Creating an identity for your sustainability strategy

“Plan A, because there is no Plan B". Marks and Spencer’s sustainability strategy has a clear identity that resonates with people inside and outside the organisation. “Plan A” is a meaningful, powerful shorthand for their ambitions, and the term clearly works. But what if somebody less imaginative had come up with this? Would exactly the same strategy work as well if it had simply been labelled “M&S Sustainability Plan 2007-2017”? Almost certainly not.

Don’t underestimate the impact a good designer can make in bringing your strategy to life. When done well, it unlocks future ideas by enabling everyone to share and discuss ideas, whilst acting as a visual cue to think differently when making business decisions.

The concept of sustainability can be hard to define What does it mean to you? What does it mean to your team? The most commonly used definition is that of sustainable development, (Brundtland 1987) “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations to meet their own needs.” It’s about managing resources and the impacts of our actions.

The range of issues relating to sustainability means communicating your businesses sustainability strategy can be challenging. Members of your team may see sustainability as using recycled paper, or turning monitors off. Others may consider the wider impact of; energy providers, transport, packaging, supply chain sourcing, talent attraction and retention and carbon sequestration.

A graphical representation is pivotal to teams understanding and remembering it. It shows how interconnected a sustainability strategy is with your business ambitions and acts as a reminder of the priority workstreams.

In my Group Sustainability Manager role at Bewley’s the purpose of our sustainability plan was for ‘Everyone who’s lives are touched by Bewley’s, has the chance to thrive’. We used a business impact assessment to guide our 4-pillar plan and we displayed our strategic framework in the shape of a coffee blossom flower- linking back to our core business, coffee roasters. 

The visual was used in induction materials, presentations, client tenders and in our Bewley’s for Good group, (our internal champions). By combining graphics and text it enabled our team to influence our objectives in their everyday roles and understand the relevance of what they were doing. It also led to many ideas that we added to our framework as it encouraged more diverse thinking. In a nutshell, by transparently sharing the ambition and tactics it helped integrate the strategy into everyday actions.