Our Solutions

The Natural Step Learning Network

The Natural Step has worked directly with over 100 organizations in Canada over the past five years. In addition 15,000 learners have subscribed to The Natural Step’s on-line learning programs. Together they represent a movement for change. The leaders, champions and partners we have worked with have asked us to connect them to each other. Many of them are pioneering approaches that are innovative and unprecedented. As sustainability leaders, they value learning from each other, and they value being connected to a larger movement.

In direct response to requests from our partners, we are launching The Natural Step Learning Network. Our goal is to convene leaders, champions and experts to learn from each other, to provide on-line resources and opportunities to share best practices, to advance the practice of sustainability, and to foster a movement for change.

Early Adopters Program

The Natural Step provides a specialized leadership program for Early Adopters, which builds community capacity by establishing a common understanding and shared language for sustainability among a variety of community stakeholders, creating local success stories, and then supporting this core group of leaders to disseminate the lessons, knowledge and energy they have gained throughout the community.

Early Adopters are a group of leading stakeholders in the community -- local businesses, organizations, community groups, concerned citizens and municipal government -- who come together with a shared commitment to provide leadership by introducing and incorporating sustainability into their respective organizations and by working together towards community sustainability.  PDF with full description.

Building Awareness and Support
To start your sustainability initiative, you will need to build awareness about what you are trying to achieve and also generate support within your organization for these efforts.  Creating a common language to talk about sustainability is an incredibly powerful and important way to make progress on your organization’s journey. 

Sustainability Briefing (1/2 day workshop)
Our sustainability briefings are designed to enhance your team’s understanding of sustainability, to introduce the key concepts of strategic sustainability planning based on The Natural Step Framework, and to share examples of how other leading companies and municipalities have used the framework to further advance sustainability within their organizations.  PDF with full description.

Introductory Workshop (1 day)
“Sustainability” is the buzz-word of our decade, but how do you know what sustainability really is? What are the challenges and opportunities facing organizations in the future? This workshop will give you an understanding of sustainability, show you how other leading organizations are successfully taking strategic actions towards sustainability and start you and your organization on your own journey. PDF with full description.

Keynote Presentation (30 to 60 minutes)
Thirty minutes can change the way you look at the world. Sixty minutes can change the way we live and work in the world. The Natural Step has addressed tens of thousands of individuals through presentations around the world, inspiring a desire for change in its wake. We take a systems-approach to solving today’s problems starting by envisioning the kind of future that we want to be part of.  We bring this approach and our experience to boardrooms, auditoriums, council chambers and classrooms around the country to inspire people toward change and to show them that what is possible.  PDF with full description.

Blended Learning (multiple sessions of 1.5 hours)
Your organization, business, network or community is interested in learning more about sustainability – what it is, what the fuss is all about and how you might succeed through efforts to achieve it.  We have created a long-distance education program to engage your organization in learning about The Natural Step Framework through a guided program that includes our award-winning eLearning course.  Participants can go through the course on their own time while learning with their colleagues at the fraction of the cost of in-person training and without emitting one gram of green-house gas for travel!  PDF with full description.

Strategy Development and Implementation
Ultimately, we aim to shift an organization's thinking away from the piecemeal management of immediate problems to the creation of a long term and strategic plan toward sustainability. 

Strategic Sustainability Workshop: the Backcasting Approach
Often when we make plans in our organization, community or business, we do it by forecasting. We gather information, trends and observations to help us create a picture of where we think we are heading, then we try and position ourselves so that we are in an advantageous spot in coming years. But what happens if we want, or need, a very different future than current trends project, as with sustainability?   For this, The Natural Step uses a very different way of planning the future called backcasting, where we start with our envisioned future as the beginning point for our planning. 

We provide training to build your capacity to understand and apply the concept of backcasting from sustainability principles to your organization, community or business. This training builds the capacity of your team to identify gaps between your current reality and where you would like to be in relation to sustainability and also to create a prioritized action plan.  PDF with full description.

Capacity Building Workshop
The Natural Step offers a training program to build the capacity of a cross-functional sustainability leadership team for your organization or community. The program helps build a shared language for sustainability within your organization or community and assists participants in integrating sustainability into ongoing planning and decision-making in their respective roles. It also prepares a core team to take a leadership role in immediate actions towards sustainability and in disseminating the lessons, knowledge and energy they have gained throughout the organization. PDF with full description.

Self-Directed Strategic Sustainable Action Plan
Having a clear understanding of the conditions for a sustainable society and a compelling vision of your organization will generate all sorts of tangible and intangible benefits to both your organization and society.  Benefits include reducing risk, increasing revenues, cutting costs and avoiding unforeseen costs, enhancing reputation and customer/client/employee loyalty, lower insurance and borrowing costs, providing leadership and helping to achieve a sustainable society. 

We provide training for your team to help build a common understanding and shared language of sustainability as well as the capacity to undertake this work.  This program not only builds capacity but also the competence of participants to integrate sustainability within their organization and to strategically plan towards it.  We will provide ongoing coaching and support throughout the process and will connect you with other organizations and partners who are transitioning towards sustainability.   PDF with full description.

TNS-Led Strategic Sustainability Action Plan
This program is the same as the Self-Directed Strategic Sustainability Action Plan except that we will work with your organization to build the ability to do your own current reality evaluation and direct your own internal team.  PDF with full description.

Integrated Community Sustainability Planning
Sustainability problems are often complex and overlapping; as such they cannot be solved in isolation, and are best addressed using a comprehensive, systems-based approach that addresses the root of the problem, rather than only the symptoms. TNS’s unique Municipal Sustainability Planning approach is designed to address these challenges.

A Municipal Sustainability Plan (MSP), or Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) is essentially a high level overarching document for a community that is informed by sustainability principles and guides the community into the future. It is a strategic business plan for the community that identifies short- medium- and long-term actions for implementation, tracks and monitors progress, and is reviewed on an annual basis. An ICSP is a big picture, holistic plan that provides guidance for the development or alignment of all municipal plans, policies and decisions (i.e. municipal development plan, transportation plan, energy plan, purchasing policy, capital planning, etc.), under one integrated decision-making framework.  PDF with full description.