*2.2. The ABCD Procedure*

A long-term strategic perspective is crucial when working with sustainability to ensure that actions lead in the right direction towards full sustainability and contribute to the own organization's competitiveness. In order to be strategic, it is necessary to know the desired vision of success. This comes with the challenge of defining sustainability in a way that is neither too broad, not providing any guidance in practice, nor too specific, making it difficult for people to agree and risking becoming obsolete in the face of, for example, new technology advances. Within the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), the following principle-based definition of sustainability is used: In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing (1) concentrations extracted from the Earth's crust, (2) concentrations of substances produced by society, (3) degradation by physical means; and people are not subject to structural obstacles to (4) health, (5) influence, (6) competence, (7) impartiality, and (8) meaning-making [33,34,36]. These eight principles represent the root-causes of unsustainability, up-stream in cause-and-effect chains. Thereby, the myriad unsustainability-related impacts in social and ecological systems, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, ozone depletion, discrimination, etc., can be related to a few comprehensive mechanisms of destruction. These eight principles can be used as boundary conditions for the re-design of socio-technical systems. They can be used to create that vision, which is necessary to be able to be strategic. This provides the basis for backcasting, i.e., starting the planning process with the end in mind, asking what is necessary to happen in order to reach the vision over time. Thereby, the direction of change can be anticipated, enabling decision-making that makes sure to be on the right track and giving benefits to the organization, e.g., by being ahead of legislation or meeting new customer demands [37]. The funnel metaphor of the FSSD can be used to understand the sustainability challenge and the self-benefit of strategic sustainability thinking based on backcasting from a vision framed by the eight sustainability principles [34,36,38] (see Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Funnel metaphor for transformers and the ABCD procedure for strategic sustainable development. The violations of the sustainability principles are represented here as red stars, which are hitting the funnel wall. These violations should be evaluated to identify the hotspots of sustainability impact.

The decreasing cross-section of the funnel represents the systematic degradation of the social and ecological systems. Over time, a situation must be achieved where this is no longer the case, and the funnel turns into a cylinder—this represents a sustainable state. However, society is currently moving towards the funnel walls, which represents a collapse of the social and ecological systems. This unsustainable development comes with important dynamics from a business perspective. The closer society comes to the funnel walls, the greater the need for sustainable solutions and to stop unsustainable practices. Therefore, there will be increasing business opportunities for companies that can contribute towards developing a sustainable path, while there will be increasing threats for companies that enforce unsustainable development. Such threats and opportunities, i.e., risks, can be related to, for example, legislative change, brand and reputation, shifting customer needs, raw material and waste costs, the ability to attract and retain talented employees, and more [37]. An organization must identify solutions that can work as flexible platforms on the way towards the sustainable vision and that help to exploit business opportunities and avoid threats [39].

To operationalize this strategic sustainability thinking, the FSSD includes the ABCD procedure. Step A includes setting up a shared understanding of the sustainability challenge and defining the overall vision within the restrictions of the sustainability principles. In this step, the organization must take a long-term perspective and think of an ideal success vision. Besides the sustainability principles, there are no other constraints such as the feasibility from today's perspective. The vision created in this step provides the basis for backcasting. In step B, an assessment of the organization's current reality and activities are carried out and analyzed through the lens of the proposed vision. Thereby, hots-spots of sustainability impact are identified, and a baseline is created. In step C, possible actions are identified and listed to close the gaps between the vision defined in step A and the current reality that was analyzed in the step B. In step D, strategic guidelines are applied to analyze the possible actions in the step C and select the prioritized ones to be utilized in the organization's plan of moving to sustainability. According to the basic strategy guidelines of the FSSD, the prioritized actions should be flexible platforms for future steps and achieve a balance between the rate of improvement toward the sustainable vision and return on investment [33,34,36]. The organizations need to ensure that the return on investment of applying the prioritized actions toward sustainability is satisfactory to continue the

process of moving toward sustainability. However, when the cost of actions is very high, it is recommended to wait for more studies and investigations in order to find appropriate economic solutions. The actions that can be easily implemented with a good return on investment should be started first to set up a concrete structure for the future process for the other actions [33,34]. The ABCD procedure has been applied in various contexts to support strategic planning for sustainability, including in the context of sustainable product development [32].
