If we are to address many of the issues facing people and their environments, such as single-use plastics, we need to place innovation at the heart of sustainability within business.
There are some great media stories out there extolling the steps that companies or brands have already started to take in minimizing single-use plastics. Some are small scale in their impact, but others will have a significant impact on plastic usage, the amount going out the factory gate. Each business step taken will start to limit post-consumer use, eliminate landfill waste and reduce plastic entry into the marine environment. These are great stories and actions that hopefully will become ‘business as normal’ in the future!
The range of alternative solutions and strategies emerging from the business sector is fascinating. The challenge of reducing single-use plastics has obviously released a lot of innovative thinking internally within these enterprises.
So, why had no-one released this innovation earlier? Why had it taken these organizations so long to wake up to the possibility of reducing plastic usage within their systems?
A key business driver for sustainability is challenging and changing established practices. Too many organizations are happy to coast along on the assumption that this is the only way to conduct business, drive a process or use a material.
There is a role for sustainability managers to be more hard-hitting in their professional roles. When working with organizations I see far too many sustainability initiatives standing apart from core business planning cycles with little linkage to financial growth, business strategy, and most worryingly responsible management. Far too many sustainability programme leaders are environmental or SHEQ managers and not part of the C-suite echelon. Their focus is therefore on small scale environmental, health & safety, energy management pr community relationship initiatives as opposed to significant assets management, business continuity or growth accountabilities.
In particular, where sustainability comes into close association with corporate communications, the identifiable “goals” are peripheral to the Business Plan, have separate “initiatives” to drive the goals, and “separate reports” that bear little relationship to the organization’s mission or value proposition. Many of the goals are “impact” goals and are not derived from issues that the C-suite is tackling internally.
Leadership in Sustainability and in innovation both have at their core the necessity to ask the ‘What if’ and ‘Why do we do..’ questions that nobody at first can answer. In all walks of business, there is the need to stimulate debates that provoke answers to problems nobody had questioned before. Many organizational leaders lament the lack of innovation within their organizations, whilst rarely seeking out the company of those who are unafraid to ask them. Sustainability leadership is closely aligned with innovation, culture and change management skills. When practised to its operational strengths as a business tool, as opposed to communication and relationship building tool, sustainability leadership is a powerful stimulus to drive innovation across internal silos and externally through supply chains.
So why don’t businesses harness and seek to create opportunities to release their internal innovative potential? Many established organizations have too many established tiers of management. Their leaders were forced into management duties with not enough time for strategy. This is the death bell of innovation. There is a risk when innovation becomes institutionalized and separates from an organization’s cultural DNA. R&D and engineering groups may be tasked with product ‘innovation’. However, rarely is the entire organization invited to join a trans-enterprise innovation debate.
The single-use plastics solutions now emerging demonstrate clearly that many innovative solutions are cross-departmental in origin. The internal debate has involved a wider community of employees within a sustainability theme. Different players bringing their expertise, worldviews es than normal, it probably brought different players into contact and required organizational silos to interact and work more closely together. Sustainability issues are notable for being trans-organizational – that is what makes a sustainability manager’s life so difficult at times.
But look at the positive outcome of this innovation. Management has challenged the internal workforce with sustainability business risk that no one department ‘owns’ and a collective response has been provided. This has probably had a positive impact on those involved, a clear sense that they are ‘doing good in terms of aligning their values with how they want to behave, a reinforcement of how they expect their employers to behave, and externally how customers and society feel they should behave. In bringing forward their innovative solutions into the marketplace they will have been supported by the businesses’ leadership group, and everyone is feeling good about themselves. An ideal ‘I Win – You Win – We Win‘ scenario that has then pounced upon by PR and Marketing teams as a positive story to take out into the marketplace.
The next step I hope is that these initiatives reveal potential cost savings. The businesses providing data and insights on how much single-use plastic has been eliminated. I would also like to know how many Environmental Management Systems had paid previous attention internally to plastic usage and how many had ignored their external impact altogether…. perhaps for another blog!
What I do want to conclude on, is that there is a clear example of how seeking to enact sustainable solutions can galvanize organizational innovation. In the process bringing forward a new initiative to take out into the marketplace as a sustainability value proposition.
They thought through the single-use plastic’s life cycle of their product, then took positive action and the marketplace welcomes their innovation. Becoming more sustainable hasn’t rocked the boat, hasn’t caused investors to man the life rafts and no one has died of leadership shock by taking a risk in changing direction. In contrast, the staff is feeling good about themselves, their company and what they have achieved. Internally the initiative has probably brought new internal; teams together to solve a challenge and has given these companies a great story to add to their brand and marketplace communications.
So, my Big Question is:
Why aren’t organizational leaders utilizing sustainability more as a business driver to challenge their staff to achieve further sustainability outcomes if the outcomes can only be beneficial?
The issue of plastic waste isn’t new. The five oceanic gyres hadn’t developed overnight, and environmentalists have been raising concerns about Man’s plastic usage and the environment for years. So why has it taken so long for the action to permeate the strategic tiers of businesses?
Sustainability has the potential to galvanize innovation within and across businesses, it provides a positive culture for business expansion and a repositioning of brands within the marketplace.
As business leaders try setting sustainability challenges for your organization to solve – a problem that needs to be addressed or a resource that needs to be reduced! Something that can deliver a reputational, as well as an economic, boost to the brand. An initiative that creates a new sustainability value proposition that attracts consumer attention, but most of all something that stimulates innovation across the entire organization
If you want innovation, give sustainability a try! If you want sustainability, give innovation a try!
Leading Green can provide ‘brainstorming’ workshops for leadership teams and wider organizational groups, helping them address and focus on sustainability issues, priorities, and future pathways that identify their sustainability value proposition. Contact ross@leading-green.com to see if we can help your organizational needs.
At Leading Green helps organizations from the FTSE 500 to community non-profits and family-run SME’s address sustainability and leadership development issues.
At Leading Green, our approach to sustainability & leadership in business consulting encourages our clients to look closely at their own internal leadership strengths and goals. Helping them adopt an inquisitive state of mind and supporting them in how sustainability can support their long-term business strategy.