Why smart businesses can’t shift sustainability beyond the coffee cups and printer paper - and how to cut through the noise
The thing I hear most often when talking about corporate sustainability is “we want to focus on more than just the coffee cups and printer paper”. Honey, I get ya! As an individual deeply committed to making large systems change in sustainable behaviour, I understand the frustration of having meeting after meeting that gets us no closer to big action. In fact, trying to shift the dial beyond just the coffee cups and printer paper often feels a bit like the 400m-long ever ledger jammed in the Suez Canal in 2021.
So why is it that companies struggle to move from talking about sustainability to taking meaningful strategic action?
Circular discussions (and not the circular economy kind)
A 2015 Harvard Business Review article summed it up nicely stating “although many companies embrace this broad vision of CSR, they are hampered by poor coordination and a lack of logic connecting their various programs”. To try and cut through the noise, organisations have workshops and meetings, design frameworks and strategies but still do not gain clarity or momentum about where they are going or what to do first.
What if corporate sustainability was simple?
I've come to notice some similar themes and patterns across several different organisations' plans, policies, strategies and frameworks (depending on what they call it). Each business articulates it differently, but ultimately I found all businesses had 4 simple steps that were embedded across their strategic documents. These 4 steps make the foundations for corporate sustainability.
THE 4 STEPS
STEP 1: Get clear on your sustainability values
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else” - Laurence J Peter
You might end up somewhere else, or it may take a really long time to get there! Therefore, the first step is to understand what your business cares about, agree to focus your sustainability efforts and confirm buy-in from staff on your direction of travel. Although it’s tempting to try and support everything, it’s important to narrow our focus down. We all know that if we try and do everything, we often end up doing nothing. So, let’s be clever and purposeful and pick the things we can have the most impact on.
We already know what problems exist in the world, so this conversation is not about trying to unpick the problems, but about identifying which problems your business will address. The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide the perfect framework to consider what outcomes you may like to focus on as a part of your business.
STEP 2: Get honest about where you’re at
“We can only know where we are going if we know where we have been” - Maya Angelou
“What gets measured gets managed” - Peter Drucker
In baseball, depending on which base you are standing at, will determine the direction you run. This is the same in sustainability. Depending on what you have already done, and what actions you have taken will determine what you do next and where you should focus your efforts. Setting a baseline and measuring your current state will show you if your actions are having a tangible impact and moving you forward over time.
The book and movie Moneyball is a prime example of how we not only need to measure, but we need to measure the right thing. The key theory of Billy Beane in Moneyball was not picking players for the Oakland Athletics based on the traditional metrics of runs batted in, stolen bases and batting average but rather focusing on the more statistical player metrics of on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
Now I’m a sustainability expert not a baseball expert, but the lesson is the same - measuring the right thing can really change the game! In sustainability there are three things that ought to get measured:
OUTPUTS - this refers to the things, systems and processes that you put in place to deliver sustainability. For example, number of actions taken this year, number of staff that have taken a sustainability education course, have you got a sustainability policy or strategy in place.
OUTCOMES - this refers to the specific sustainability metrics you are trying to shift the dial on. For example: a reduction in corporate emissions, the number of staff on the living wage, number of women in senior leadership roles, dollars spent with diverse businesses in your supply chain, volunteer hours contributed, reduction in corporate waste.
IMPACT - impact measurement is much, much harder to prove and to measure. What this considers is the long term effect of your outcomes, for example a city-wide reduction in inequality, a reduction in net carbon emissions or an improvement in literacy rates leading to further employment. Although important, impact measurement should not be focused on in the absence of other measurement. It is also not something that can be done by one business alone and most definitely should not get in the way of taking action.
STEP 3: Take action
“You’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your head” - Irish proverb
“You don’t need to be ready, you just need to start. Messy action is better than no action” - Unknown
“What matters most is how well you understand your flywheel and how well you execute on each component over a long series of iterations.” - Jim Collins
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together” - Vincent Van Gogh
Why the coffee cups are important
This is where the coffee cups come to the party! Take a look at the Wānaka community and their Single Use Cup free (SUCfree) campaign. I recently learnt that the community has shifted from about 20% of its local people from using reusable coffee cups to about 70% since the start of the campaign. This level of buy-in is incredible and has generated a huge culture shift that has inspired and propelled other movements within the town.
Like they do in Wānaka, the important thing for your business is that when focussing on the coffee cups, it is part of a bigger sustainability vision and movement going on in the background.
There are three areas for corporate sustainability action:
Your office, sites, buildings and assets
Your procurement and supply chain partners
Your staff, philanthropy and giving
In each area, we can all start to take step after step towards more sustainable behaviour aligned to the outcomes identified in Step 1 and that will support traction against metrics in Step 2. Each step (even the small ones) is important and gets the flywheel turning.
STEP 4: Systems for success
The final stage is about setting your business up for long term success. We need to have ongoing accountability, check-in's and culture building for sustainable practices to last. There is no silver bullet, so we need to continually be assessing and making improvements.
There are several things that can be considered as a part of your sustainability system and it will depend on your business which ones you do first:
Set up a green team or champions programme - a committee of people keeping the flywheel moving
Deliver regular communications and engagement - this is VITAL. Transparency (both within your company and publicly) is critical to developing trust and getting your stories out there. It helps show authenticity and sharing with others how they can best get involved.
Provide appropriate resourcing - both money and time needs to be allocated to staff for sustainability to be successful. I see many companies corporate sustainability fall over because they ask one person to manage it all on top of their day job.
Embed sustainability in your decision making and policies (e.g. what if your renumeration or bonus system was contingent on delivering a sustainability initiative per year, do your business decisions consider sustainability at each step?)
Book in your reporting timeframes and schedules (for example - when will you review sustainability metrics each year?).
Provide regular staff training and education on sustainability- where can staff up-skill and learn more?
Start celebrating sustainability success with your team - could this be embedded in your meetings or stand-ups, an awards programme, or could you have sustainability themed drinks?
There are so many ways that sustainability can be embedded as a part of your business system, it’s important to find the best way to make it work for your organisation. The main thing is that it filters across a wide section of all business processes, and is simple and easy to follow.
Which of the 4 steps are you already executing in your business? Are there any steps missing in your corporate sustainability journey? I’d love to hear your stories.
