Advocacy

With the start to the New Year, we’re always looking at ways to reset, reinvigorate and drive for better. This can be true in our personal lives but also in the commitments we make to ourselves, the broader community and the planet. At the end of last year, we saw global sustainability leaders once again gather in Dubai to discuss collectively how to address the planetary issues that we have created over the past 150 years. Undeniably progress was made, for example discussions around hydrocarbon curtailment and deepening the understanding on climate justice. What will be critical is turning those words into action.

 

While the governmental level agenda will set elements of the sustainability direction, it is global communities and customers who will set the demand and corporates who will deliver against it. Therefore, a significant part of the ownership of activity must lie with those two groups. What I’m not going to talk about is how we as individuals make commitments, what I am more interested in here is how corporates deliver against the strategies that they’ve been setting in a more meaningful way in 2024 and beyond. A key part of that will be taking the steps beyond setting baselines and creating effective metrics and moving into driving scale sustainability improvements. This has to move beyond the incremental. Doing less bad will only get us so far, we need to fundamentally re-engineer. Industry needs to put sustainability at the core and unfortunately that requires a significant rewiring of core systems, processes, and the way we interact with the planet.

 

A key element to all of this will be around how we build skill sets to do that redesign. Effectively we are asking senior leaders who have limited experience of the changes that are coming, as after all that is true for everybody on the planet as this is an emerging/developing subject, to drive a significant change in business while in a highly unstable economic environment. This really is the challenge of a generation and one that we simply haven’t been equipping businesses with the skills to deal with, not only at the senior level, but also at the frontline.

 

So what does this mean that we need to be doing in 2024. In addition to all the self-seeded work within corporates, there are number of campaigns on going already that are looking at how to build sustainability in the broadest possible sense into corporations, so we include things like the just transition, from a governance perspective. Groups, such as the Better Business Act are already up and running looking to drive sustainability into core business practices and reporting. 

 

However, in my view in addition what we need to be mandating is the development of a systematic approach for training our leaders (existing board and the senior leaders who will likely be board members in the next 3-5 years) on how to deliver the sustainable challenges which they face. That is why, with a number of other organisations (I will share at a later date those who are involved), we are looking to make sustainability skills development a part of corporate governance, both of the executive and the non-executive board.

 

What we’re not talking about here is the development of the skills and understanding around what the sustainability is, and how it potentially will impact the planet. What we looking at here is how to build the business skills needed to understand the impacts sustainability will have on the mission and vision of the business, how that will then define the strategy for that business, drive the planning and the timing of those changes, developing the approaches to deliver that change, not just the what but also the how, and then creating the business cases and associated financing approaches in order to get them through investment committees and delivered.

 

So to the advocacy. What we are looking to create is a broader coalition of the willing from both within the corporate space, and across potential providers and government entities. This approach also needs to help support the development of those in government driving the change, i.e. the senior civil servants. Over the coming few months we will be formalising the approach being taken and pull together how we then drive the process forward. 

 

So what… What we are looking for from you? Well we don’t have all the answers – or in fact in some cases a clear understanding of all the issues – so we are looking for help:

 

• In talking to a number of organisations, we have pulled together a view of the key challenges being faced in building these skills, but that can always be improved on. What we are looking for are your thoughts on the challenges – where are the gaps (funding, governance, etc.) – and how do we get building the capabilities needed to the top of the corporate agenda

• Understanding what has worked – and just as importantly what hasn’t. What have organisations delivered internally, how to build on the large number of courses that are now out in the market to support developing the needed skills, etc.

• Looking at how to put pressure on government, regulators and corporations to incorporate sustainability into the core management skills of senior leadership teams - thoughts and suggestions are very welcome

• If you are interested in finding out more – either to build this into your development processes, or to potentially partner on driving delivery of the solution, then we would love to hear from you.