Age of Arrows

I’ve had the privileged position of talking with many Large Enterprises across North America regarding their sustainability initiatives.  After a year of ongoing conversations about qualitative and quantitative information and how, why and when to share -  one factor is fairly constant - the arrow.   Is the arrow on any particular sustainability metric going up or down in the right direction?  A good example of this can be found at:  http://www.sapsustainabilityreport.com/operations-impact  The point – pun intended – is that many companies are still just making statements on their public facing sites about their initiatives.  How are we to believe that they are actually dealing with the items or if they are just making empty promises?  Do we really have to wait a year to read the results in their annual report?  Any organization just making statements is in danger of green washing accusations.  Imagine if we could do our financial reports this way? Would shareholders just accept that we “state” we are going to turn a profit or reduce costs without any real metrics?  Major banks are now determining the risk of loans to corporations based in part on these “statements” and how real they actually are.  The good news is that any corporation can get the arrow working for them with an automated software solution that collects, monitors and drives the arrows.  Eventually arrows will be the norm so now is the time gain the advantage – the power of the arrow is yours to wield.   A good place to start might be to ask the company that is showing a good example of arrows like the one sited above – how did they do it?