Pamela Wilhelms & Peter Senge are the current stewards of the SoL Sustainability Consortium.

The Purpose of the SoL Sustainability Consortium is to build the capacity in organizations and society to achieve economic, ecological and social sustainability so that all life can thrive for all time. We do this by actively practicing the five disciplines of organizational learning and systems thinking in all we do and by engaging leaders who work together across traditional boundaries to achieve our shared aims.

Leadership: True leaders are deeply engaged at a personal level in change. The leadership capacity of individuals is fundamental to fulfilling the potential and mission of the consortium. We each take personal responsibility for learning and action.

Active Practice of Organizational Learning tools and disciplines in all we do: We continuously develop our capacity to think, learn and act effectively together. We do this by practicing the Five Disciplines of Organizational Learning -- Systems Thinking, Team Learning, Mental Models, Personal Mastery and Shared Vision – and applying these to achieving sustainability.

Balancing Action and Reflection: Through collective action on projects we achieve results on specific sustainability issues. By reflecting together on these results, we develop new theories and ideas. These ideas, in turn, lead to improved action.

Collaboration: To achieve the sustainability results we all aspire to, it is essential to work together.

In 1999, a group of leading companies committed to more sustainable business practices came together to form the SoL Sustainability Consortium. They believed that the mandate to invent more socially and environmentally sound products, processes, and business models presented a profound learning challenge of institutional learning and – based on the experience with organizational learning principles and tool – that the application of such approaches could make a difference. Over the past nine years, we have worked together to invent new ways of doing business that positively affect the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. It has been exciting and rewarding to join with committed professionals to think, problem-solve, and tackle the unprecedented issues businesses face as they address sustainability.  Creating sustainability means inventing new business models, leap-frogging to new environmentally sound technologies and infrastructures, shifting established norms, and “changing the rules of the game.”

The SoL Sustainability Consortium is a “learning community” of companies committed to accelerating the creation of knowledge needed to achieve a truly sustainable economy. The Consortium utilizes the disciplines of Systems Thinking and Organizational Learning to explore and address the knotty issues surrounding the imperative to remain profitable while nurturing the natural systems and the communities within which we do business. This “triple bottom line” approach provides an overarching framework for all we do.