to communicate more frequently, why not move them closer? Or if one team is being directly impacted by a business initiative that kills their available time, why not do more to reduce that responsibility or change expectations?

Freedom is a powerful mindset change and it is one that is often misunderstood as always being contrary to constraint. Sometimes constraint can be an extremely powerful tool of freedom. That’s a post in and of itself though.

The Talent Dynamic Shifting

For so long, that talent function in most organizations has assumed that being strategic meant making sure your plans fit with corporate needs. As an example, if the organization wanted to shift some functions to a different part of the country, the talent function is best served by a person who could tell you how to get it done right and efficiently.

The problem with that is that isn’t strategic at all. We’re coming into the conversation too late. If HR came into the conversation saying “We have key competencies elsewhere in our company that we can use to expand and one of our locations is close to a college that is one of the top ranked in this area as well.” that changes the dynamic completely. Speaking of which…

Building Your Business Around Talent

Let’s say you want to start a business. Where do you start it? How do you find the best people to run it?  I think that second question is going to start driving the first one. Rather than make the consideration solely based on where the entrepreneur is at or where the market is at, they are going to be building the business where their talent is at. With product delivery easier than ever, the major differentiation strategy will be pulling together those pieces from wherever they may be and making it happen.

As our economy and workforce continues to evolve, I think it will be more important than ever to think about this. Think about the business executives that will be retiring in five years. What happens if you could engage with them from their house in Florida on an ad hoc basis? It isn’t even a hypothetical anymore but it will become more of a business consideration as we work into the future.

Going Forward

These are just a couple of ideas that transpired through our conversations (I have pages and pages of notes and conversations in my head that I am still digesting). The cool thing of course is that these are only possibilities right now. There is a lot of work to be done to make these reality too.

As the conversation continues to evolve, I encourage people to get involved and opine on some of the ideas that get presented out.

Editor’s Note – Today’s post is brought to you courtesy of Dustin Henderson, co-founder of MeritBuilder. Dustin went to HR Southwest conference last week to cover the show for us. You can follow him on Twitter. Thanks!

HR Southwest (the 2nd biggest HR show in the US) is over. I thought I would take a few moments and summarize my thoughts on the show. Luckily I tweeted most of the stuff that was on my mind because to be honest my memory is beginning to fail me. For the full twitter experience search twitter for #HRSW.

In hopes of making his recap a little more interesting I thought I would expand on some of my tweets. Unfortunately I could not fit it on to one post so you guys are stuck with a two-parter (see part two here).

But first a quick word about our hosts:

HRSW was a very professionally produced show. The staff was very helpful and made sure we were well taken care of. The signage was outstanding (a small item that can make a show miserable if done incorrectly). Every event flowed nicely into the next and the keynote-speakers were outstanding. A special Kudos on the registration process – plenty of knowledgably attendants!

On to the twitter review:

Note to Exhibitors – Eye contact is required if you want to make me think you care.

I was talking to a guy at an employee incentive booth about MeritBuilder. The entire time we were talking he was literally looking over my shoulder. I get it – I am not that interesting of a guy, but do me the common courtesy of looking me in the eye.

Who knows, I may run across a client that might be a good fit for his service. I believe networking is about helping others as much as you (perhaps more). Do you think I will be sending any business his way?

HINT: This is a small space and there is no such thing as little people

Hotwire: Example of Great Customer Service

If you guys saw my tweet about Hotwire not offering a lot of deals for those going to HRSW, what you probably did not see was how Hotwire replied to me. They asked that I give Hotwire a try again soon and gave a shout out to those going to HRSW.

This is an outstanding example of great social media. It should make you feel closer to the company. We don’t deal at the corner store any more, but SM can make if seem like we do. Nice job Hotwire!

Social Media will amplify your culture, so make sure you have the culture right before you have the sales team download tweetdeck!

First Networking Event:

It was well attended and I had a great conversation with a person from Wes-Tex, a printing operation based in Texas. Someone commented about the volume of tables & seats and how that hindered quality networking. I disagree.

I like to get to know people. I know this is not an “efficient” use of a conference, but I take a real interest in people. Understanding them takes a little longer than 5 minutes and that requires a comfy chair. So, thanks for all the chairs and tables and thanks to the lady for Wes-Tex for the great conversation.

1st day Key Note – People want to be Known:

While there were a number of themes that could be pulled from Victoria Labalme’s energetic keynote speech, the one that stood out for me was: People want to be known. There was a great commercial from Monster.com a few years back where children talk about their future goals. Perhaps it is their honesty or the reality of their statements, but was pretty powerful.

People don’t want to be a number or an entry on your to do list. Some think the answer is to learn communication skills so they can act like they care. I would suggest that people just really learn to care. The first step to caring is KNOWING your people.

Shane Yourt: meetings are not “team time”… Meeting must advance business goals

Mr. Yourt was by far the most challenging speaker at the show. His views of the organization are so different from those of MeritBuilder that it was hard to listen to. Perhaps most annoying to me – he is correct on many levels.

Yourt suggests that one should care less about how the employee feels and that one should manage almost entirely through accountability. Yes you may hate “me” and your job – but did you get that thing I asked you to do – done – when I asked you to do it? While extremely efficient, it ignores the power that positive relationships play in employee engagement.

Summary:

Have you ever seen the Newton Balls on someone’s desk? They are those cool little balls in a line. You swing the end ball and the energy is transferred through the other balls pushing the final ball up into the air. That ball then comes back ands strikes the balls and the process starts over until the energy is depleted… Just keep that in mind.

The theme for the post above is caring. Your customers what to know you care (guy in the booth, networking, keynote & Shane). So, that is what you tell the sales guys. But, I think it works like those balls. Caring is something that starts at the top of the organization and works it way through until it burst out the other side. It is not something that will spontaneously start in the middle.

Editor’s Note – Today’s post is brought to you courtesy of Dustin Henderson, co-founder of MeritBuilder. Dustin went to HR Southwest conference last week to cover the show for us. You can follow him on Twitter. Thanks!

If the products found on the floor of HR Southwest are any indication, then the answer is a definitive yes. Between booths for lawyers and those who believe performance management involves issuing little notes every time an employee asks a question (you know who you are), there are plenty of products to help HR put up a great defense. Do the products offered reflect the feelings of HR practitioners?

I know the suspense is killing you so I will put you out of your misery: The answer is a clearly NO. Like teachers who don’t enter the teaching profession worried about the quickest approach to meeting state standards, HR folks truly want to help people!

In search of an answer to this apparent dichotomy I decided to stop talking to consultants and start talking to those practicing HR. If you separate those HR practitioners who were shooting for law school, but landed in HR – almost 100% of the respondents were in the business to help others. In many cases there was a clear willingness to self-sacrifice.

With each person, I asked “Why are you in HR.” After asking the same question and getting nothing but compassionate results, I knew there was something wrong. So I changed the question to “What does your CEO want from HR?” With the answers came the eureka moment.

The simple fact was that the CEO’s desires or expectations of HR are overriding those “empowered” to develop and execute the HR strategy.

The most engaged and excited HR execs were those who had a CEO who understood the true power of HR. Many told me of nightmare CEOs who relegated their contribution to the expense side of the balance sheet and as such something to be minimized. Most told me of poor support for their “touchy feely” approach to people.

Is your CEO playing defense? Here are some signs:

• Keeps the facts to himself
• Cut recognition and incentive budgets first
• Culture is a four-letter word
• Engagement is measured by the P&L
• Seeks to be a “competitive” employer

If this were just another post pointing out the obvious challenges faced by HR, then I would not waste my time writing it. Instead, I want to take a moment to suggest a solution. The following recommendations assume that you cannot fire your CEO.

How to get your CEO playing offense:

Stop it: Whatever you have been doing, stop doing it. Reevaluate everything because the messages you have been sending your CEO is not working. Learning to sing the same old messages in the perfect key will not change the outcome.

Shut Up: If you cannot prove it, shut up. You are not doing your cause any good.

Learn the Language: It is a bit of a bummer but your CEO is not going to learn the language of HR. He or she is much more concerned with keeping shareholders happy or making payroll. And to be honest, those concerns are more important than yours. So learn how to express your concerns in a language your CEO understands.

Step Out: Stop attending HR conferences that just reinforce what you already know. Start reading trade magazines that pertain to your company’s industry. While you are expected to know HR, you are a real asset when you can apply that knowledge to your company’s unique situation.

Find your own Facts: Stop looking for support to hire a HR consultant or to do a 20K employee engagement evaluation. Go onto the web, do the research. Figure out the questions to ask and then hop over to surveymonkey.com and do your own survey. While this will not be 100% scientific, it will give you a baseline fast!

Communicate Only Value: There was a newspaper man credited with the saying “Don’t burry the lead.” When you talk about anything start with the value to the CEO. How will this idea help him make shareholders happy or how will it help make payroll. If you cannot support your idea with hard numbers, skip it (see shut up). If you are RIGHT, then there will be hard numbers. Go find them and put them on the first slide.

Don’t Stop Believing: If you believe that treating people with dignity is important, that honesty tends to be the best policy, that engagement is more about passion than it is about satisfaction and that people really are your competitive differentiator, FIGHT FOR IT.

If you are an HR exec and in the business to help people, you must figure out the best strategy to achieve that goal. Your CEO sucks  is not an acceptable excuse. You must figure out how to use what you have. The interesting thing is, if you are successful then it might not just be the people you help, but the entire company.

Offense is defined as “the means or method of attacking or of attempting to score.” Figure out the correct means and method and you will score. In doing so, you will transform your HR mantra to “Offense is the Best Offense.”

A Golf Story

I love and hate playing the game of golf. There is something inherently peaceful about walking around a carefully landscaped course and there is something inherently vengeful and ridiculous about trying to get a small white ball into a cup 300 yards away. When I lived a bit closer to my dad, we’d play quite a bit in the season.

Now there is something in golf called a mulligan. After you take a terrible shot, you are told to take your mulligan and try again. With the pressure off and the mistake made, I’ve typically done considerably better after my mulligans. I remember one memorable shot as I was lined up to go over the water hazard and on to the green. I lined up, took my shot, topped the ball and it rolled into the pond. I went down to the pond, grabbed my ball, took it back to the spot and shot again, this time hitting the downhill side of the green several yards away from the hole.

A Work Story

I believe HR is in a tough place and in need of innovation and reinvention. I also know that change doesn’t come from people who talk about it but from people who execute and initiate. And when you have ingrained systems with a stake in keeping the status quo, execution is the most difficult thing in the world. Think I am joking? Just ask President Obama (or, if your politics prefer, President Reagan).

HR’s situation is the same. We’ve progressed down a path decreased relevance and stature in organizations. The people who worked the staffing functions in the olden days would be ashamed at some of the disconnects between HR and the organization. The need for change is bigger than ever but the ability to change is seen as less possible due to those ingrained systems driving organizations today.

What Does That Mean?

HR needs a mulligan. Or we need to at least explore the possibility of what we would do if we had a mulligan. That’s what Talent Camp (being organized by the great Susan Burns) is all about. A dozen or so diverse minds coming together to tackle that question. We’ve got practitioners, recruiters, consultants and technologists all thinking about these issues. For a couple of days, we are going to focus on thinking about it and brainstorming frameworks, solutions and answering bigger questions than we can do ourselves.

The Challenge For Me

I consider this a personal development exercise for myself and I’ve rarely done much personal development in the past five years. For me, doing this blog, talking to people about talent and technology and going to conferences? That’s the easy part. Being deeply introspective, strategic and thoughtful about future direction? That’s still something I am working on making a more natural part of my daily routine.

The Challenge For Us

I really envision this process to produce action. Whether that means a written manifesto, framework, specific action points or bringing other key influencers to the table, I am game. If we can be renewed and changed in our processes and our actions going forward, that would be a big step in the right direction too. Here are a couple great posts on the subject from attendees:

• Talent Camp and the BIG “What If?” by Susan Burns
• The Future of HR, Susan Burns and Talent Camp by Jeff Hunter
• #talentcamp by Steve Fogarty

Let me also just say that, very selfishly I might add, I really like that this is showcasing some of the great Northwest talent professionals. We so rarely get events out this direction (and a lack of Fortune 100 companies certainly doesn’t help) so this is a nice change of pace.

Looking forward to exploring this camp and the ideas that come out of it on this blog in the coming weeks!

Note: Today is Blog Action Day and we’ve been encouraged to talk about Climate Change. Yes, I realize the irony between having “blog” and “action day” in the same statement. Here’s my take anyway.

This week, I’ve talked about my skepticism about green jobs (without the supporting training), about exploiting a good cause and businesses with sustainable practices. It is almost like I planned to talk about my cynicism about all of these niche business ventures that tend to separate people’s money from their pockets with no appreciable gain for the environment.

Let’s Get Something Straight…

This may not be a popular post (with anybody) but before you go all out on me, you should understand where I am coming from. For one, I believe climate change is real. The science, while not conclusive in all areas, easily points to the impact we have on the planet being a negative one. And I am an environmentalist. There is no moral basis for needlessly destroying what we have. But I too believe that there are ways we can use our resources responsibly (like timber, farming, mining and harvesting). I am skeptical of many of the regulations that have been used to try and fix these issues though (that’s why I refused to sign the petition that Blog Action Day tries to throw at you in order to participate). And while I believe awareness is important, I believe education (without ridiculous fear mongering from the partisans) is most important.

I live in the middle of the green boom here in Portland, Oregon so it may be easy to see why I am bit cynical about green business in general. For one, many of the subsidies and tax credits simply aren’t making it down to infrastructure development and job creation. Attraction of businesses that depend heavily on this money to float operationally is a gamble that lawmakers are willing to take with tax payer money. Many in the green industry say that pulling tax credits and subsidies will sink their businesses. They are correct too.

Sustainability Is Also About Business Practices

When we talk about sustainability in the green economy, we rarely talk about business sustainability. So we essentially switch one broken model that requires subsidy (our dilapidated manufacturing and old energy infrastructure) with another (green business and energy models that require massive public investment to break even). Of course, the cry is that it is necessary, that infrastructure developments are a one time price for the switch and it is much better than investing in our current industrial base. Best of all, politicians get to feel like they can push forward ideas with vision, purpose and (most importantly for their constituents and donors) targeted funding for their district’s contribution to green industry.

So now there are thousands of companies out there who are either drawing up business plans or executing on business plans that essentially say “Qualify for government subsidy, ride it out and cross our fingers that we have a product or service in the end that we can limp along with after our runway ends.” It is a killer business plan because it gets people money (not because it works).

Think Outside Of The Green Box

There is a better way and it starts with leaving government money off the table for a second and thinking about ways you can run your green business without it. That doesn’t mean that government money doesn’t come on the table later to help ease or encourage distribution or help supply investments in infrastructure and plant facilities. While much of the focus right now is on consumer driven solutions (think hybrid cars, personal solar panels or wind turbines), the most important gains will come in industry and agriculture. That’s why programs like industrial power conservation and methane capturing don’t need a ton of money for the relative benefit they provide. This is also why low risk, high reward green businesses haven’t stopped to think about how they could get more money from the government: they don’t need it.

We need more of that and less of these schemes that are going to require government interference for decades, carbon swapping or any of these other ideas that move the problem of climate change around rather than fixing it. I think devising sustainable business solutions are the best way of moving forward.