Spend 3 Days With Us—And Run a $100M Sustainable Business for 5 Years

What if I told you that you could lead a fictional, $100M, triple-bottom-line company for five years—in just three days? You’d have the experience of running a sustainable business successfully—or into the ground—risk free.

As a leader, you’d strategize and negotiate with heads of marketing, finance, HR, production, sustainability, and sales, then put the business plan you’ve developed into action. You’d get to try out different market approaches and operational strategies. See what works best for your company and compete against other companies to achieve profits while improving conditions for both people and the planet. And you’d gain all the insights that come from learning by doing, with your leadership team, and the support of expert instructors.

That’s what our July 30-Aug. 1 program is all about: “LeaderShip for Sustainability: People, Planet, and Profits in a New Green Economy.”

"We are pleased to offer this program to deliver important lessons on leading a profitable business while also making a positive contribution to our society," said the Honorable John McKernan, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. "This type of expert instruction is an essential part of our efforts to strengthen America's long-term competitiveness."

We’re hosting this program to respond to the challenges that our supporters and the wider business community tell us they’re facing. Whether your business is micro-sized or enterprise, we’re all dealing with the new normal described by Andrew Winston in The Big Pivot: resource constraints, weather challenges, changeable markets, and our connected world’s radical transparency. We all want to take care of people and the planet for tomorrow, as well as achieving profits today.

But actually making sustainability happen—at scale—and with the speed required—poses huge practical leadership challenges.

Which is why LeaderShip for Sustainability is a great choice. This course teaches not only established—but also emerging and high-potential people—how to be sustainability leaders in every part of the company.

No matter what your job title, as leaders and sustainability champions in our companies each of us has to understand the bigger picture for triple-bottom-line success that engages people to responsibly manage planet resources while generating profits. That means not only operations expertise, but also marketing, finance, human resources, IT and supply chain management skills.

Here are some of the ways that this course is different:

Gamification: Participants play an online business simulation where teams compete head-to-head to build and grow a triple-bottom-line company. Each team starts with $28M total assets to run their company over 5 years, completely risk-free.

Financials and metrics: The game forces players to wrangle with balance sheets, weigh debt decisions, and balance competing priorities. Many non-finance program alums report that this gave them a completely new understanding and appreciation of the CFO's role in achieving sustainable outcomes.

Networking and support:The course continues after the three days in Washington, D.C. with in-depth follow-up calls to help you apply what you learned to your company’s goals and challenges. And you’ll join a community of fellow program alums that include senior and middle level leaders from BASF, Honeywell, Novartis, Alcoa, Church and Dwight, Sanofi, and Alcatel-Lucent.

The course is led by Dr. Jeana Wirtenberg (author of the new 2014 book Building a Culture for Sustainability, with a foreword by Andrew Winston) and her team from Transitioning to Green.

Please take a look at the program description and register today. The Early Bird discount ends June 30. Registration. CCC supporters receive a discount off registration.

Questions? Please reach out to me at jgerholdt@USChamber.comor Jeana Wirtenberg, Ph.D. at 973-335-6299 or jwirtenberg@transitioningtogreen.com.

Hope to see you at the end of July.