5 conversations to have in your business to get traction on sustainability action
Marina Bradford
Nature positive l Climate & Nature risks l Regenerative for Sustainability
This is the monthly newsletter from Bemari where we talk about how to not get lost in sustainability. This month we talk about the key questions and conversations that organisations need to have and make decisions on in order to be able to make the real progress on their sustainability journey.
There has been a lot of discussion around the number of reporting obligations, standards, 3 or 4 letter acronyms and general sustainability alphabet soup. It is easy to see why it may get blurry and unclear which way to go and how not to get lost in all the complexity.
Taking a step back and looking at what is actually important and needs to be in place, may help bring the focus back to the things that matter.
We suggest that having clarity over the following 5 questions can help get traction and bring the focus to the areas that matter, no matter the reporting framework and the latest acronym in vogue. These are conversations the business should have - possibly in the suggested order.
Key to success: the conversation and exploration needs to happen across levels and functions within the organisation. No good sustainability team knowing, but not the supply chain or marketing, and definitely very little value in leaving out the senior management and the C-suit from this step. They should not just be presented with the solutions and asks without building the foundation of the “why”.
2. What is the superpower that we have that can offer the biggest positive contribution? Any business has a role to play as part of solutions. So often we hear things like: “we are too small”, “we do not have resources”, “our impact doesn’t matter when country / company X does Y”. Whilst some of those things might mean that the actions will not make as big a dent as a global multination, it undervalues the power that organisations have within their sphere of influence. Butterfly effect can be transformative!
What are the things you already do that can be scaled up? What are the actions of others that you can amplify? How many people do you touch through your operations, supply chain, customer interactions, service or any other kind of platform that your business has? Do you have land, walls, ceiling or space? Do you use suppliers who also support other businesses? Do you participate in industry forums? What are the things that you are not doing but could do across all those that will shift you just a little further ahead to where you were yesterday?
Selfridges set a target on the proportion of their (aspiration creating) marketing to be about sustainability and their revenue to come from circular business models, Country & Town House 's biggest platform is their audience - so sustainability is core to the content published across platforms.
Key to success: do not confuse reducing your negative impact (e.g. switch to renewable energy) with your superpower (e.g. enable your customers/audience to switch to renewable energy by providing information, incentives and deals to make the switch easy). They may overlap and you will need to do both.
3. Is our business ready for the future? Most businesses want to stay around for longer than a few years. Does your organisation want to be around in 5, 10, 30, 100 years? If so, what might the future look like given the changes our planet and society are undergoing? Which aspects of your business model are fit for that future and which elements might need to be adjusted? It is important to consider that as the context in which the businesses operate changes, some of the conditions for success will no longer hold to be true - and then you have two options: prepare for it or hope for the best. Kodak chose to maintain that digital photography is a fad …
If your business relies on predictable weather in a particular destination (tourism agency) and the weather is getting more and more unpredictable and unpleasant, no matter the marketing - customers will go elsewhere. If your product relies on an ingredient that can no longer grow as it did because it is too hot (e.g. coffee) or tastes different due to drought (e.g. potatoes), or may be cost of water will be prohibitive due to droughts and water scarcity - and you need water to operate e.g. metal manufacturing or data centres. Exploring how fit your business is for the future and the different scenarios that might play out might help you see opportunities to future-proof the business and minimise unpleasant surprises.
Key to success: explore what assumptions your business is making and what conditions need to exist for the success - which assumptions and conditions are likely to vulnerable to change in the near and medium term future? Which ones would make your business no longer viable? These are the ones you want to start addressing now.
Beer companies rely on water, barley and hops all of which are impacted by climate change - therefore reducing water use and safeguarding biodiversity to ensure crops still yield are priority actions for survival, not to “help the environment”.
4. What does growth look like for us? The crucial word is often used, but if you dig a little deeper it is not always understood by everyone the same way - is it growth in revenue? Margins? Number of staff or markets? Proportion of global market? IS growth the same as success? Is growth how much impact is created by the business in relation to the problem that that the business was set out to solve? Depending on how your organisation defines growth and success, it will drive your strategy in very different directions.
In this conversation about growth, it is worth calling out the obvious - there is no infinite growth. And this is not only true because we have limited resources (but a good reminder in case this was not factored in) - if we look around, many businesses start seeing limitations at certain point - limitation due to competition, limited resources, limited demand or market, changes in market preferences and customer affordability. Even humans have limits to how they can operate together in balance and without conflict - this number is limited to 150 people in a group.
The bigger businesses get, the more complexity they have to deal with, the more scrutiny they find themselves under, the more challenges they have to deal with - and at a certain point growth is justified by the need to address/ resource/ finance this complexity. What if the organisations did not have the objective of maximising returns and growth - but instead optimising returns and rightsizing to solve the problem they exist to solve?
Key to success: Explore what “rightsizing” means for your organisation. What would be “enough” in terms of financial, market, customer, pressures your business and people can take upon themselves to still be able to maintain a level of healthy working environment and support people and business? What does “thriving” look like for your organisation and people within it? At which point might the price that the organisation has to pay becomes too much - in terms of environmental costs, level of stress and pressure, impact on others outside of your organisation, complexity and risks to deal with?
We all agree that the super-returns for oil businesses’ shareholders are not worth the climate catastrophe and lives list due to climate change. What is the acceptable cost for growth and financial returns for your business?
5. Do our internal incentives enable/ hinder/ have no effect on the conclusions from 1-4? This one seems simple and logical, but in practice is often left to much too late. When you want marketing team to increase sales, you set a sales KPI and link the marketing team’s reward to the KPI performance. Yet, when a business wants to achieve Net Zero, KPIs of senior team, C-suit or even the marketing team often do not get a mention of carbon footprint KPI.
If a business wants to reduce its contribution to biodiversity loss, but encourages its product development teams to develop new single use products and its sales teams to promote these products in markets that do not have waste management infrastructure, incentives are note only misaligned, but actively contradict the stated sustainability ambition.
Key to success: Engage your Finance teams in the discussion on how incentives can be re-aligned - they are the experts in understanding what makes a business tick and all the balances balance. Finance team are often the ones who will have very practical and pragmatic solutions. After all - the concepts of limited resources, budgets, risk and indicators of success is the language they share with sustainability profession.
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We have been attending and speaking at various events in the last few weeks, and planning for more panels and events in the coming months. Keep an eye on our LinkedIn page for the events - we would love to see you join them and hopefully even meet you in person.
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Bemari is a B Corp certified impact consultancy helping businesses accelerate the just transition towards more restorative and regenerative practices. We can help you evaluate your environmental impact and support your transition to nature positive and regenerative business practices. Here is what we offer and how we do it. We also offer training to support your transition.
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Purpose & strategy for life-centred organisations | Regenerative Leadership & Transformation | Sensemaking | Advisor to CEOs | Board Member | Catalyst & Thought curator
7moMarina Bradford, ❤️ it. Another question, WHAT IS OUR WIDER ECOSYSTEM; AND HOW DO WE CONTRUBUTE TO ITS THRIVING?