Sustainability Journey

Overview

The Sustainability Journey is a structured, facilitated pathway that guides your organization through a six-phase transformation process grounded in two complementary methodologies:

PAR — Participatory Action Research: Stakeholders co-define problems and co-create solutions through collaborative inquiry cycles
AL — Action Learning: Teams learn by tackling real problems, reflecting on outcomes, and adjusting their approach iteratively

The Journey is not a checklist — it is a living, evolving process. Each phase includes mandatory facilitated sessions called PAR/AL Spirals that ensure genuine stakeholder participation and evidence-based course correction.

The Six Phases

Phase 1 — Pre-Vision

Purpose: Establish organizational readiness and assemble the right team.

Key activities:

Define the organization’s reason for engaging in this journey
Identify internal champions and working group members
Map the relevant stakeholder landscape
Complete an organizational capacity self-assessment
Set ground rules for the process

No spirals required. This phase focuses on foundation-setting before community engagement begins.

Phase 2 — Strategic Vision

Purpose: Co-create a shared understanding of the community’s needs, gaps, and aspirations.

Key activities:

Identify Organic Whole Use (OWU) challenges and opportunities
Conduct needs-gap analysis across ESGETC dimensions
Prioritize action areas with stakeholders
Draft preliminary action pathways

Required spiral: CO_CREATION — bring key stakeholders together to co-define challenges and aspirations before leadership sets direction.

Phase 3 — Plan

Purpose: Develop a concrete, accountable action plan using PDCA principles.

Key activities:

Translate vision into measurable goals
Assign roles, timelines, and resources
Integrate with ESGETC assessment cycles
Identify risks and mitigation strategies

Required spiral: REFLECTION — review the vision developed in Phase 2, surface assumptions, and adjust the plan to reflect what participants actually heard.

Phase 4 — Do

Purpose: Implement the plan while monitoring for real-world adaptation.

Key activities:

Execute action items
Track milestones and key indicators
Surface barriers and unexpected outcomes
Document learning as it happens

Required spiral: PROBLEM_SOLVING or CAPABILITY_BUILD — depending on what the implementation reveals. Use PROBLEM_SOLVING when the team encounters specific obstacles. Use CAPABILITY_BUILD when skills gaps are limiting execution.

Phase 5 — Check

Purpose: Evaluate whether the actions produced the intended outcomes.

Key activities:

Measure results against Phase 3 targets
Analyze what worked, what didn’t, and why
Gather stakeholder feedback on impact
Feed findings back into the learning cycle

Required spiral: REFLECTION — create space for an honest team debrief before drawing conclusions. Surface dissenting views.

Phase 6 — Act

Purpose: Institutionalize what worked and set a new baseline.

Key activities:

Standardize successful practices into policy and procedure
Update the organization’s ESGETC baseline assessment
Document and share lessons learned
Prepare for the next journey cycle

No spiral required. This phase focuses on embedding change and transitioning to steady-state.

PAR/AL Spiral Sessions

Spirals are the facilitated workshops that punctuate the Journey. They ensure the process stays genuinely participatory — not just nominally inclusive.

Session Types

Type	Methodology	Best Used When
Reflection	AL	After a significant period of activity — pause to review and learn
Co-Creation	PAR	Stakeholders need to co-define solutions, not just be informed
Problem-Solving	AL	Team faces a specific obstacle during implementation
Capability-Build	AL	Skills or knowledge gaps are blocking progress
Stakeholder-Engagement	PAR	Engaging a new or underrepresented group

Running a Spiral

Navigate to /journey/spirals
Select the active phase
Click Create Spiral
Choose session type and focus area
Facilitate the session (platform provides facilitation guides and templates)
Document outcomes in the facilitation panel
Mark the spiral as complete — the phase requirement is satisfied

Journey Dashboard

The Journey Dashboard (/journey-dashboard) provides:

Phase Timeline A visual representation of where your organization is in the six-phase journey, with completion percentage for each phase.

Active Spirals Upcoming and in-progress spiral sessions requiring facilitation.

ESGETC Dimension Progress How the organization’s scores have moved since the journey began.

Reports & Analytics Export progress reports for funders, governing boards, or public disclosure.

Getting Started

Subscribe to a tier that includes Journey access (Basic or above)
The Journey dashboard auto-initializes after your subscription is confirmed
Begin Phase 1 immediately — no setup required
Complete each phase’s requirements before moving to the next
Use the Phase Guide embedded in each page for facilitation tips

Integration with ESGETC Assessment

The Sustainability Journey is deeply integrated with the ESGETC Framework:

Phase 2 (Strategic Vision) uses ESGETC gap analysis outputs
Phase 3 (Plan) maps actions to specific ESGETC dimensions and SDGs
Phase 5 (Check) compares pre- and post-journey ESGETC scores
Phase 6 (Act) updates the organization’s ESGETC baseline

Each spiral session can generate ESGETC-tagged data that flows directly into the analytics dashboard.