Taking the long view in sustainability leadership

It is no longer enough for com­pa­nies to sim­ply pri­ori­tise sus­tain­abil­i­ty; it must be con­sid­ered as a long-term objec­tive. Doing so will see sus­tain­abil­i­ty make a con­sid­er­able dif­fer­ence to oper­a­tional resilience, cor­po­rate rep­u­ta­tion and the bot­tom line.

Over just the past few years, sus­tain­able busi­ness has pro­gressed from some­thing that is unusu­al, to some­thing expect­ed, to now an inte­gral part of busi­ness oper­a­tions.

Com­pa­nies around the world are con­sid­er­ing the impact they have on on their envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties. With COP26 begin­ning on 1 Novem­ber, glob­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty lead­ers met to dis­cuss the val­ue sus­tain­abil­i­ty strate­gies can bring to cor­po­rate resilience.

Busi­ness are now poised to unite sus­tain­abil­i­ty with busi­ness objec­tives at the senior-most lev­els. For Pern­od Ricard, this makes utter sense. “Our vision and our mis­sion is to cre­ate moments of con­vivi­al­i­ty,” says chief sus­tain­abil­i­ty offi­cer Vanes­sa Wright. “We call our strat­e­gy ‘Good Times from a Good Place’ because we want to bring these moments of con­vivi­al­i­ty from a good place. All our prod­ucts come from nature and agri­cul­ture. It’s the phys­i­cal good place, the ter­roir, the land; but it’s also in terms of how we behave as an organ­i­sa­tion. Nature is the start­ing point of our strat­e­gy.”

That align­ment between busi­ness objec­tives and sus­tain­able strat­e­gy res­onates with oth­er com­pa­nies, as well. The world’s largest wind pow­er com­pa­ny, Ves­tas, has a vest­ed inter­est in a sus­tain­able future, but it has put its own sus­tain­able strat­e­gy in place. This includes a dri­ve toward a cir­cu­lar busi­ness mod­el, an exam­i­na­tion of trans­porta­tion meth­ods and fight­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. “You need to inte­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty holis­ti­cal­ly,” says Lisa Ekstrand, senior direc­tor – head of sus­tain­abil­i­ty at Ves­tas. “Our vision is to pro­vide even more sus­tain­able prod­ucts for our cus­tomers, by mak­ing sure that the car­bon foot­print of wind tur­bines is even low­er than today.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, at Deutsche Bahn, the con­tin­ued abil­i­ty of cru­cial infra­struc­ture, like the rail­ways, to oper­ate relies on a healthy envi­ron­ment. Andreas Gehlhaar, head of sus­tain­abil­i­ty & envi­ron­ment at Deutsche Bahn points to the recent flood­ing in Ger­many as an indi­ca­tion that com­pa­nies should be doing more to com­bat cli­mate change. He says: “From an eco­nom­ic point of view, we can only run our busi­ness if there is a sol­id infra­struc­ture. If the infra­struc­ture is destroyed by a flood, then no goods, no peo­ple can be trans­port­ed. That shows how cru­cial­ly we rely on a sta­ble envi­ron­ment. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, is, for us, actu­al­ly at the heart and core of our com­pa­ny and our strat­e­gy.”

All of these com­mit­ments are forg­ing a stronger stan­dard of prac­tice in glob­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty lead­er­ship. But, says Davide Vas­sal­lo, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer at DuPont Sus­tain­able Solu­tions (DSS), a longer-term view is need­ed to fur­ther pro­pel sus­tain­abil­i­ty up the list of board­room pri­or­i­ties: “We need to look at the val­ue of sus­tain­abil­i­ty on a much longer time scale and not only for the results of the next quar­ter of busi­ness. It’s about expand­ing the time­line, being more inno­v­a­tive in imple­ment­ing the solu­tion and hav­ing an absolute con­fi­dence that we are cre­at­ing long-term val­ue, not only for soci­ety, but for the com­pa­ny itself.”

Achiev­ing this, is not just ‘doing good;’ it’s doing the busi­ness good, too. Ensur­ing a com­pa­ny is viable in the long term – whether that’s through sourc­ing agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts or lay­ing rail lines – requires a con­sis­tent sup­ply chain, con­sumers unaf­fect­ed by cli­mate dis­as­ters, and a sta­ble envi­ron­ment and econ­o­my. “We are future-proof­ing the com­pa­ny,” Ekstrand says. She says even in the most chal­leng­ing of cir­cum­stances, with Covid-19 wreak­ing hav­oc on sup­ply chains, the val­ue of sus­tain­abil­i­ty has not dimin­ished. “What has been real­ly inter­est­ing over the last year is, you would think that sus­tain­abil­i­ty would drop in impor­tance, but the push from cus­tomers has not stopped…I think we have per­haps final­ly got to the point where mind­sets are real­ly start­ing to change.”

Wright echoes this, adding that cost cut­ting is not anath­e­ma to sus­tain­able busi­ness. In fact, sus­tain­able busi­ness can help improve effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. “The cost of not being sus­tain­able is high­er in the long term,” she adds.

How­ev­er, says Gehlhaar, sup­port­ing and devel­op­ing the solu­tions that will facil­i­tate this also require a long-term approach: “It’s a marathon. It’s about inno­va­tion and devel­op­ing the knowl­edge that can get us there. Of course, that would be need high­er invest­ments at the begin­ning, but if we can scale up and think more long term, we know that the cost will come down and there­by cre­ate more long-term val­ue.”

If com­pa­nies can prove the long-term val­ue of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, they will also be able to link sus­tain­able strate­gies with improved resilience, and by exten­sion, a reduc­tion of risk. Vas­sal­lo says: “If the ques­tion is, ‘What is the con­nec­tion between sus­tain­abil­i­ty and resilien­cy?’ I think the con­nec­tion point is in aware­ness. If we want to improve the resilien­cy of our organ­i­sa­tion, we need to be aware of the risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties that are around our organ­i­sa­tion.” Com­pa­nies, he adds, should con­sid­er sus­tain­abil­i­ty from the “board lev­el to the work­shop floor,” as a means of build­ing aware­ness about risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties.

But there are chal­lenges in the road to a holis­tic approach to cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The val­ue of bio­di­ver­si­ty is one crit­i­cal area that needs to be addressed by more com­pa­nies to ensure their long-term via­bil­i­ty. Sim­i­lar­ly, car­bon emis­sions and the road to net zero will have an impact on com­pa­nies around the world. Agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices and man­u­fac­tur­ing could be improved. Bet­ter health and safe­ty pro­grammes can lead to more effi­cient busi­ness­es. The list is near­ly end­less.

Com­pa­nies like DSS, Deutsche Bahn, Pern­od Ricard and Ves­tas are all lead­ing the way in tack­ling these prob­lems. But, the speak­ers agree, to tru­ly take a lead­er­ship role in sus­tain­abil­i­ty inno­va­tion, com­pa­nies need to eval­u­ate their progress, unite their busi­ness behind sus­tain­able objec­tives and con­sid­er sus­tain­abil­i­ty as a long-term, strate­gic process every organ­i­sa­tion can ben­e­fit from.

For Vas­sal­lo, com­mu­ni­cat­ing about this process is cru­cial. He says the time is right for change to take place: “The chal­lenge is exe­cu­tion. I think that we can real­ly make a dif­fer­ence, but it’s more about doing the work and talk­ing about that. This is real­ly the right time to move the nee­dle.”

Cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty strate­gies can make a dif­fer­ence – not only to the envi­ron­ment and to com­mu­ni­ties – but to a company’s abil­i­ty to oper­ate in the long term. Those organ­i­sa­tions that can make sus­tain­abil­i­ty a pos­i­tive con­trib­u­tor to their suc­cess will be those that lead the way in sus­tain­able busi­ness.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it impactforgood.eu

Pro­mot­ed by DuPont Sus­tain­able Solu­tions