The Sustainability Catch-22

And why chickens can’t lay square-shaped eggs

Photo by Domino on Unsplash

There once lived a chicken who had a peculiar dream. That dream was to lay a square-shaped egg. The chicken spent every moment of every day in pursuit of that dream. It changed its diet. It went on a rigorous exercise regime. It slept during the day and stayed awake at night. But no matter how hard it tried, those eggs remained stubbornly oval-shaped because the chicken couldn’t escape the limitations of the system defining its existence.

To lay a square-shaped egg the chicken would have to influence millions of years of evolution. The chicken was a victim of a catch-22. A catch-22 is defined as an impossible situation because you cannot do one thing until you do another thing, but you cannot do the second thing until you do the first thing.

Companies embracing sustainability are a bit like that chicken trying to lay a square-shaped egg. Just like the chicken, businesses operate within a system that is an outcome of an evolutionary process. Only this process is a social one. Take the economy — it’s not like the rules of the game that govern markets have appeared out of thin air. And neither have the businesses that comprise those markets.

Unlike the chicken that is unaware it’s a product of an evolutionary process, businesses can adapt how they…