Step 1: Goals and Indicators

Setting the right goal is the single most consequential decision in any sustainability project. Get this wrong and everything downstream follows a flawed trajectory. Get this right, and the goal itself becomes a breakthrough that transforms how stakeholders think about the challenge.

In Step 1, you define three things: the systemic goal, the boundary conditions, and (in later cycles) the key performance indicators. Together, these create the solution space you will investigate in subsequent steps.

Setting Goals at the System Level

Here is where SiD diverges from conventional project management. You do not set goals at the object level. You set them at the system level.

Consider a project to make a building sustainable. There is no such thing as a "sustainable building," just as there is no sustainable product or sustainable organization in isolation. Sustainability is a property of systems, not objects. So you zoom out. Instead of a sustainable building, you aim for a sustainable community in that neighborhood, or a sustainable city, and then determine how the building contributes to that system.

This shift in perspective changes everything. You stop optimizing the object in isolation and start asking: what does this object need to do for the system to thrive? The building is no longer an endpoint. It becomes an instrument.

The same applies to what you hope the goal achieves. You do not specify that the building should be red, large, or a particular shape. Those are not performative attributes. Systemic goals are performative: they address resilience, autonomy, and harmony. Goals like "increase community energy independence" or "enable neighborhood-scale circular resource flows" operate at the system level. Goals like "install 200 solar panels" operate at the object level and belong in the KPIs, not in the systemic goal.

Doing this exercise, zooming out and defining the goal properly, often produces the complete breakthrough of a change of mindset in a project. It is vital to get this right.

Boundary Conditions

Every project operates within constraints. Boundary conditions define the edges of your solution space:

• Time. How long do you have? A five-day co-creation session differs fundamentally from a five-year transition trajectory.
• Partners. Who is involved? Which stakeholders have influence, resources, or decision-making power?
• Budget. What financial resources are available, and how are they allocated?
• Scope. What is included and excluded? What system level are you operating at?

These constraints are not limitations to resent. They are parameters that focus your work. A well-defined solution space is more productive than an unbounded one.

Creating a Vision

A vision is a shared image of a desirable future. It does not prescribe the solution. It describes what the world looks like when the problem is solved. What does a future look like in which this community has achieved its systemic goal? What is it giving people? How does it feel?

SiD uses backcasting to build visions. Backcasting starts by envisioning a desirable future (typically 50 years out), then works backwards step by step to determine what is necessary to achieve it, until the present day is reached. This breaks the strategic trap of incremental improvements toward an unclear destination.

When backcasting is used in SiD, it does not project a physical or material future state. It projects a performative state. The vision addresses how the system functions, not what it looks like. This distinction prevents the common error of designing a future that merely externalizes problems to somewhere else.

Vision creation is especially powerful in teams. It surfaces assumptions. Different stakeholders carry different mental models of the future. Making those explicit, and negotiating a shared vision, generates alignment and reveals insights about what the team truly values.

Example: Schiphol Airport Office Complex

A real-world goal set for a multi-tenant office building at a major airport illustrates the difference between systemic and object-level goals. The strategic goals addressed the system:

• Become the preferred location for companies with a global perspective, for at least 50 years
• Flexibility to respond to new trends, social standards, and changes in mobility
• A resilient user mix: no monoculture, but varied company sizes, sectors, and characters
• Best-in-class sustainability, combining energy, material, biodiversity, culture, social, health, and wellbeing
• Catalytic effect: boost the value of 200,000 m2 with 20,000 m2

The user goals addressed demand: a rich natural experience, a range of services that make residents feel at home, the ability for companies to express their identity, a sense of pride, healthy working environments, flexibility for expansion, transparency and fairness.

The object-level performance goals then followed: energy positive with no medium exchange, water positive with 100% rainwater, zero waste construction, design for disassembly, on-site food production, cultivation of endangered local species. These KPIs are concrete and measurable. They serve the systemic goals, not the other way around.

This project was, at the time, the most ambitious goal set for any sustainable office project globally. Research showed it was feasible and financially viable through an integrated concept design. The systemic framing made that possible.