We all know it. In the time of crisis, cash is king.

Well, for a manufacturing company, there is a direct link between how resource efficient and how effective your use of resources is and money in the bank.

Thus, what we really mean is: Resource efficiency is king.

If you don’t have a resource efficient business, you don’t have a competitive business.

The question is, “have you been working strategically and focused on optimising the flow and use of resources in your company?”

Well, if not, that should be a top priority as of today.

I recommend using the circular economy toolbox when you want make sure you are not wasting money on resources. It’s a discipline that’s rooted in business thinking and that’s all about optimising the flow and use of resources, keeping them alive for as long as possible at the highest value possible.

But let me just take one step back because circularity is the guiding principle of nature and until just a few generations ago, it was also the guiding principle for societies.

Resources were used again and again and everything we had basically came from nature. And after we used it over a couple of cycles, it all went back to nature.

Just as in an ecosystem, in the bigger picture, nothing was wasted.

But industrialisation changed that.

Over the last 70ish years, we have more or less abandoned this approach and this principle of circularity. Instead, we have taken in this linear approach where we take stuff from the ground, make a product out of it, use it once, perhaps twice (but most of the times just once) and then we throw it out.

Consequently, we now live in an incredibly resource-inefficient world where billions of Euros of materials is wasted every year. And yes, you heard right, I said billions of Euro. And if you just stop and reflect on that for a second, it does seem quite stupid, doesn’t it?

It’s time to unlearn some of those things that you were taught in school and that you have had as part of your upbringing in the business community.

My guess is that resources, raw material, energy, water and so on, it’s all part of what could be labeled as “cost of operations”.

That is how most people have been thinking about it for so long.

But now it’s time to unlearn some of those things and replace them with an upgraded version of that success formula mankind have been living by for most of the time on this planet, and that is the circular economy.

I know that you probably don’t feel ready to lead a transition and integrate circular economy as a way of doing business.

I perfectly understand that because not having the skills and the knowledge, not knowing how to do it, not being able to see a clear path ahead, creates doubt. Why would you want to take such an “unknown” approach into the core of your business?

In many ways, it’s a similar situation to what you were in around a decade or so ago, when digitalisation was what swept through the business community.

Back then, most business leaders did not understand that either.

It became quite popular to hire a chief technology officer or something like that and park the responsibility there. But over time it became obvious that that was not sufficient.

Management groups started to engage, started to build capacity, and started to integrate it into the core of the business.

For the companies that were not that far, when the COVID pandemic hit and the world shut down, well, they were in for a rough ride. Today we are in a similar situation. If you have not spent time on familiarising and working and building up competencies on circular economy, now that you’re facing 4-5x increases in material prices, energy prices, you are in for a rough ride. Now it’s really the time. You have to embrace the circular economy.

The good news is that it’s easier than you think to upgrade yourself.

In my experience, most business leaders are fairly fast to grasp the basic ideas, and again, perhaps because it, really aligns well with what mankind have been doing, for generations.

Of course, it’s a little bit harder to master it, but just get started and it will give you results quite fast.

And if you want know how to do it in a structured way through a method that will take you from where you are today, to where you want get – to a place where you have a more resource efficient, more profitable business that also leaves the world a better place, I invite you to jump on to one of my free introduction seminars.

You can go in and book it at my website https://www.bwimpact.com/introduction

Look forward to see you there.