Find out how companies, nonprofits, government entities and investors can accelerate the adoption of racial and ethnic diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as an investment criterion.
You will learn about
Investor interest in companies with strong DEI practices
The influence of DEI practices on investor decisions
Barriers to adopting DEI practices when selecting investments
“Bright spots” in furthering DEI practices in the investment community
Actions that help investors consider DEI practices when selecting investments
Get the report
Co-Build-20: The Blueprint for a World Post-COVID-19 – RegenAbility, the Future of Sustainability
This op-ed is the result of an unusual and innovative conversation between an exec and a poet, a doer and a dreamer, a Chief Sustainability Officer and a Chief Poetic Officer.
During the lockdown with the world on pause, Virginie Helias, Chief Sustainability Officer at Procter & Gamble, met virtually with author, speaker, storyteller and speech writer, Vincent Avanzi, to discuss a possible storytelling for the world post Covid-19 to build back better for brands and leaders, and to use as a blueprint for the way we do sustainable business in the world of tomorrow.
Please discover a mix of enchanted vision and grounded action as the balance of both worlds. May this manifesto bring hope and be the roadmap for a more regenerative way to do business and to be human.
With over 30 years of experience at P&G in Brand Management and Innovation across multiple multi-billion dollar brands and regions, she is also recognized for her visioning, change management and leadership development skills. In July 2011, she recommended the creation of a new position, Global Sustainability Brand Director, working across all P&G business units and regions. Her mission was to embed sustainability into the innovation, brand-building and everyday business practices at P&G. In July 2016, she was promoted to Vice President of Global Sustainability, in recognition of the work she has led to make sustainability a core business strategy, an innovation driver and a catalyst for a more resilient organization.
She is the architect of the “Ambition 2030” goals, an industry-leading roadmap that is transforming how P&G is integrating sustainability across its supply chain, innovation and brand building. Virginie has received the 2018 Women Leading Award from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and was selected as one of the 25 women shaking up the Climate movement in 2020. In 2019, she became the first P&G Chief Sustainability Officer
Vincent Avanzi
Chief Poetic Officer at The Ink of the Future
Vincent Avanzi is a Chief Poetic Officer, author, speaker, storyteller and speech writer. Former Microsoft employee and twice a globe-trotter, he founded The Ink Of The Future to reenchant the world with poetry. He developed the concept of “corporate poetry” to bring out the soul of corporations and develop the human global awareness around sustainability, singularity, wisdom and harmony. He is the author of eight books including “Harmony and the Genius Spot of Mankind” (Human Odyssey) and “Trouver son Point Génial” (Hachette) and was dubbed an “enlightened leader” by Decideurs Magazine. Recurrent speaker at Sustainable Brands and creator of many neologisms included “CoBuild20”, he is also a consultant on brand identity and accompanies CEOs and leaders on their transformational journey, their storytelling and the art of writing inspiring speeches. “Poetry will save the world and we’re all poets”.
10 Top-Rated Sustainability and Regeneration Books You Never Found Time For, Until Now
by Dimitar Vlahov, Director of Knowledge & Insights at Sustainable Brands
While following the demands of social distancing and stay-at-home measures taken by governments to limit the spread of COVID-19, we are almost inevitably finding ourselves with time for activities we couldn’t quite get to in the hurried pace of life before the virus crisis. The list of things we all of a sudden have time for would, of course, vary from person to person, but as sustainability nerds we’d love to recommend you some of the best recent books within our space. You’ve probably heard about a number of them, maybe you’ve read some of them, but we strongly suspect there are gems on the list you are yet to explore – and boy are they worth it!
Check out our list of 10 top-rated new books dedicated to sustainability and regeneration below.
This book by leadership and sustainability experts Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm provides an exciting and comprehensive framework for building regenerative life-affirming businesses. It offers a multitude of business cases, fascinating examples from nature’s living systems, insights from the front-line pioneers and tools and techniques for leaders to succeed and thrive in the 21st century.
Regenerative Leadership draws inspiration from pioneering thinking within biomimicry, circular economy, adult developmental psychology, anthropology, biophilia, sociology, complexity theory and next-stage leadership development. It connects the dots between these fields through a powerful framework that enables leadership to become regenerative: in harmony with life, building thriving, prosperous organizations amid transformational times.
In The Regenerative Life, Carol Sanford shows us how to fundamentally change the roles we play in society, enabling us to do more than we ever believed possible; grow ourselves and others, provide astounding innovations for our clients, children and students, generate extraordinary social returns, become more creative, and bring new life and opportunity to everything around us. This book teaches us to see our roles differently: stripping away all preconceptions of how things should be done, understanding what our role is at its core, and building ourselves back up to become something new; something grounded, inspiring, resilient, and truly regenerative.
Lo―TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. It is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems.
With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and four chapters spanning Mountains, Forests, Deserts, and Wetlands, this book explores thousands of years of human wisdom and ingenuity from 18 countries including Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Iraq, India, and Indonesia. We rediscover an ancient mythology in a contemporary context, radicalizing the spirit of human nature.
Thirty years
ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change.
Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to
play itself out.
Bill
McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature — issued in dozens of
languages and long regarded as a classic — was the first book to alert us to
global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change
shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like
artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of
human experience.
Falter tells
the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps
us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience
in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate
change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment
in human history — and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the
civilization our forebears built slip away.
The Great
Pivot bridges the gap between three seemingly disparate issues – (1) people’s
hunger for meaningful work, (2) the fact that our energy, transportation and
foods systems are unsustainable, and (3) the need for more green investment
opportunities, broadly speaking. The book provides a blueprint for dozens of
projects in energy, transportation, circular business models, food waste
reduction, and the restoration of nature – which together can create millions
of new meaningful jobs. We have the talent and the resources – now we just need
to commit to it and roll up our sleeves.
An “epoch-defining
book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington
Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a
meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways
that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology
and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the
trajectory of human progress.
The
Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the
world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime,
the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s.
Even leading
capitalists admit that capitalism is broken. Green Swans is a manifesto for
system change designed to serve people, planet, and prosperity. In his
twentieth book, John Elkington–dubbed the “Godfather of
Sustainability”–explores new forms of capitalism fit for the twenty-first
century.
If Nassim
Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swans” are problems that take us
exponentially toward breakdown, then “Green Swans” are solutions that
take us exponentially toward breakthrough. The success–and survival–of
humanity now depends on how we rein in the first and accelerate the second.
Green Swans
draws on Elkington’s first-hand experience in some of the world’s best-known boardrooms
and C-suites. Using case studies, real-world examples, and profiles on emergent
technologies, Elkington shows how the weirdest “Ugly Ducklings” of
today’s world may turn into tomorrow’s world-saving Green Swans.
Something
incredible is happening within our economy. Beyond the failures of state socialism
and the excesses of corporate capitalism, a realistic alternative is emerging.
In How on Earth, Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton chart the rise of
businesses that place purpose ahead of profit, and outline how the advantages
these businesses hold in the marketplace pave the way to an entirely different
economic system, focused on addressing human need, not greed.
At the heart
of this monumental transition lies the changing nature of not-for-profit (NFP)
organizations. Contrary to popular notions of non-profit inefficiency,
unaccountability, and dependence on donors, the 21st century NFP is proving
highly efficient, transparent, and increasingly self-funded.
Distinguishing
themselves from B corps and ethical/green shareholder companies by always
reinvesting rather than privatizing profits, NFP enterprises around the world
are proliferating and succeeding in areas as diverse as construction,
manufacturing, software development, food catering, and retail.
The original
Mid-Course Correction, published 20 years ago, became a classic in the
sustainability field. It put forth a new vision for what its author, Ray C.
Anderson, called the “prototypical company of the 21st century”―a restorative
company that does no harm to society or the environment. In it Anderson
recounts his eureka moment as founder and leader of Interface, Inc., one of the
world’s largest carpet and flooring companies, and one that was doing business
in all the usual ways. Bit by bit, he began learning how much environmental
destruction companies like his had caused, prompting him to make a radical
change. Mid-Course Correction not only outlined what eco-centered leadership
looks like, it also mapped out a specific set of goals for Anderson’s company
to eliminate its environmental footprint.
Those goals
remain visionary even today, and this second edition delves into how Interface
worked toward making them a reality, birthing one of the most innovative and
successful corporate sustainability efforts in the world. The new edition also
explores why we need to create not only prototypical companies, but also the
prototypical economy of the twenty-first century. As our global economy shifts
toward sustainability, challenges like building the circular economy and
reversing global warming present tremendous opportunities for business and
industry.
The next big human pandemic—the next disease cataclysm, perhaps on the scale of AIDS or the 1918 influenza—is likely to be caused by a new virus coming to humans from wildlife. Experts call such an event “spillover” and they warn us to brace ourselves. David Quammen has tracked this subject from the jungles of Central Africa, the rooftops of Bangladesh, and the caves of southern China to the laboratories where researchers work in space suits to study lethal viruses. He illuminates the dynamics of Ebola, SARS, bird flu, Lyme disease, and other emerging threats and tells the story of AIDS and its origins as it has never before been told.
Dimitar Vlahov
Director of Knowledge & Insights Sustainable Brands
A letter from KoAnn Skrzyniarz, CEO & Founder of Sustainable Brands.
I am just back from 3 weeks of travel in the US and Asia. Needless to say, in light of the unfolding coronavirus crisis, it’s been one of the most insightful periods of travel in my career, and I was continually reminded in new ways what leadership looks like in today’s changing world.
While in Asia, I enjoyed participating in our 4th annual event in Japan, where we convened a record 3,300 business and civic leaders for a rapidly maturing conversation about the power of brand to lead the way to a better world — all in the shadow of the Diamond Princess as it waited to disembark its passengers. Fortunately, after 3 weeks since the event, there have been no cases of anyone in attendance having become ill or testing positive for the virus.
At our 6th annual conference in Thailand, we explored the potential for local brand solutions and action in response to the global challenges we face. We established a top chef led skills training program in a local prison, got out in the countryside with the bees, explored new sustainable fishing techniques being deployed in a local fishing village, and progressed our Sustainable Seafood manifesto established by participants last year by setting up a certification program for the region in partnership with a local university.
Record attendance and the depth of ‘engagement to action’ we saw at these events both signal the growing recognition, importance and power of our work together.
Back in the US, I travelled to Minneapolis for 2 days of deep discussion with two of our corporate member companies. While there, I had the opportunity to participate in a strategic planning session as well as co-lead a meeting for 200 leaders across one organization that is involved in unfolding a stepped up and far more progressive sustainable brand/business strategy than we’ve seen to date.
During my travels, I’ve had the opportunity to be in conversation with dozens of global brand companies, agencies, consultancies, government officials and NGO’s — all of whom are recognizing two things: 1) global social and environmental challenges are having an increased impact on business stability, and 2) as a result, these issues need to take a more central place in discussions about business and brand strategy — not someday in the future, but today. And they are! More than ever, I’m seeing the companies we engage with recognize both the path — and the opportunity embedded in taking the lead through smart strategic planning and action to align all parts of our economic ecosystem around the needs of the future for all.
Over the past 15 years, our community has been dubbed the “Home for Courageous Optimists”. Many have told us that in SB, they have found their tribe. We are, collectively, a diverse community of resilient brand leaders who have realized for some time now that the future is calling. We recognize that the challenge of leadership is to craft new rules of the game — to reset the system so that those brands that are optimized to deliver regenerative products and services, to help build regenerative communities and to support regenerative lifestyles and families will be the brands that win in the marketplace of tomorrow.
As a community, we thrive by coming together to share in a fully immersive experience, rich with presentations and dialogues from adjunct thinkers and practitioners — but also with hands on training and interactive simulations — hot seat debates and a lot of fun and games. We aim to help inspire and equip –and to help you build relationships that stick and become the building blocks used to create the new systems and solutions of tomorrow. For this reason — and of course for the sake of the many around the world who are already being impacted, and will be by this pandemic — we hold hope that the COVID-19 outbreak will be fully contained by June, so that we can continue to bring this future creating community together to build on the knowledge and expertise it has been developing together for more than a decade. And we hope you will make plans now to join us — just as we continue to ‘act as if’ by continuing to design a world-changing experience for you in a compelling new venue in Long Beach, California.
That said, in collaboration with our Industry Advisory Board, we are carefully monitoring unfolding news about the virus daily, and are creating contingency plans as we speak in case the changing situation precludes the sensibility of our convening face to face in June. To date, registrations continue on track against our record setting goals, and we are grateful for those who continue to step up daily to make plans to attend.
You can trust we will continue to keep the best interests of the whole at heart, and we will be in touch regularly to inform you of any adjustments to our plans. Furthermore, to give comfort to our guests, we’re extending our standard cancellation policy for SB’20 Long Beach to honor requests for a full refund up to 30 days prior to the event start date, and a 50% refund within 30 days of the event start date. And we will continue to update our plans to best support our collective capacity to drive forward together against our shared purpose together. We will continue to update our website on a regular basis.
In the meantime, I want to thank you for your interest in our work, and promise you that if you’ve come to a Sustainable Brands event in the past, when you come again, you will find a renewed experience that is grounded in the latest best practice and thought leadership. If you are considering joining us for the first time, you will be welcomed with open arms, and quite likely, come away fundamentally changed, as has been the experience for so many who have become part of our tribe through the years.
While the seas ahead will undoubtedly be bumpy, we see a future full of joy and delight. It will not create itself, however. It’s up to us to be the leaders that will make it happen.
I look forward to seeing you soon, to welcoming you to our family of courageous optimists, and to working together to continue to set the pace of brand and business leadership for a regenerative future.
KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz CEO & Founder Sustainable Brands
30 Fearless Women Leading Sustainability and Regeneration
In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8th, the Sustainable Brands team celebrates 30 fearless women leading the charge in sustainable and regenerative business practices.
Janine Benyus Co-Founder of Biomimicry 3.8; Author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
Janine is a trailblazer around biomimicry, a discipline that emulates nature’s designs and processes to create a healthier, more sustainable planet. She co-founded the world’s first bio-inspired consultancy, bringing nature’s sustainable designs to 250+ clients including Boeing, Colgate-Palmolive, Nike, General Electric, Herman Miller, Interface, Levi Strauss, Kohler and many more. Janine’s theory of biomimicry is now taught globally to students who will one day design, engineer and manage our world. Don’t miss Janine on the main stage at SB’20 Long Beach this June – did we mention it’s her only speaking engagement for 2020?
Amanda Brinkman Creator, Producer and Host, Small Business Revolution – Main Street
In 2015, Amanda was recruited to transform Deluxe Corp.’s 100-year-old, $2 billion brand. Fueled by a hypothesis that authentic content will garner more results than traditional advertising, her team launched the Small Business Revolution to travel the US and tell inspiring stories of our country’s small businesses. Today, the movement has gained 11x the reach and impressions of a traditional media campaign with the same budget. Amanda will share how she revitalized local economies through smart activation of collective purpose at SB’20 Long Beach this June.
Carol Cone CEO of Carol Cone ON PURPOSE; Founder of the Purpose Collaborative
Carol is a social purpose pioneer, top-notch strategist, communicator and creative helping brands evolve for sustainability. For over 25 years, she has built lasting partnerships between companies, brands and social issues for deep societal impact. Carol conducted the world’s first research on social purpose, and she has facilitated dozens of studies to inspire organizations to engage with society as a wise business strategy. Don’t miss Carol’s session on new research exploring the changing roles purpose can play in B2B relationships and strategies at SB’20 Long Beach.
“Little Miss Flint” Mari Copeny Youth Activist, Philanthropist and “Future President”
12-year-old youth activist Mari Copeny helps kids embrace their power through equal opportunity. When the Flint Water Crisis began, Mari used her voice to fight for the children of Flint – and she hasn’t stopped since. Since her 2016 letter to President Obama, convincing him to observe Flint Michigan’s water crisis, Mari has helped raise $350k+ through active fundraising and advocacy on her social networks. As an activist just getting started, Mari offers a “we vote next” future-looking declaration to the world: “I’m 11. My generation will fix this mess of a government. Watch us.”
Aria is CEO of DoSomething.org: the largest tech company dedicated to youth activism. Under her leadership, DoSomething.org scaled from 100,000 members to 5 million+ members. As a world-class expert on understanding and collaborating with Gen Z and Millennials, Aria founded Do Something Strategic in 2013. Her consultancy leverages research from DoSomething.org to create purpose-driven relationships between companies and consumers.
In 1984, Eileen Fisher started her namesake company with $350 in her pocket and a mission to create comfortable clothing. In recent years, the company made huge leaps to lead the fashion industry in creating sustainable apparel. EILEEN FISHER is a renowned brand with a commitment to creating organic and sustainable fibers, manufacturing clothing in the USA, and recycling clothes with the EILEEN FISHER ReNew program.
“We don’t want sustainability to be our edge, we want it to be universal.”
Eileen Fisher
Nathalie Green Co-Founder & CEO, Doconomy
Nathalie is a trailblazer in leveraging the power of fintech to enable more sustainable lifestyles at scale. After 13 years working on communications and business development within financial services, she co-founded Doconomy – the first banking service to measure customers’ spending and saving by their negative and positive impact on the planet. Doconomy’s credit card, DO Black, is the first credit card that limits consumer spending once the carbon emission limit is reached. Don’t miss Nathalie at SB’20 Long Beach, where she will reveal her journey.
Virginie Helias Chief Sustainability Officer at Procter & Gamble
Virginie embeds sustainability into innovation, brand-building and everyday business practices at one of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods companies: Procter & Gamble. As Chief Sustainability Officer of a global corporation, she is an expert at getting sustainability, marketing and product innovation teams to collaborate effectively. Her portfolio includes sustainable innovation for Fabric Care (P&G’s biggest footprint category), the design and commercialization of Ariel Excel Gel (a P&G Sustainability Innovation hallmark), and the development of the Future Friendly multi-brand program. Virginie will be speaking on engaging the C-Suite to accelerate brand transformation at SB’20 Long Beach this June.
Hazel Henderson Founder of Ethical Markets Media; Author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy
Hazel is a futurist, evolutionary economist, a worldwide syndicated columnist. As an early environmental activist, Hazel recognized the transition to a greener, cleaner economy and seized the opportunity to create Ethical Markets Media. Her public TV series, Ethical Markets, profiles entrepreneurs, environmentalists, scientists, and professionals who lead highly successful green businesses around the globe. Hazel later published Ethical Markets, a book by the same name as her TV series, which brings to light the rapidly growing green economy through statistics and analysis.
Susan Hunt Stevens Founder & CEO, WeSpire
Susan is a world-class expert on employee engagement and education for sustainability. She recognized the potential of combining social mechanics, game mechanics and content, and seized the opportunity to build a behavior change app focused on health and sustainability. Today, the employee engagement platform, WeSpire, helps forward-thinking global companies design, deliver, and measure the benefits of positive-impact programs such as sustainability, CSR, wellbeing and more.
Naomi Klein Author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
Naomi is a fearless world-class climate activist, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and New York Times bestselling author. Her 2014 book, This Changes Everything, exposes myths that are clouding the climate debate. Naomi’s rigorous reporting not only identifies problems, but also brings to light successful solutions.
Sirikul (Nui) Laukaikul Brand Strategist and Sustainability Advisor at The Brandbeing Consultancy; Country Director at SB Bangkok
After working at global corporations for nearly 20 years, Nui established the Brandbeing Consultancy to advise Thai companies in sustainable branding and systematic methodology. Nui is an evangelist for Thailand’s Sufficiency Economy Philosophy, which creates sustainable development based on one of the most important Buddhist concepts: moderation. In addition to being a strategic advisor, Nui leads the charge on Sustainable Brands’ events in Thailand, including SB’19 Chumphon and SB’20 Chantaboon.
Renee Lertzman Author of Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement
Renee is a pioneer in marrying psychological research with sustainability. Her work explores the role of anxiety, ambivalence, and aspiration in our relationship with environmental and social crises. Renee translates complex psychological and social science research insights into tools uniquely suited for the challenging nature of environmental work.
Gwen Migita Global Head of Social Impact, Equity & Sustainability at Caesars Entertainment
Gwen is a world-class expert on diversity, equity and inclusion. Her sustainability career began as the Corporate Director of CSR at Caesars, with no team and no budget. Under her leadership, the program evolved to include employee engagement, climate action and eventually social issues. Today, Caesars is an industry leader in corporate social responsibility, driven by its People Planet Play framework.
Joanna Macy Author of Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy
Joanna is a thought leader around systems thinking, accepting rapid change, and coping with multi-faceted overwhelming crises. Her book, Active Hope, shows us how to strengthen our capacity to face crises like climate change, the depletion of oil, economic upheaval, and mass extinction, so that we can respond with unexpected resilience and creative power.
As Chief Sustainability Officer at Interface, Erin ensures the company’s strategy and goals are in sync with its aggressive sustainability vision, which was established over 20 years ago. Today, Interface has evolved from doing ‘less harm’ to creating positive impacts, not just for Interface and the flooring industry, but for the world. Erin led the company to unveil a new mission in 2016, Climate Take Back, which tackles reversing global warming, not just reducing carbon emissions.
Khalilah Olokunola VP of Human Resources, TRU Colors Brewing
Khalilah spent much of her teens active on the streets of Brooklyn and Troy NY with what many view as the cities’ most notorious street gangs—Bloods, Crips, and Folks. Throughout it all, KO remained adamant about the importance of education in her life. Today, she is VP of Human Resources for TRU Colors Brewing, where she is the force behind defining a company culture that drives both personal and professional growth. TRU Colors is a business employing active, rival gang members coming together to stop gun violence. Don’t miss Khalilah’s remarkable story at SB’20 Long Beach this June.
Laura Palmeiro Senior Advisor at UN Global Compact
Laura entered the sustainability scene when she became the first VP of Finance, Nature, at Danone. She established environmental reporting for Danone, and her endeavors led the company to become certified as the world’s largest B Corp. Today, she is a senior advisor for UN Global Compact, and has developed important frameworks including the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap and the recently launched SDG Action Manager.
Carol Sanford Author of The Regenerative Business: Redesign Work, Cultivate Human Potential, Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes and The Regenerative Life: Transform Any Organization, Our Society, and Your Destiny
Carol Sanford pioneered the principles of regenerative business. Her acclaimed books, The Regenerative Business and The Regenerative Life, suggest radical new ways of thinking for business leaders. Carol educates companies, like Google, DuPont, Intel, P&G, and Seventh Generation, to invest in their employees and create a stream of innovation that continually delivers extraordinary results. Catch her session at SB’20 Long Beach on translating the science of regeneration into practical business and leadership principles.
Leith Sharp Director and Lead Faculty, Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership — Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Co-Founder of Leaders on Purpose
Leith is a thought leader around the evolution of business leadership for a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. She drives sustainability into the core business of organizations, utilizing a myriad of highly innovative organizational, financial, decision-making and change leadership models that she has opened sourced. Her cross-sectoral program at Harvard University brings sustainability leadership, human well-being, purpose, agility, and organizational design together into a powerful curriculum that ushers in a new leadership paradigm based on idea flow. Leith will dive into regenerative leadership and building capacity for resilience in a rapidly changing world at an SB’20 Long Beach workshop.
Atossa Soltani Founder & Board President at Amazon Watch
Atossa founded Amazon Watch in 1996 when she unexpectedly confronted the Brazilian president on deforestation in the Amazon. Amazon Watch is an international NGO dedicated to protecting the rainforest and advancing the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. She has spent her career tirelessly fighting for a more harmonious coexistence with indigenous people and protecting their rights to self-determination, territories, natural resources, culture, and way of life.
Laura Storm Founder at The Regenerators; Podcast Host; Co-Author of Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st-Century Organizations
Laura has spent her entire career pushing for ambitious action on climate change and making the sustainability agenda more attractive. She is an experienced thought leader around regenerative leadership and organizational behavior. Laura’s book, Regenerative Leadership, provides a comprehensive framework for building restorative, life-affirming businesses. Her work draws fascinating examples from nature’s living systems and brings to light insights from front-line pioneers.
Kate Raworth Author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
Kate is a renegade economist addressing the evolution of economics for the 21st century. Her internationally acclaimed idea of Doughnut Economics, which addresses social and ecological challenges in the context of economics, has widely influenced sustainable development thinkers, businesses, and political activists. Her work has been presented to audiences ranging from the UN General Assembly to the Occupy movement.
Greta Thunberg Climate Youth Activist; Time’s Person of the Year
With a “School Strike for Climate” sign in hand, Greta initiated a global movement by skipping school. Over the past two years, she has inspired millions of young people around the world (and people of all ages, really) to march in favor of action on climate. In 2019, Greta was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and named Time’s Person of the Year.
Solitaire Townsend Co-Founder at Futerra, Author of The Happy Hero
For the past 30 years, Solitaire has leveraged marketing and communications to make sustainability more desirable. As co-founder of the global change agency Futerra, Solitaire advises governments, charities, and big brands on ways to solve social and environmental problems. Her book, The Happy Hero, lays out the principles of how to feel good by doing good, and how we can ultimately change our lives by changing the world.
Lynne Twist Founder of The Soul of Money Institute; Author of The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life
For more than 40 years, Lynne Twist has been a globally recognized visionary committed to alleviating poverty, ending world hunger, and supporting social justice and environmental sustainability. Her book, The Soul of Money, examines our attitudes toward money – how we earn it, spend it, invest it and give it away – can offer surprising insight into our lives, our values and the essence of prosperity. Find her at SB’20 Long Beach, and learn how you can transform your relationship with money and life.
Sally is a world-class expert on sustainable business models and scaling up for system change. As CEO of Forum for the Future, Sally is on a mission to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable future by transforming global systems. She works with organizations to address complex challenges in systems such as food, energy, apparel and shipping.
KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz CEO & Founder at Sustainable Brands
Since 2006, KoAnn has led the global conversation on how 21st-century brands can (and are) delivering new business value through environmental and social innovation. In addition to overseeing direction and strategy at Sustainable Brands, KoAnn has been a vocal proponent of the shift in consumer demand, and the opportunity for brands to respond by changing the way they think of and deliver against their role in society.
Freya Williams CEO of Futerra, Author of Green Giants: How Smart Companies Turn Sustainability into Billion-Dollar Businesses
Freya spent her career making sustainability relevant to mainstream consumers, business leaders, and investors. As a top-notch strategist, communicator and creative, she helps brands from the likes of Unilever to the UN evolve for sustainability. Freya’s book, Green Giants, captures her insights from the field and has been profiled in The Economist, Fortune and Forbes.
Marci Zaroff Founder, CEO & Chairwoman of MetaWear Organic
Marci is a long-time leader in regenerative agriculture and sustainable fashion. She launched the leading lifestyle brand Under the Canopy, coined the term “ECOfashion®”, and pioneered the market for organic and sustainable textiles. Today, Marci is the Founder and CEO of MetaWear, the first “sustainable style” Global Organic Textile Standard and Cradle to Cradle Certified cut-and-sew manufacturer in the world for turnkey, full package organic and eco-friendly apparel. Marci will join us at SB’20 Long Beach to unpack the evolution of regenerative agriculture and its relationship with a variety of industries.
A letter from KoAnn Skrzyniarz, CEO & Founder of Sustainable Brands.
As we launch into a new decade — one that may well be the most pivotal decade in human history — we at Sustainable Brands® find ourselves both increasingly concerned and increasingly hopeful.
It’s clear that, for some, low unemployment and positive stock
market performance in the US read as solid signs of a healthy economy;
justifying continued deregulation, further exploitation of our natural
resources and ongoing pursuit of self-interest above the health of the whole.
Sadly, what’s absent from this short-term view is the recognition that we are living on borrowed resources and borrowed time. In fact, we continue to use nearly two times the natural resources the earth can restore each year to drive our global economy. We face increasingly polarized populations, the acceleration of climate-related disruptions and biodiversity loss, increasing income inequality; and threats of looming job market disruption, stemming from the accelerating capabilities of AI and robotics. Each of these concerns alone, and certainly all of them combined, give us clear reason to acknowledge that our current paradigm of take-make-waste has run its course. And those of us who are conscious of these and other concerning megatrends are justifiably challenged to imagine how we can restore our ecosystems to health and sustainability without rapid and coordinated response.
Thankfully, the global business community is increasingly waking up and acting, both individually and together — driven at least in part by stakeholder encouragement and sometimes even pressure, but also by the courage and force of bold, future minded change makers willing to do the hard work of paving the path to better brands and business. Despite governmental inaction, investors are moving more funds into sustainable investments. Financial giant Goldman Sachs recently announced a commitment to funnel $750 billion into green projects, advisory services and companies that are addressing climate change and inclusive growth; and the total value of the impact investment sector has now topped $12 trillion.
As people also wake up, more brands are documenting increasing sales of products and services that deliver proven environmental and social value to the world. The sense that purpose is a new competitive requirement is leading more companies today to re-envision their reason for being — to define and begin to articulate a purpose beyond profit around which to rally their people. And the conversation about the role of business purpose has moved far outside the CSR/Sustainability office to the C-Suite — as CEOs, CMOs and even CFOs are taking the purpose agenda to heart. Much progress has been made over the 15+ years since Sustainable Brands launched making the case that innovation for environmental and social benefit would become the key to economic resilience and success in the 21st century.
As more brands rush to claim purpose as the solution to brand risk and growth, the challenge will be to get purpose right. Purpose in today’s context cannot exist at the level of cheerleading for a cause.
KoAnn Skrzyniarz, CEO & Founder of Sustainable Brands
We are by no means, though, on solid ground. As more brands rush to claim purpose as the solution to brand risk and growth, the challenge will be to get purpose right. Purpose in today’s context cannot exist at the level of cheerleading for a cause. In fact, as with the “green rush” of 2007/08, launching a public purpose — absent a serious action plan to authentically and deeply deliver the goods through integrated execution across the organization — will likely backfire. With new solutions providers jumping in claiming to point the way, the undiscerning are at risk — as is our collective forward progress.
Purpose must be rooted in a deep understanding of how a business contributes to the greater good of the commons – those shared resources that none of us own but we all rely upon.
The time has come to move beyond half-hearted promises to incrementally reduce harm, or to incrementally deliver positive impact on non-material problems. There IS still hope that we can right our ship, restore our natural ecosystems to balance; and rebalance our socioeconomic systems to work for all people, rather than just the few. But to do this will require a new kind of commitment — to come together across sectors and regions, across functions and value networks — to acknowledge our need to be the ReGeneration. It’s time to get serious about making this the pivotal decade it must be — the decade we all tap the deep expertise of the thought and practice leaders who have been amassing knowledge over the past 30 years about the material business behaviors and cultural norms that need to change collectively, so that together we can shift our global economic paradigm toward a Regenerative model that will ensure the future of humanity on our planet.
Purpose, yes — but not the trivial, slap-a-new-tagline-on-our-brand-type purpose that some might suggest is good enough to satisfy the trend of the moment. No, we must all step up to purpose that runs deep into the core of who you are, what you do and how you do it — informed by the deep expertise of those who have done the hard work of learning to embed it authentically into the core of business strategy and across the organization. This is purpose that is aimed at delivering a regenerative economy that can restore us back to balance for the long haul.
At Sustainable Brands, we are fortunate to have worked on this challenge with the most informed thought and practice leaders around the world for almost two decades. We are fortunate to steward a global community of these long-time changemakers, who together have forged the deep learning needed to transform both their business and their stakeholders’ through heart-driven creativity, courage and hard work. It is our community that gives us hope in the midst of the story wars of the moment, and we couldn’t be more excited to be convening them in Long Beach to stand firm together in our conviction that We Are ReGeneration — and that together we will activate our purpose-led brands to drive the shift to a flourishing future.
KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz
Founder & CEO Sustainable Brands
KoAnn is Founder and CEO of Sustainable Life Media, producers and conveners of the internationally respected Sustainable Brands community.
Through Sustainable Brands, she and her team lead the global conversation about how 21st century brands can, and are delivering new business value through innovation for environmental and social purpose. In addition to overseeing direction and strategy at SB, she writes and speaks around the world on the shift in consumer demand and the opportunity for brands to respond by changing the way they think of and deliver against their role in society. She served as faculty for Harvard’s Leadership for Sustainability Exec Ed program, and is on the external sustainability advisory council for P&G. She was recently awarded the Hutchens medal from ASQ, (American Society for Quality) which recognizes exceptional leaders in social responsibility and sustainability.
A podcast by Carol Sanford, Author of The Regenerative Business
In this podcast by Carol Sanford, examine what regeneration is and how the term is used in modern society. You’ll learn the most essential tools and principles needed to achieve regenerative business practices and leadership within your organization.
The Business Second Opinion podcast is host by award-winning author, contrarian thought leader, and regenerative paradigm educator, Carol Sanford. Carol is a consistently recognized thought leader working side by side with Fortune 500 and new economy executives in designing and leading systemic business change and design. Through her university and in-house educational offerings, global speaking platforms, multi-award-winning books, and human development work, Carol works with executive leaders who see the possibility to change the nature of work through developing people and work systems that ignite motivation everywhere. For four decades, Carol has worked with great leaders of successful businesses such as Google, DuPont, Intel, P&G, and Seventh Generation, educating them to develop their people and ensure a continuous stream of innovation that continually delivers extraordinary results.
Carol Sanford
Author of The Regenerative Business
The Carol Sanford Institute
Dispelling 5 Common Myths about Regeneration and Regenerative Business
by Dimitar Vlahov, Director of Knowledge & Insights at Sustainable Brands
Whether the new decade starts in January 2020 or January 2021, one thing about it is clear – it will need to be a decade of reconfiguration and transformation for business, governments and indeed human civilization as a whole.
Otherwise, we may not be able to achieve a good quality of life in the decades that follow, as thousands of scientists from around the world representing a variety of disciplines keep telling us.
The multitude of crises we’re facing – around climate, water, species extinction, infrastructure, inequality, migration, corruption, cyberattacks, information manipulation, and governance, to name a few – are not only real, but also strongly interconnected and converging more and more as we go. This is clearly illustrated by the 2020 Global Risks Interconnections Map of the World Economic Forum‘s latest Global Risks Report.
Just a few days ago, as the world had been glued to the
Australian fires for weeks and weeks on end, grieving the death of more than
one billion animals (and counting), the UN issued yet
another stark warning through its Convention on Biological Diversity, in
light of the fact that a million of the world’s eight million species are
currently facing extinction and the global rate of species extinction is thousands
of times higher than it has been on average over the past 10 million years.
Yes, you read that right – species now are disappearing thousands of times
faster than they had been in the last 10 MILLION years.
Enter regeneration and regenerative business.
What is
regeneration? And why now?
Regeneration means restoring and renewing a system – an
ecosystem or any other system – so that it is healthy, resilient and producing
desirable results again. Importantly, it also means improving a system’s
ability to restore and renew itself effectively – an essential
characteristic that comes up again and again. Simply put, regeneration is about
leaving nature and society healthier, better off and more resilient than we
found them. It’s the future of sustainability.
And, the same way sustainability has become a business
imperative in the last fifteen years, so is regeneration now – in fact,
regeneration hides even more benefits than sustainability (more about that
below)! The business case for regenerative business and regenerative leadership
in all aspects of life has never been stronger.
That being said, there is still a lot of misunderstanding
about regeneration and regenerative business practices out there. We at SB keep
hearing the following five myths again and again, and we think it’s time to
have a serious conversation about them and dispel them.
Myth 1: Regeneration
is a luxury. We need to focus on sustainability above all.
Why, one might ask, do we need to go for regeneration? If we
can keep nature and society the way they are now – that is, if we sustain
the current way of life — isn’t that a pretty good life already? The answer
boils down to this: While we (people) have had it more or less good for the
last several decades, on average, that has come at a huge cost – the kind of
cost reflected in the extinction warnings and global risks map referenced
above. As much as we don’t like admitting it to ourselves, we have largely run
the last few centuries based on degenerative systems – that is, systems that
may produce beneficial results in the short term, but undermine and degrade
nature and society in the long run. So no, we can’t just sustain the status
quo, because it is simply not sustainable the way human civilization is set up
currently. Therefore, we need to regenerate first, and then sustain the new
regenerated status quo.
To use a handy analogy, we need to heal back to health
first, before we can talk about staying in shape.
Myth 2: Regeneration is mostly about agriculture and forests, and therefore not all industries need to worry about it.
Although there is – justifiably! – a lot of buzz about regenerative agriculture, the extent of what needs to be regenerated goes much beyond land and forests. Those are vital, of course, and they alone touch a big number of industries, having recently led to initiatives such as General Mills’ intention to convert 1 million acres of farming to regenerative ag, or Timberland’s new focus on regenerative sourcing. However, there are several other essential dimensions to regeneration, including restoring the vitality and abundance of oceans, lakes, and rivers; renewal of companies’ relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, local communities and other key stakeholders; reimagining a healthier balance between material and non-material pursuits and values; cultivating systems-thinking win-win-oriented leaders who pursue the success of all stakeholders at the same time; and stepping away from prioritizing the values of extraction, exploitation, and separation – to name just a few. It’s the kind of systemic reconfiguration and transformation that definitely touches all industries.
Myth 3:
Regenerative business is really difficult to explain and communicate to
consumers and other stakeholders.
Incorrect. A number of brands – Fortune 500s as well as
startups of various types – are reporting that as soon as they tried, they
discovered that regeneration lends itself really naturally to attractive and
easy-to-understand marketing. Just think about the main concepts – restoration,
rejuvenation, renewal, replenishing, healing, nurturing, revitalizing,
reenergizing…! Community, diversity, inclusion, harmony, balance, trust,
connection, health! This is all warm, pleasant, stimulating, hopeful,
aspirational and highly intuitive language that makes communicating
regeneration and regenerative business a pleasure.
Myth 4:
Only brands with really advanced sustainability credentials can practice
regeneration.
Wrong. This myth is based on a common perception that it is
harder to practice regeneration than it is to practice sustainability. Since
most companies don’t have a great handle on sustainability yet, the argument
goes, only a select few sustainability leaders, such as Patagonia, Unilever,
Danone and IKEA, can venture into regeneration. None of this is true. Any
business can start following regenerative principles, no matter how far along
the ‘sustainability journey’ it is. If it’s helpful, think of regeneration as a
type of sustainability – the type that seeks not just to sustain, but also to
restore, renew and nurture. From that point of view, even basic sustainability
actions can be turned into regenerative with the right understanding of desired
outcomes, and from there the right tweaks.
For example, if your company is thinking of making changes
to its products so they can become circular, think about picking the type of material
flow that results in both circularity and restoration + renewal + resilience for
as many systems along the way as possible. Or, if your company is switching to
renewable energy, think about all the stakeholders that will be touched in the
process and whether restoration + renewal + resilience will feature in the
outcomes. The “restoration + renewal + resilience” test comes in very handy.
Myth 5: The
ROI of regeneration hasn’t been researched and documented well yet. We don’t
know if it sells.
Actually, we do know. The ROI of regeneration is at least as
good as the ROI of sustainability – and the ROI of sustainability has already been
shown to be consistently positive and lasting. Why is regeneration at least as
good, you ask? Because it invests in the long run in even more robust ways and
it strips away even more externalities and risks – simple as that!
We will explore these topics, and many more, in-depth at one of our upcoming events.
Dimitar Vlahov
Director of Knowledge & Insights Sustainable Brands
Why Brands Who Exhibit Social Responsibility Will Come Out On Top
by Amanda Brinkman, Chief Brand Officer at Deluxe + Creator
Many brands have
traditionally focused on one objective and one objective alone: driving
revenue. But with today’s more
conscientious consumers, brands are being forced to consider their broader social impact in order to stay competitive. Research from Kantar’s 2020 Media Report reveals that 90 percent of consumers
think brands should be involved in social issues, and they want to support brands they trust and believe in. With this in mind, every organization should
ask how they’re making a positive impact on customers’ lives, and what their
purpose is beyond just driving a profit.
This philosophy of becoming a purpose-driven organization—which I believe will ultimately drive more business and improve a company’s bottom
line—is something I like to call “doing well by doing good.”
In order to be a purpose-driven organization, every company
should start by identifying its brand purpose—taking a hard look at what unique
value it adds and why the brand exists.
But when I think about
truly being a purpose-driven organization, I mean moving beyond just
having a brand purpose and taking what I call “brand action.”
Brand action
isn’t a momentary thing, but sustained action that makes a meaningful
difference in consumers’ lives. Take
Warby Parker, for example. The eyewear
company is committed not to just earning a profit but also donating a pair of
glasses for every purchase through their “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair”
program. This brand action is focused on
alleviating the issue of impaired vision, all while continuing to expand Warby
Parker’s business.
The key to success is taking authentic brand action—which can come to life in many different ways—that advocates for consumers and actively works to enhance their lives. Content creation, for example, is an extremely effective way to raise brand awareness and change perceptions. At Deluxe, we decided that, rather than marketing at small businesses, we would take action. Because we believe small business owners are the backbone of our economy, we created the Small Business Revolution, an acclaimed television series where we award a $500,000 revitalization to struggling small towns throughout the U.S.
Together with high-profile partners, such as Shark Tank’s
Robert Herjavec and Trading Spaces’ Ty Pennington, we revitalize one community
each season—spending time with business owners, helping them understand ways to
improve their marketing, evolve their customer experience, and even renovate
their spaces. Doing so has led to
meaningful connections not just with Deluxe and each community but has also
created deeper relationships within these communities. As a result, this authentic storytelling has
given way to social responsibility.
At Deluxe, we didn’t set out to create a program that
defined authentic brand action. We
sought to shine a spotlight on the small businesses that make our country great
and, in the process, found a purpose that has helped define our program. Now, when we share our company’s love for
small businesses, it truly comes from a place of authenticity – we want small
businesses to thrive; we want to share their stories; and we want to make sure
we are investing in their success.
Creating the Small Business Revolution has ultimately led to
a new brand perception and greater success for Deluxe, helping to drive news
coverage, impressions, social media reach, and millions of episode views—all
which stemmed from a place of authenticity.
Social responsibility is, among many things, acknowledging
the imprint large corporations like Deluxe have on the fabric of society. If we were able to successfully create
brand action at Deluxe, a 100-year-old, publicly traded company, so too can
your organization. It just requires a
paradigm shift and focusing on how your brand can make a difference in people’s
lives.
Find an authentic way to tell the stories of your brand
actions, be humble about it, and brand affinity will follow.
Amanda Brinkman
Creator, Producer, and Host Small Business Revolution
What 1,000 CEOs Really Think About Climate Change and Inequality
by Andrew Winston, Author & Founder of Winston Eco-Strategies
To buy into a new vision of business, CEOs need to connect to it as people and write it into their own personal narrative of how their work fits into the world. They need to ask: What’s my legacy?
To solve the world’s biggest challenges, such as climate change and inequality, the business community will have to play a critical role. And we need CEOs who understand the challenges and want to drive deep change in how business operates. In August, nearly 200 CEOs declared, through the Business Roundtable (BRT), that the purpose of business is no longer just maximizing shareholder profit. But are they ready to follow through?
In September, an important study on CEO attitudes came out, and it sheds light on how chief executives think about sustainability and other global challenges. Written by Accenture and the UN Global Compact, The Decade to Deliver: A Call to Business Action collects insights from more than 1,000 global executives. Published every three years, this report provides a deep dive on how CEOs view sustainability. I found reasons for both optimism and concern in the data; but at the very least, it shows that the BRT’s call for broader view of stakeholders was not a fluke.
It’s clear that CEOs are thinking about where their companies fit into society. Alex Ricard, CEO of Pernod Ricard, is quoted in the report as saying: “I need to recognize where consumers want us in ten years … I believe businesses that are only targeting profits will die” (Note: all CEO quotes here are from the study).
To step back, the underlying context for this year’s report is that the world is running out of time on climate change. Last year’s IPCC study gave us all until 2030 to cut emissions in half to avoid some of the worst outcomes.
The new report revolves around a single idea: We’re not moving fast enough. As one of the lead authors, Jessica Long, Accenture’s Managing Director of Strategy and Sustainability, told me: “The study is meant to be a call to action. Lots of good work is going on, and companies are making more commitments. But current activity and statements without action just won’t get us to 2030.”
The report is worth spending some time with to explore the three “calls to action” they identified: (1) raising ambition and impact in CEOs’ own companies; (2) “changing how we collaborate with more honesty about the challenges”; and (3) “defining responsible leadership,” which I read as the CEOs committing personally, as human beings, to change.
Based on my own years working with companies and execs on these issues, as I read through it, I found myself bucketing some key insights and data into categories: things that were not surprising/expected, surprising, promising and worrying.
Not too surprising
Business leaders feel pressure to build more sustainable enterprises from key stakeholders. Customers and employees were the top two vote getters when the CEO’s were asked which stakeholders would be most influential on how they manage sustainability. Within those stakeholder groups, Millennials and Gen Z, in particular, want the companies they work for and buy from to stand for something. As Patrick Decker, President and Chief Executive of Xylem, put it, “The younger generation is drawn to higher purpose and mission — ‘why are we doing this?’ It’s not purely the profit motive.” And these demands increasingly seem non-negotiable. Mark Hunter, President and CEO of Molson Coors, says, “Our consumers and our customers are looking for assurances that we are doing business the right way. It’s becoming table stakes.”
The other area that was no surprise to me was the tension CEOs feel about the perceived tradeoffs between sustainability and traditional financial metrics. While I feel that this tension has always been overstated — sustainability creates business value in multiple ways — there is a real tension between short-term profit and long-term value. And in fact, more than half of the CEOs say “they face a key trade-off in the pressure to operate under extreme cost-consciousness while seeking to invest in longer-term strategic objectives.”
Some surprising findings
An amazing 88 percent of the CEOs “believe our global economic systems need to refocus on equitable growth.” Concerns about inequality have moved from “Occupy” protests a decade ago to the mainstream, and leaders see it as destabilizing. As one CEO said, “Unleashed capitalism has created extreme poverty, terrible social conditions and a difficult situation for our planet. If we cannot manage a better social transition of the wealth, we will be in trouble.”
In addition, some of the results on how sustainability creates value were somewhat odd to me. As the authors say, “CEOs recognize that sustainability can drive competitive advantage,” but fairly low numbers of respondents cited specific value creation: 40 percent see revenue growth and just 25 percent cost reduction (which might just reflect that the easy wins are gone). That revenue number doesn’t completely gibe with another statistic: When talking about barriers to implementing sustainability, only 28 percent of CEOs cite the “absence of market pull.” That’s a pleasant surprise after years of complaints that the demand for sustainable products is weak.
Promising and reassuring results
Sustainability is firmly on the agenda now, and that’s a victory many years in the making (trust me). All of the large company CEOs (ok, 99 percent), agree that “sustainability issues are important to the future success of their businesses.” (Funny side note: just 62 percent of those CEOs would link their pay to sustainability outcomes). And fully 94 percent feel a personal responsibility for laying out their company’s core purpose and role in society. In another piece of good news, some barriers to action seem to be dropping: Only a quarter of the CEOs cited “no clear link to business value” and merely 8 percent said “lack of knowledge” was a problem.
On the biggest challenge of our times — climate change — the denial level in the c-suite has shrunk dramatically (in my anecdotal experience and in the data in this report). Companies no longer see climate change as an issue for future leaders to manage. BASF chairman Martin Brudermüller says, “We are already experiencing the impact of climate change today, and virtually every day.” The report also notes that CEOs are understanding the need for system-level change to tackle issues as big as climate.
One other clear theme emerged around trust and expectations from society. Three-quarters of CEOs said citizen trust would be critical to competitiveness. Natura CEO João Paulo Ferreira says, “If at any point, consumers learn that a company or brand cannot be trusted, those brands will be heavily damaged.” And De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver painted an even clearer picture: “The time will come when there will be a threshold question that consumers will ask, which is ‘can I trust this brand?’; and if the answer is ‘no,’ they won’t buy anything. It will become a binary question.”
What’s still worrying
Four key findings concern me. First, for all the silver linings, the report’s overall theme is that we’re not going enough fast enough to achieve the Global Goals (aka the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs), the UN’s guidelines on the targets we need to hit to build a thriving world. The CEOs acknowledge this gap. Only 21 percent think business is playing a critical role in contributing to the Global Goals. Dr. Rolf Martin Schmitz, CEO of RWE AG, said, “Sadly, too many people are only talking about it. What we really need is more action.”
Second, business and the world are not doing enough on climate change. While 59 percent say they’re deploying low-carbon and renewable energy, only 44 percent see a net-zero future for their company in the next decade. And just 41 percent are decarbonizing their supply chains. In line with this lukewarm level of action (in comparison to the scale of the crisis we’re in), I was particularly sad to see that just one-third of the CEOs say they have or plan to set a science-based carbon target.
Third, the survey showed limited belief in investors. No matter what the BRT statement says, most companies won’t act aggressively unless they believe investors value their sustainability efforts. And while there is actual movement in the investor community of late, as EDF Energy CEO Simone Rossi says, “There is a great disparity between the public statements put out by banks and investors, and their apathy towards sustainability behind closed doors.” No wonder only 12 percent of the CEOs cite pressure from shareholders as a motivation.
Finally, the CEOs cite political and economic uncertainty as big distractions. Two-thirds said macro volatility is critical to their strategies and 42 percent say it’s reducing their sustainability efforts. For me, this highlights the long-standing disconnect on sustainability — the implicit assumption that it’s a distraction from “real” business, rather than the path to profit and building thriving businesses. And, to be blunt, if leaders are waiting for less volatile times to act on climate change, they’ll wait forever.
In total, this study paints a mixed picture, much like the real world these companies are operating in. We’ve seen progress, but we have serious gaps and a *lot *remains to be done. I do take comfort in the fact that leaders now recognize that we’re falling short, that these issues are incredibly complex, and that we need more real action. These CEOs, according to UNGC Executive Director Lise Kingo, “are not content with current progress and calling for their sectors and peers to step-up and turn commitment into action.”
Perhaps the best finding in this whole report was the third action item that Accenture and the UN highlighted — the personal responsibility angle. I’ve found in my own CEO research that all the business case logic in the world only goes so far. To buy into a new vision of business, CEOs need to connect to it as people and write it into their own interior narrative of how their work fits into the world. They need to ask: What’s my legacy? And that’s a good question for all of us to answer.
Andrew Winston, founder of Winston Eco-Strategies, is a globally recognized expert on how companies can profit from solving the world’s biggest challenges.
