40 Years. One Question.
For more than forty years, one question has guided my work.
Why has business sustainability produced so much activity—and yet so little transformation?
I didn’t begin my career trying to answer that question.
It found me.
It appeared in product design.
In corporate decision-making.
In sustainability programmes.
In public policy.
Everywhere I looked, capable people were working hard to create better outcomes.
Yet something remained unresolved.
That question has shaped the journey that followed.
The Journey
My professional career began with SC Johnson, where I spent more than twenty years and ultimately served as Director of Global Product Responsibilities Worldwide.
Those years provided an extraordinary education in how large organizations make decisions, balance competing priorities, allocate resources, manage risk and bring innovation to market.
More importantly, they taught me something that has stayed with me ever since.
Organizations rarely make decisions based solely on strategy.
They make decisions based on the assumptions that strategy quietly inherits.
That insight would not fully reveal itself until many years later, but its foundations were laid there.
My next chapter took me into the emerging world of sustainable design and the circular economy.
For seventeen years I worked alongside William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart, co-authors of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, eventually serving as CEO of their consulting practice.
Together with businesses, governments and institutions around the world, we explored new ways of designing products, systems and organizations for long-term benefit.
Those years expanded my understanding of what was possible.
They also revealed something equally important.
Even the most thoughtful sustainability initiatives often struggled to achieve the scale and depth of transformation many hoped they would create.
The question remained.
Why, after decades of remarkable effort, does sustainability still appear to have reached a ceiling?
The Realization
Over time, my attention shifted.
I became less interested in sustainability strategies and more interested in the assumptions that produce them.
Less interested in frameworks and more interested in the beliefs that shape how frameworks are interpreted.
Increasingly, I found myself asking not what organizations said they believed, but what they actually believed.
Because organizations rarely act from their stated beliefs.
They act from their operative beliefs.
The same is true of leaders.
The same is true of institutions.
The same is true of societies.
That realization has become one of the central themes of my work.
Current Areas of Inquiry
Today my work explores several interconnected questions.
Business Stewardship
How can organizations create enduring value without undermining the conditions their future depends upon?
Sustainable Circularity
What happens when sustainability and circular economy are understood as one integrated challenge rather than two separate conversations?
Design Like Nature™
What can enduring living systems teach us about resilience, renewal and long-term value creation?
Tactical Tetrahedron™
A three-dimensional framework exploring how creation, maturity, decline and renewal operate across living systems, organizations and societies.
These are not separate projects.
They are different expressions of the same inquiry.
Our Common Future – Now
Why Sustainability Reached a Ceiling—And What Comes Next
After more than forty years, I came to believe that the greatest challenge facing sustainability may not be a lack of commitment, technology or investment.
It may be the assumptions shaping our decisions before strategy even begins.
Our Common Future—Now is the most complete expression of that inquiry.
It traces the journey from practice to reflection, from frameworks to first principles, and asks why sustainability appears to have reached a ceiling—and what leaders can do differently.
Publication is planned for September 2026, forty years after the publication of Our Common Future, the landmark report that introduced sustainable development to the world.
Today
Today I write, speak and advise leaders around the world.
My work is shared through books, keynote presentations, The Inquiry, the Circularity Catalyst podcast and The Ken Alston YouTube channel.
Whether I am writing, speaking or working directly with organizations, the purpose remains the same:
To help leaders ask better questions before making decisions that shape the future.
After more than forty years, the question that continues to guide my work is surprisingly simple.
What are we trying to sustain?
And for how long?
I believe those two questions shape almost every decision we make—whether we realize it or not.
Much of my work begins there.
I hope some of yours will too.