The leadership team level at company X is not making the moves that might be expected and needed from a sustainability perspective. What to do? How to overcome the blockage? How to make progress without even mentioning the S-word in the discourse?
The answer: Compliance, Risk, and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).
Or in more tangible terms - start the conversation by focusing on legal compliance, Risk and Due Diligence, Efficiencies ... and good old benchmarking with the competition.
No S-word needed. Not a big step for humanity no doubt. But a door opener to many more interesting conversations.
ISO 37000/2021 is a pivotal shift in governance, placing purpose at the heart of every organisation. It’s not just a box-ticking exercise but a strategic framework aligning values, strategy, and stakeholder interests. The key question: Does this signal a new global consensus on good governance, or a warning for leaders?
CEO pay is an ongoing topic. Stock options are a regular part of their pay package.
The way CEO pay packages handle stock options may foster short-termism. Or contribute to remedy it. Some thoughts.
A recent Bloomberg article found: of more than 600 directors and executives of the world’s 20 largest banks, only few individuals had experience in renewable or sustainable industries. Far more had ties to polluting industries: At least 73 individuals even have at one time or another held a position with one or more of the biggest corporate emitters of greenhouse gases, including 16 connected to oil or refining companies.
The irony: it is precisely the directors’ prior track record and experience, one of the very reasons why they got (s)elected onto the board, that could jeopardise their board’s forward decisions.
Regenerative' is really a re-packaging of traditional agro-ecological approaches, with an added notion of leaving the land better than it was found.
And yet - because lack of knowledge runs deep in companies, such lack is compensated by prescribing procedures rather than to focus on outcomes. It is a bit of a deja-vu indeed ...
The finance industry does have its share to play in a ‘just transition’ to a low carbon and more ‘doughnut-ty’ economy. This is a given. I have written repeatedly about it.
In most contexts, the finance industry is characterised and promoted as a ‘driver’ of said transition. But is that really so? After all, the by far and distant most frequent tenor in ESG (the finance industry’s term for all things ‘sustainability’) is predominantly about risk. With that in mind, let's tell it as it is: The finance industry’s ESG discourse is opportunistic. As indeed all it’s actions and views have been, and as indeed the the industry’s clockwork is set out to be and function. Opportunistic.
On March 3rd, 2011, ethical fashion was discussed in a Question session of the UK's House of Lords. Much focus was on human rights & the environment. But fashion is driven by SMEs ...
Sustainability is usually thought of as an environmental issue. And it is. But but not only. It is in fact a mindset. One that takes courage.
This magazine - come out of a creative collaboration - explores three key questions by interviewing personalities in business (Vincent Stanley from Patagonia, Eric Garnier from Choba Choba, Adriana Marina from Hecho x Nosostros, Fergal Smith from the Moy Hill Farm and Andy Middleton from the TYF Group), and by giving space to written creativity of sustainability professionals. The three fundamental questions are: How does ‘creating change’ feel from within? What does it mean to swim against the business mainstream because genuinely the status quo does not work? Where and how does courage come into play?
Consistency is one of those traits that is coveted by business journals and business leadership as possibly the most important ingredient in leaders. For a simple reason: Consistency — whether good or bad, positive or negative — provides the business, its employees, and stakeholders with a known quantity.
But what is often forgotten: A leader is never, ever made over night. It is a life long process. And just like a relationship, the accumulation and significance of small little things that are done over and over again is more often than not underestimated.
There are two approaches on how we can define of what is viable and desirable for our global economy.
In one, the 'soft attributes' and non-physical factors such as consumer desires, lifestyles or distribution of goods are a fixed attribute. In the other, quantifiable, physical attributes - amongst them natural resources - are fixed.
The challenge of boards in this time and age: Recognising that the first - the present - is failing. And outlining the path towards the second.
Knowledge and data are two interesting entities: essential for decisions at any one time. And yet evolving with time. And with that, decisions taken some time ago, possibly decades earlier, may prove flawed – in hindsight.
But what if years down the road these insights are resurfaced and either proven to be partially or fully inaccurate? What if the nuggets are suddenly being used in a context that has shifted significantly since? What if our best intended and best-possible informed statements of the past are called out years, decades later?
A few thoughts on this dilemma.
Expertise is a key discussion topic when it comes to board composition. Not only during the hiring process, but also when looking at the tenure in and renewal processes of board. According to a recent article by Board Agenda: a number of risks that have raised Directors & Officers concerns, and even litigation. These include [...] climate change and environmental issues; the #MeToo movement and other societal risks and merger objection litigation. Hence the question is: How sustainability (ESG) savvy and capable are boards?
If you’ve ever been part of a bigger discourse about how to scale out sustainability economically and globally, you’ll have been quick to notice that by and large you’ll be faced with representatives of four distinct camps of advocates:
The Grassrooters; the 'Setting the tone at the top' people; those in support of government regulation driven by civil society; and the 'Fiduciary Duty Advocates'.
But which camp owns the driving leadership role? Funnily enough, that role does get handed around as if it was a game of musical chairs ... or the proverbial hot potato.
One of the things usually approved at the constituent board meeting after every company AGM are the board of directors' ‘Rules of Procedure’. What looks, and is often perceived, as a formality though, at close looks carries not just formal weight, but indeed formulates – directly or between the lines – the duties of the board.
What do these rules typically enshrine - and what not?
The more time I spend ‘doing sustainability’, i.e. being involved both as a professional as well as as an individual in cajoling, motivating, convincing and helping companies – and the individuals therein - to become ‘better citizens’, the more I realised that … actually, in would not be that hard to do better.
Or let me reformulate more accurately: it is equally hard as many other things in businesses.
Corporate responsibility, business ethics, sustainability, ESG. Whatever the terminology there are three fundamental questions that underpin all decisions, actions, strategies in this regard. These questions are strategically relevant for any board of directors. Because they are the basis upon which fiduciary duty is constructed. And: they outline the framework within which the fiduciary duty of a board is bound to evolve over time.
In the discussions within companies around risk management and indispensable moves towards more sustainable processes and business practises, there’s habitually unmentioned elephant in the room, namely: Where, in all what needs to be done in the corporate world, does the responsibility of the individual factor in?
Europe is, no doubt, a checker board in regards to environmental (and other) legislation and jurisprudence.
While the European Union is is hammering out the different fence poles related to its Green Deal and Green Taxonomies some other countries run ahead with their own locally applicable laws.
One law that is considered 'innovative' since its publication - the French 2019 Law on Energy and Climate, and its 2021 implementing decree - are worth a somewhat closer look. These pieces of law focus - once more - predominantly on financial industry players and reporting. The innovative part is the explicit inclusion of Biodiversity impact reporting. What are the bets of them beeing at the root of change?
In an earlier post I asked: How can business, a business, downscale the Doughnut and make it operational?
In this post I look at three tools that praise themselves of being either part, or even all, of the support a business needs on the journey to integrate the Doughnut Economics concepts. Namely: Science-based Targets (SBTs), the B Impact Assessment(BIA), and the Future Fit Business Benchmark (FFBBM).
What are their fundamental differences and similarities?
Are they indeed a tool to help on the path to keeping within the Doughnut boundaries?
The design stage is usually the longest, most expensive and riskiest part of the chain. Additionally, research has shown that at least an estimated 80% of a product's environmental (and to a lesser degree also social) impact is locked at the design stage into a product. By integrating the product design with the supply chain, companies can compress non-value adding time and costs in their supply chains, increase responsiveness and mitigate supply chain risks – while simultaneously managing (improving) their sustainability performance without added costs or efforts.