All organizations wish to be seen as taking sustainability issues seriously, some have adopted a strong organizational mindset towards sustainability issues, whilst some have leapt on the Sustainability bandwagon as it passes through the City, not wanting to be perceived as being behind their competitors. Regardless of the motive, it is beholden for all sustainability leaders to set sustainability goals that improve corporate sustainability performance in strategic ways that links an organization’s sustainability purpose to its achievable business objectives.
When it comes to setting environmental sustainability, CSR or ESG goals, those organizations play-acting at sustainability can often be exposed by the goals they set, and to an expert eye by quickly assessing the strength of their leadership’s ambition and commitment. How does your business come across in its market sector?
Ambition and drive are the lifeblood of companies, and it is to be expected that sustainability managers must push and nudge their organizational culture as they lay down more sustainable business models. We fully support this, in fact, regular readers and clients will recognize this as a regular theme in our blogs and leadership coaching, as well as two other mantras – ‘Prioritize’ and ‘Make your actions business relevant’ for growth. Sustainability leaders must add to the bottom line as much as the initiatives they pursue!
We all have a different sense of purpose and goals when it comes to business sustainability and the quest for a better world—from reducing our impact on natural resources to cutting the adverse impacts on people and their environments from overly competitive supply chains. To turn our purpose into realities, we set personal and internal organizational goals. Unfortunately, many organizations are extremely poor at converting purpose into goals, worse we often see sustainability initiatives lose traction and support within their businesses, and outwardly reflect poorly on the corporate brand. There are many reasons for this, but high on our list is a feeling that traditionally companies often set out poor corporate sustainability goals.
In your career, have you or your manager ever recycled or adapted last year’s performance goals? No? Most organizations are guilty of making the same resolutions repeatedly without any real sense of drive or ambition. Maybe you are on the receiving end of a long set of goals cascading down from the CEO, by the time they reach you they have lost steam, or have transformed into banal business-speak. Maybe the delivery-by date was so short-term, or so lacked resources, that the goal just cannot be delivered. The sad reality is that many annual corporate goals do not deliver the realities they promise. I recommend that all sustainability managers read an article by Martin Hirt on The Hockey Stick Effect, and the challenge for any company to keep upward momentum on what he terms the ‘Power Curve’. So as a sustainability leader how do you protect and develop your purpose? It is possible to set effective sustainability goals and to keep forging ahead. The key is to create adhesive corporate goals with just the right amount of traction to force internal progression. But what errors do you need to avoid when setting Sustainability Goals?
When creating compelling Sustainability Goals, start by avoiding these three corporate elephant traps:
Too often I perceive undemanding sustainability goals, particularly when an organization is not sure of what its sustainability value proposition or purpose is. Their reports drop a tier in ambition, focus on the simple and pull back from actively committing to what are likely to be their priority business issues. I suspect that the sustainability leadership or corporate executives have committed in principle to adopt a more sustainable business model but are holding back from active involvement. Lacking this commitment, the goals have been set at lower managerial levels that have settled for less ambitious targets as they lack the resources and support to drive harder internal goals.
For a sustainability goal to make a positive corporate impact, it must stretch the organization and impact positively on corporate culture. This means that it must for something and have enough energy to break free of internal corporate inertia. Try this simple test – If you know exactly how you will achieve that sustainability goal, you are probably not reaching up high enough. Staying within your corporate comfort zone is unlikely to drive business benefits and garner internal commitment. On the other hand, working towards a difficult priority-based goal not only increases buying by aligning with business strategy but also the likelihood of achieving it. Organizational motivation and commitment take a step up. So the message is, playing it safe may make for good internal political sense but it rarely delivers organization-wide benefit.
Sometimes goals written by internal committees break free of the banality and lack of challenge such groups often impose on organizational goals, instead, a group or an individual sustainability manager (or a marketing/CSR specialist) can set goals that sound impressive but are impossible to achieve and do not align with the organization’s true sustainability priorities. Sustainability goals should always be ambitious, but not flat-out stupid. If they are questionable they will fail to inspire your organization and, worse, they can position a business for failure. Setting well-meaning, but ultimately delusional sustainability goals happens when a sustainability manager or corporate body is not being honest with (their self) itself. Talking over potential sustainability goals with the teams fated to deliver them can help us find blind spots and possible barriers to delivery. But keep in mind the question raised in the paragraph above:
If you know exactly how you will achieve a sustainability goal, you are probably not reaching up high enough.
At other times, our own sustainability purpose can divert from the organization’s priorities, and we are tempted to say, ‘these are my sustainability goals?’ or ‘what I want the business to do’ too many times. Being a sustainability leader demands that you have ambition for your organization’s continued progress, but being too ambitious at the cost of business realities can be a route to disaster.
The key to successful goal achievement within your personal and corporate sustainability agenda is to avoid setting both ‘comfort zone’ goals and fantasy goals. Instead, aim for somewhere in between. That’s the ideal influencing zone. Set goals that are deliberately uncomfortable. You will know that you are getting close when your colleagues start to buy into the potential business benefits or accept the challenges and become emotionally engaged in how to deliver the route map for delivery, and how they can adopt the proposed goal into their team goals.
The third piece of advice is not to lose sight of what you are trying ultimately to achieve in purpose, especially if your goal is to be viewed as a socially responsible and altruistic organization. Many ambitious sustainability goal strategies run the risk of being formulated internally and thus of adopting an internal bias. In essence an ‘insider view’ – views formulated by the worldview, societal norms and decision-making culture within an organization. Using facts and adopting viewpoints that rely solely on the experience of the goal setters. In many business situations, this can be a valuable decision-making approach, however, the issue with sustainability goals is that an organization may be addressing new concepts that depart from existing corporate experience and knowledge.
As a case point, I was once involved in a corporate debate to promote extensive tree planting in Ethiopia, the programme was to follow in the footsteps of other ‘successful’ carbon offsetting schemes. The discussion was positive and there was a high degree of support in the boardroom for doing what seemed ‘good’. Then somebody asked the question ‘What do the local people think of these schemes?’ No one knew! Subsequently, we found out that the land to be planted was owned by a large local landowner, with few benefits for the local community. Mono-culture planting of trees was supplying temporary employment opportunities, but it was also having a disruptive impact on local agriculture and families were being evicted off land that was now more valuable in terms of an intangible corporate goal of carbon offsetting!
Listening to a local spokesperson was a sobering experience, and a reality check to what had been perceived as an ambitious sustainability goal. Our first assumptions had led us to omit the views of those with greater knowledge of the likely outcomes and to base our decision-making in the hands of those who had a vested interest in providing carbon credits. So, take a step back when setting sustainability goals to consider external ramifications and whether you are in receipt of all the necessary data to truly deliver sustainable developments. There are times when organizations require an external view to reality check likely outcomes!
Because sustainability forces organizational leaders to address earlier areas of business practice in the wider light or ESG or responsible management practices, debates centred around an organization’s sustainability purpose and the future direction of its sustainability goals are a necessary practice. In this light, discomfort is a positive indicator that the right questions are being asked and that when an organization has the maturity to stretch itself beyond its comfort zone, it is beginning to adapt towards a more performance-based sustainability culture but also position itself in a stronger position to survive in the future.
If you need help defining your sustainability purpose, prioritizing your sustainability issues, and setting compelling sustainability goals aligned to business strategy, contact us for further help and support. With an active approach to organizational leadership training and coaching that is flexible, systematic, and proven, you will take that next step towards setting authoritative goals to ratchet up corporate performance. Speak to us today and develop the sustainability leadership and management tools you need to build your desired business transformation.
Ross Marshall
CEO, leading Green
This article was first published in Linked In