Building the leadership skills needed for the sustainable transition

We are in the midst of the biggest industrial transition of at least this generation. The challenge for business and political leaders is to drive the development of an industrial complex that puts sustainability at the heart of day-to-day life – which will require a transformational change across all areas of business and society. Yet almost all of our leaders (and the planned successors for those leaders) have developed their skills in an environment and playing to a set of stakeholder agendas that did not incorporate and in lots of case even value sustainability. 

 

Yet we are providing very limited support or training in how to navigate what is an incredibly complex set of issues. With the huge amount of political, social and economic instability that we are seeing dominating politics and the board room, attempting to blend in sustainability issues is even more complex. Yet these very issues threaten the core of most industries – from having to change operations and supply chains, to creating the products that customers need in a way that preserves the planet, to fundamentally shifting entire sectors – automotive to electric cars, utilities and Oil & Gas to renewables, retail away from consumerism and toward circularity, to name but three.

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None of this is easy – and in many cases will require innovation and ‘first of a kind’ thinking. We need to provide the skills and training needed so that leaders understand what is at stake (and where to make a stand), how that impacts business/politics in the short and long term and then how to build that into the decisions, strategies and day to day delivery. Where leaders come unstuck is on understanding the scope and scale of the issues and then translating that into action. We need to provide practical support, equipping leaders with the language and understanding needed to drive change and motivate already stretched organisations to redouble their efforts.

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Tools provided: 1. Sustainability leadership development toolkit:

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Many organisations are looking at this – from universities to specialist executive training firms. We at the Chestnut Tree Partnership have been working with many of them and working with organisations like the Eden Project to pull together a practical leadership development approach to build these skills in leaders. We focus on three key elements:

 

• Understanding the broader sustainability challenges/issues (in detail) and equipping leaders to take a stand within their organisation and across broader stakeholders on what they will do to drive the sustainable transition. Without authenticity and a clear understanding of what is needed, real change will be difficult to deliver. Getting a broad set of views (cross industry) will be essential here to determine how the entire business ecosystem will change and their business’s role in that change.

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• Providing the skills and toolkits to deliver the change - both the what and the how. This will need to blend getting into action to improve business understanding of what is needed and the impact it has on business performance, while embedding change in all parts of business development and governance. While some of the tools will be cross industry, this phase will need to get progressively more specific to tailor solutions to specific business needs.

 

• Determining the transformational elements of change and how to deliver them. For most organisations, incremental will simply not get us there. There will be a need to redesign the shape of the business determining how to build a viable financial model in a world where sustainability is at the core – and the costs of planetary, societal and environmental impacts are built into the business. This will need to be very focused to the specific business – ideating the ‘art of the possible’ based around a business’s starting position.

 

An outline of the framework we use is shown below:

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How this will be delivered is equally important. With the time poor nature of those senior leaders – and the need to create a safe space for that learning to happen – we deliver a set of experiences and create access to the latest thinking that plays to senior leaders constraints.

 

A big part of this is experiencing what has worked – from corporate change to delivering biodiversity solutions - using real world, experiential learning to reinforce what has been taught and to build confidence in what can be achieved and the speed it can be delivered. This will include the tactics used to create the change (from small use case-based approaches to transformational change) and how stakeholders were managed through the transition to bring them with the organisation. 

 

It also blends short intense bursts of practical activity with on-going support and coaching. An overview of what this looks like is shown below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tools provided 2: Sustainable organisation design and succession planning:

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Building out the sustainability organisation will be key. With skills lacking in most areas of line management (simply because this has not been part of core training), building out the core of a sustainability organisation to act as the heart of the change while skills are developed and transferred is key. We work with organisations to baseline the current organisation, determine the right structures and skills to drive future delivery with sustainability at the heart (from centres of excellence to in line delivery) and support organisations in the build/buy/borrow discussion on delivery.

 

In addition (and aligned to our leadership skills development offerings), completing the skills development of existing leaders will not be enough. Carefully thinking through the succession planning process will be key. Included in that succession approach is the need to identify the skill sets to lead the change through what will likely be the harder part of the transition – the more radical transformation of the business. This may mean simply augmenting the skills development of the current succession plan, but it may require a rethink, ensuring a leadership team is put in place that is capable of driving more radical transformation. We support organisation design and develop the approach for effective senior leader succession - equipping those leaders with the skills they will need for the sustainability transition.

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