Building the leadership skills needed for the sustainable transition

We are in the midst of the biggest industrial transition of at least this generation. The challenge for business and political leaders is to drive the development of an industrial complex that puts sustainability at the heart of day-to-day life – which will require a transformational change across all areas of business and society. Yet almost all of our leaders (and the planned successors for those leaders) have developed their skills in an environment and playing to a set of stakeholder agendas that did not incorporate and in lots of case even value sustainability.

If you then look at the pure numbers on the challenge itself, 70%+ of the global carbon impact is coming from around 100 companies, for biodiversity that number is around 250. If you look at it from a revenue perspective, around 10,000 companies make up over half of the global revenues. While we have new organisations coming into being that are driving sustainability from the core of their business model and disrupting the incumbents, we are still going to need a vast majority of the 10,000 or so large companies (and in particular the 350 or so that contribute most to the issue) to embrace sustainability in order that we get anywhere near our target of significant change in the next 10 years.

If you look at this from a political perspective, the decision making process is even more concentrated. 12 countries make up 70%+ of carbon emissions, with decision making concentrated at the very highest levels of government.

Even if we take into consideration churn at those levels – governments churn roughly every 4-5 years (all be it with change at the highest level on-going to a limited degree through that period) and C-suites churn at similar rates – we are only talking a few thousand people in each country that we are going to rely on to lead and drive the change. 

Yet we are providing very limited support or training in how to navigate what is an incredibly complex set of issues. At a recent presentation I was delivering, I started out by asking how many of the people in the room, that consisted of a knowledgeable sustainability audience, had formal qualifications/training in the sustainability space. Other than people that had done some of the many introductory short courses, there were only a handful. We are in essence learning as we go along….

While that works for people like myself, that are constantly immersed in the issues, the very people that we need to be taking a stand and driving the change are the ones that are time poor and struggle to get the support that they need. With the huge amount of political, social and economic instability that we are seeing dominating politics and the board room, attempting to blend in sustainability issues is even more complex. Yet these very issues threaten the core of most industries – from having to change operations and supply chains to create the products that customers need in a way that preserves the planet, to fundamentally shifting entire sectors – automotive to electric cars, utilities and Oil & Gas to renewables, retail away from consumerism and toward circularity, to name but three.

None of this is easy – and in many cases may will require innovation and ‘first of a kind’ thinking. We need to provide the skills and training needed so that leaders understand what is at stake (and where to make a stand), how that impacts business/politics in the short and long term and then how to build that into the decisions, strategies and day to day delivery.

I have been fortunate to work with many senior corporate leaders and most are passionate around sustainability and understand the need for change to preserve the planet for future generations. Where they come unstuck is on understanding the scope and scale of the issues and then translating that into action. We need to provide practical support, equipping them with the language and understanding needed to drive change and motivate already stretched organisations to redouble their efforts.

Many organisations are looking at this – from universities to specialist executive training firms. I have been talking to many of these and working with organisations like the Eden Project to pull together an outline for what we think is needed. We have been focusing on three key elements:

• Understanding the broader sustainability challenges/issues (in detail) and equipping leaders to take a stand with the organisation and broader stakeholders on what they will do to drive the sustainable transition. Without authenticity and a clear understanding of what is needed, real change will be difficult to deliver. Getting a broad set of views (cross industry) will be essential here to determine how the entire business ecosystem will change and their business’s role in that change.
• Providing the skills and toolkits to deliver the change – with an initial focus on incremental change. In effect optimising what we are doing today. This will need to blend getting into action to improve business understanding of what is needed and the impact it has on business performance, while embedding change in all parts of business development and governance. While some of the tools will be cross industry, this phase will need to get progressively more specific to tailor solutions to specific business needs.
• Determining the transformational elements of change and how to deliver them. For most (if not all) organisations, incremental will simply not get us there. There will be a need to redesign the shape of the business determining how to build a viable financial model in a world where sustainability is at the core – and the costs of planetary, societal and environmental impacts are built into the business. This will need to be very focused to the specific business – ideating the ‘art of the possible’ based around a business’s starting position.

How this will be delivered is equally important. With the time poor nature of those senior leaders – and the need to create a safe space for that learning to happen – designing a set of experiences and creating access to the latest thinking will be key.

A big part of this will be experiencing what has worked – from corporate change to delivering biodiversity solutions. Using real world, experiential learning to reinforce what has been taught and to build confidence in what can be achieved and the speed it can be delivered. This will include the tactics used to create the change (from small use case-based approaches to transformational change) and how stakeholders were managed through the transition to bring them with the organisation. 

It will also need to blend short intense bursts of practical activity with on-going support and coaching.  

Completing the skills development of existing leaders will not be enough. Carefully thinking through the succession planning process will be key. Included in that succession approach will be the need to identify the skill sets to lead the change through what will likely be the harder part of the transition – the more radical transformation of the business. This may mean simply augmenting the skills development of the current succession plan, but it may require a rethink, ensuring a leadership team is put in place that is capable of driving more radical transformation.

Finally, not only do we need to change what we do, we also need to change how we do it. Political systems and corporate boards run on cycles – and are expedient by the very nature of their design. Examples of politicians winding back promises around sustainability and CEOs focusing on short term, finance focused, agendas that play to shareholders (even when shareholders are becoming more vociferous on sustainability issues) are more frequent than we would like. Changing how we do governance, moving it away from short term cycles, building long term sustainability orientated change into everything from shareholder agreements to cross party objectives will also be key.