Helping business leaders drive planet-positive change

How can lead­ers avoid net-zero ambi­tions being dis­rupt­ed by day-to-day con­cerns?

One com­mon mis­take is they don’t inte­grate a net-zero strat­e­gy into their core cor­po­rate strat­e­gy. With sus­tain­abil­i­ty, you must weave it into every­thing that you do, and every pil­lar of your strat­e­gy must have a sus­tain­abil­i­ty lens to cre­ate a direct link between your plan­et-pos­i­tive com­mit­ments and the oper­a­tional levers need­ed to realise them. Lead­ers should adopt a holis­tic score­card and gov­er­nance frame­work to mea­sure progress against all met­rics, rather than a sep­a­rate ESG score­card, which can make sus­tain­abil­i­ty met­rics less of a pri­or­i­ty and not a crit­i­cal part of run­ning a high-per­for­mance organ­i­sa­tion, as it should be.

What chal­lenges do larg­er busi­ness­es face when shift­ing to more plan­et-friend­ly mod­els?

Larg­er organ­i­sa­tions tend to be hier­ar­chi­cal and fail to del­e­gate when it comes to who is respon­si­ble for dri­ving ecosys­tem change, while junior staff don’t feel empow­ered to act. Imple­ment­ing change is only pos­si­ble by think­ing beyond the C‑suite. Set­ting up cross-func­tion­al and cross-geo­graph­ic teams at dif­fer­ent lev­els of the busi­ness and empow­er­ing those teams can help dri­ve faster, more impact­ful change. If you don’t, it rarely gets to the top of the pri­or­i­ty list in the C‑suite, and change imple­men­ta­tion often becomes sec­ondary to busi­ness-as-usu­al pri­or­i­ties.

What skills do lead­er­ship teams need to cre­ate plan­et-pos­i­tive impact?

The first is agili­ty. That’s about process, gov­er­nance and mak­ing sure that enablers are in place to help cre­ate rapid change. Too many great ideas fail at the start because organ­i­sa­tions have too many bar­ri­ers asso­ci­at­ed with process­es and ways of work­ing. The sec­ond is hav­ing a cul­ture of cre­ativ­i­ty and ensur­ing peo­ple with­in lead­er­ship have the capa­bil­i­ties and mind­set to think about cre­ative solu­tions to chal­lenges. The third is empa­thy. Impact­ful change is only suc­cess­ful if you bring your peo­ple with you. If you don’t care­ful­ly con­sid­er the impact of change on your peo­ple and demon­strate gen­uine empa­thy, then often that change is doomed to fail­ure.

How impor­tant is it to empow­er indi­vid­u­als with­in organ­i­sa­tions to dri­ve change?

It is absolute­ly crit­i­cal. Change with­in organ­i­sa­tions nev­er suc­ceeds if there is not buy-in through­out your organ­i­sa­tion. If there isn’t buy-in about the ratio­nale for change and how it will tan­gi­bly improve things and have a pos­i­tive impact, then it will nev­er get imple­ment­ed prop­er­ly. You real­ly have to think from the shop floor up about why this change mat­ters and go into very gran­u­lar and per­son­alised nar­ra­tives to explain why it will make things bet­ter.

How can organ­i­sa­tions embed sus­tain­abil­i­ty through col­lab­o­ra­tion with exter­nal stake­hold­ers?

Data shar­ing is one very impor­tant fac­tor when it comes to enabling effec­tive lead­er­ship and strate­gic deci­sion mak­ing to realise impact. There is a huge amount of envi­ron­men­tal data out there to sup­port dri­ving plan­et-pos­i­tive change, but we’re pret­ty insight-poor. With­out shar­ing data and insight across organ­i­sa­tions, it’s hard to see the full pic­ture about how you enact change. You end up work­ing with­in an echo cham­ber and not engag­ing with dif­fer­ent organ­i­sa­tions who might have a very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. By hav­ing holis­tic data and insight, you can iden­ti­fy what levers you can pull to dri­ve pos­i­tive change.

Why do lead­ers need to think wider on net zero to achieve ecosys­tem change?

It’s easy for organ­i­sa­tions to iden­ti­fy key groups and stake­hold­ers to engage with, but have you real­ly thought about why they would want to engage with you and whether they are ready to engage? If you don’t find com­mon ground and iden­ti­fy shared out­comes, there is no rea­son for them to engage and you will be unlike­ly to effec­tive­ly work with them. Ecosys­tem change can seem big and scary because of the num­ber and com­plex­i­ty of dif­fer­ent actors involved. Start­ing with a small sub­set, cause group or the­mat­ic seg­ment where you’ve got a shared busi­ness case and then scal­ing from there is often the best approach.

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How can leaders avoid net-zero ambitions being disrupted by day-to-day concerns?

One common mistake is they don’t integrate a net-zero strategy into their core corporate strategy. With sustainability, you must weave it into everything that you do, and every pillar of your strategy must have a sustainability lens to create a direct link between your planet-positive commitments and the operational levers needed to realise them. Leaders should adopt a holistic scorecard and governance framework to measure progress against all metrics, rather than a separate ESG scorecard, which can make sustainability metrics less of a priority and not a critical part of running a high-performance organisation, as it should be.

What challenges do larger businesses face when shifting to more planet-friendly models?