Your sustainability strategy IS your business strategy

Image credit Jackson Hendry

Through conscious leadership and embedded sustainability goals

As we continue to move through the crisis that COVID-19 has brought, it is clearer than ever that we need businesses that give people and our environment the chance to thrive. Survival isn’t enough. 

In the future I’d like to see the term Sustainability Manager become obsolete. Your sustainability strategy can’t be siloed. Instead it must be deeply woven in to your businesses strategy. For business leaders this will be the start of deep culture change where sustainability objectives are incentivised and treated with the same level of respect and autonomy as traditional business levers and KPI’s. Only then, through accompanying incentives and focus will sustainable business become the only way to do business.  

Historically ‘sustainable’ has always meant financially sustainable, however increasingly a business will not be financially sustainable unless they take a holistic view of sustainability that covers people, society, the environment, biodiversity and profit (often this is summarised as the triple bottom line- People, Planet, Profit) Business needs to regenerate as well as sustain. As with most elements of business strategy, these elements are intertwined.

Understanding the impacts of your business has never been more important. Let’s call these ripples.

The way your company does business; how it employs people, how it behaves, how it sources, how it produces, how it packages, how it treats suppliers, its code of conduct, its advertising policy, its operational commitments, how it collaborates. All these elements make up your business and your brand.

Increasingly it is against all of these measures that you’ll be judged, not just on your latest award or on your most recent charitable donation. Many businesses are realising just how wide their impacts ripple out but also, as importantly, how quickly external ripples can travel in.

A strong sustainability framework, embedded in your businesses isn’t simply about mitigating the negative, it’s about improving your positive impacts and building resilience to shocks and risks. It’s also about addressing the contradictions. Good businesses will restore and regenerate. We can no longer just sustain.

The Edelman Trust Barometer Research shows that customers are increasingly looking to business to do the right thing. Faith in government is at an all-time low and out of the four institutions; government, NGO’s, media and business none are seen as both ethical and competent. Only business is seen to be competent* (good at what it does). Their research shows the lack of perceived ethics in business. Their findings show that “half respondents globally believe that capitalism in its current form is now doing more harm than good in the world.”

Capitalism is the language of our world but we have to make it better. We all have a responsibility to ensure it has a holistic impact that positively impacts the lives of those people who are in the businesses’ value-chain. This needs to be much wider than simply employees and customers. In my role at Bewley’s we agreed on the mission for our sustainability framework ‘Everyone who’s lives we touch has the chance to thrive’.

Thriving societies, thriving communities and a thriving planet has to be the ambition. We’ll help you put the systems in place to know how you contribute and measure your impact.

We’ll support you to spread your positive ripples far and wide.