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The Planning and Management Program helps landowners and decision-makers maximize ecological and social value. It transforms management of assets to support human and ecological communities.

Separately, these two old clichés are true:

"You can't manage what you don't measure."

and

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." (attributed to Albert Einstein)

Nevertheless, SRI believes many things that count can indeed be managed - even if they typically do not get counted.

SRI always seeks opportunities where ecological, social, and economic value reinforce each other. While people can be very good at measuring financial value, they tend to be much less adept at measuring ecological and social value. It can be even more challenging to understand how those different components of value interact with each other.

To help us manage things that count but remain devilishly hard to measure, we depend on the Blended Value Proposition. Pioneered by SRI advisor Jed Emerson, the blended value proposition posits that "value" is indivisible, though it has many dimensions (including environmental, social, and financial). The best managers attempt to understand and manage all of the dimensions of value they create. Their every management decision considers ecological and social value, as well as financial value.

The best way to maximize blended value is to build the concept into a project or business from the ground up. Our land and community planning services help landowners and managers design their operations to create significant ecological and social value without sacrificing their ability to earn a sustainable living. Systematic, quantitative, and strategic methodologies identify opportunities to build blended value that would otherwise pass undetected.

Managing ecological and social assets with the same rigor that managers apply to financial assets requires a new set of tools that measure value that typically goes uncounted. The Planning and Management Program monitors outcomes and builds metrics that give insight into environmental and social performance and value; they are descriptive, accurate, and easy to use.

SRI publishes management tools, metrics, and best practices to share intellectual capital with other entities. Though we still cannot count everything that counts, our Planning and Management Program brings us closer to managing what really matters.

Executive Director Joshua Spitzer leads the Planning and Management Program with assistance from SRI's full-time and seasonal employees as well as contractors.