Corporate Sustainability with Philip Beere: Recent Episodes
Philip Beere
The podcast dedicated to stories of innovation, and those leading the way to responsible business.
Listen to how others are winning when doubling down on brand activism, the environment, and social causes. Purpose driven brands are the future.
www.philipjames.co
A Roadmap for Communicating ESG and Avoiding Greenwashing Claims Environmental, Social, and Governance Topics discussed:
- The Sustainable Business Handbook (TSBH)
- Co-authored with two colleagues: Mark Lee and Chris Coulter
- TSBH is a step by step guide — 13 chapters of key elements to sustainability as a business
- TSBH how-to manual — Previous book "All In" was tracking the evolution of biz over 20 years
- Embedding sustainability in the core of the business — one chapter dedicated to communications
- The power of storytelling — it can only come after identifying a strategy — Board oversight — and leadership buy-in
- Transparency and accountability are fundamental
- Critical to a company’s success is working through environmental, social, and economic impacts: positive and negative
- Embedding sustainability is critical for people and the planet
- Greenwashing and Purposewashing
- How companies, funds, and investors can avoid greenwashing claims
- ESG claims must have substance
- How to build a sustainable business culture
- Materiality exercise as a tool to improve ESG
- For reporting ESG, should include carbon and water
- TCFD and TNFD
- Collaborations of standards and sustainability reporting and international accounting standard Boards
- Trends between ESG and investment
- Top talent will be attracted to companies that align with a responsible way of doing business and shared values
- What role does the CMO play in the success of a sustainable business?
- Unilever is an example of embedding sustainability; even before Paul Polman
- Unilever’s “brands with purpose”
- Suzano, an example of a responsible company
- Board oversight
- The Tata Group
About David Grayson
David Grayson is Emeritus Professor of Corporate Responsibility at the Cranfield School of Management. He is also chair of the Institute of Business Ethics and of the international disability charity Leonard Cheshire. He has advised businesses and Corporate Responsibility coalitions around the world.
🌎 Website
📗 The Sustainable Business Handbook on Amazon
Co-Authors of TSBH
Mark Lee is the Director of the SustainAbility Institute by ERM and an ERM Partner. Mark sits on the Advisory Board of Sustainable Brands and the Senior Advisory Board of the Centre for Responsible Business at the Haas Business School at UC Berkeley. He is based in California.
Chris Coulter is the CEO of GlobeScan, an international insights and advisory consultancy. He is also the Chair of Canadian Business for Social Responsibility and a member of several corporate sustainability advisory boards, including B Lab’s Multinational Standards Advisory Council.
About Philip Beere
15 years directing creative campaigns and growing corporate bottom lines — with strategic marketing and by crafting engaging narratives.
In January 2021, he exited his executive-marketing role for a 1B FinTech unicorn, to launch a boutique marketing agency.
Agency clients are thought-leaders and innovators, who are wanting to take their brand to the next level with creative content, story-based campaigns, and digital marketing.
Recognized for his work in sustainability, Philip believes purpose-driven brands are the future; he says when doubling down on brand activism, the environment, and social causes, everyone wins.
✉️ philip@philipjames.co
🌎 Website
🎬 YouTube
CB Bhattacharya is the H.J. Zoffer Chair in Sustainability and Ethics at the University of Pittsburgh. European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, Germany. Previously he was the Everett W. Lord Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing at the School of Management at Boston University. CB received his PhD in Marketing from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in 1984. Before joining Boston University, he was on the faculty at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University.
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- Consumer behavior
- CSR — how to understand stakeholder reactions?
- Is there a disconnect between CSR goals and execution?
- CSR success via empowering employees and shared ownership
- Is the company walking the walk? Check it by going to one of their factories away from corporate headquarters
- Unilever and check dams
- Enel in Chile and teaching self sufficiency
- Resilient communities
- Innovation is necessary to sustainability
- Enel’s My Best Failure
- Innovability
- CSO and CMO: dual role at Unilever — Keith Weed
- Nestle: COO as the sustainabilty architect of entire company
- Engaging NGOs as a means for meeting CR goals
- Relationship between CR and financial performance
- Greenwashing
- Where are the sustainabilty jobs for college graduates?
NOTES
CB Bhattacharya
How to Make Sustainability Every Employee’s Responsibility
Sustainability Lessons From the Front Lines
Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value
LinkedIn: CB Bhattacharya
CB Bhattacharya (@CBsuite) | Twitter
Book: Straight Man
Harpic
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
Christopher Davis
International corporate social responsibility professional and recipient of United Nations Business Leader Award. Creative and strategic thinker with a track record in delivering high impact, international projects. Expert in the development of integrated CSR strategy, change management and leading stakeholder engagement. Strong communication skills and experienced corporate communications leader and media spokesperson. Strong track as both a Board Member and Chair of NGO and Corporate Foundations
Responsible for leading the International CSR Team; and developing the company’s strategic approach and overseeing implementation to ensure The Body Shop's performance as one of the world's leading ethical brand is maintained and enhanced
In the interview, topics discussed include the following:
- Philosophy of Natura (Antônio Luiz Da Cunha Seabra, Pedro Luiz Passos, Guilherme Leal) and The Body Shop (Anita Roddick), as rooted in the founders.
- Business as a force for good and change
- The DNA of companies as seeing business as more than profit
- TBL
- 2050 Goals - partnership with Future Fit Foundation
- Regenerative
- Enrich Not Exploit — a first step toward developing Future Fit into the business
- The philanthropy and sustainabilty team at The Body Shop — servicing 69 countries
- How to engage employees?
- Enrich Not Exploit was launched during a challenging time within the company, and criticism came in the form of walking the walk, and talking the talk.
- Securing a complete ban on animal testing
- Employees encouraged to advocate for animal rights
- Activist companies — and attracting talent — sharing beliefs and values
- Millennials and interest in value-based business
- The need for policy and regulation for the environment
- Corporations picking up where politics is falling short
- We must challenge the status quo and short term profits
- Ask questions
- If a company that is not open to be challenged will probably not thrive
NOTES
Enrich Not Exploit
The Body Shop
Future Fit Foundation
natura
Christopher Davis
@ActivistChris
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
Henk Campher
Challenge conventional thinking – with 20 years of global experience, Henk is known as a disruptive and creative expert in the communications, brand, social impact and sustainability space. He’s had the pleasure of working on some of the coolest award-winning corporate campaigns and developing strategic solutions with companies such Starbucks, Levi’s, Best Buy, Timberland, Tiffany’s, REI, Abbott Labs, Samsung, Kellogg's, The North Face, SC Johnson, J&J, Unilever and Nestlé.
He has been bridging the world of nerds (social impact, purpose & sustainability experts) and flirts (brand & communication whizzes) thanks to being part of team Fenton, leading social impact and purpose work at Allison + Partners and Edelman, his time in the UK as an Oxfam campaigner, and his South African roots as an African development worker, trade unionist and creator of the Nelson Mandela initiated Proudly South African campaign.
He was named as one of the Top 30 CSR Pros to Follow in 2015 by Triple Pundit, Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior (he is now a judge for the award) and The Guardian’s Top 15 Sustainable Business Executives on Twitter.
Henk is a regular writer for the Huffington Post, Triple Pundit and CSRWire, a frequent speaker at conferences, and a Twitter junkie: @AngryAfrican. He is a member of Team Net Impact for Super Bowl 50. His Dō Sustainability book Creating a Sustainable Brand: A Guide to Growing the Sustainability Top Line was published in April 2014.
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- Product impact vs. CSR — the crossroads
- Supply chain measured, but overlooking the impact of the product itself
- Three product buckets: makes the world better, makes world worse, or blah bucket
- Most products are not essential
- Ranking is overlooking impact
- The right measurement tools
- Measurement has made us oblivious to how consumers react to products — creative and instinct
- A challenge to corporations is embracing human nature
- Why is Disney ranked 100, and a cigarette company ranked 6?
- The important of honesty, or speaking about the white elephant in the room
- Methodology problem about indexes
- The vision of sustainability at SalesForce — at the heart is reinvention
- The launch of philanthropy cloud — helping employees contribute to the causes
- Equality related to gender pay
- Attention on Inequality
- Best place to work — as a B2B company
- You can’t have innovation if people don’t love working for a company
NOTES and RESOURCES
Henk Campher
Salesforce Sustainability
2018 100 Best Corporate Citizens
David Grayson — Everybody’s Business
@salesforce
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
Dr. Sheffi is Director of MIT's Transportation and Logistics, and holds a dual appointment at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and at the Engineering Systems Division. He is an expert in systems optimization, risk analysis and supply chain management, which are the subjects he teaches and researches at MIT. He is the author of dozens of scientific publications and three books. Outside the university, Professor Sheffi is an active entrepreneur, having founded five successful companies, and a sought-after speaker in corporate and professional events. He obtained his B.Sc. from the Technion in Israel in 1975, his S.M. from MIT in 1977, and Ph.D. from MIT in 1978.
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- Balancing green pressures and corporate pressures
- It is not planet vs profit, instead it is people vs people
- Companies are running the global supply chain, providing the jobs, and are also responsible for a lot of the environmental impact
- How many people will pay 10% more money for a sustainable product?
- Tesla in Hong Kong: government incentives
- Convenience and low cost vs the environment: How many people buy on Amazon? How do you feel about the packaging that goes to landfill?
- Until consumers agree to pay more for sustainability, companies will not change their fundamentals of production
- Companies will save energy, minimize risk, and hedging with a green product line for millennials
- Sustainability is a supply chain issue
- Is Apple or Microsoft sustainable? They do not manufacture anything, until you look at the supply chain impact
- Coca-Cola says they reduced the amount of water in bottling plant, but it takes vast amount of water to grow sugar cane
- Carbon impact of detergent is making the water hot
- Deep sustainability: Patagonia and Dr. Bronner
- Unilever trains farmers who grow tea
- Natura invests a lot in the welfare of the Amazon
- Starbucks has 120,000 coffee growers who they invest in and train
- Is the consumer willing to pay more?
- Maybe not until we have a lot more desires
- Will Shanghai flood?
- Social responsibility, shared values, and making a case for social responsibility
- Supply chain is holistic thinking
NOTES
Balancing Green: When to Embrace Sustainability in a Business (and When Not To)
Dr. Yossi Sheffi LinkedIn
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
A veteran leader in the environmental movement, Carl Pope is the former Executive Director and Chairman of the Sierra Club. He's now the principal adviser at Inside Straight Strategies, looking for the underlying economics that link sustainability and economic development. He serves as a Senior Climate Adviser to former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He was a founder of the Blue-Green Alliance and America Votes. He has served on the Boards of Ceres, the California League of Conservation Voters, As You Sow, the National Clean Air Coalition, and California Common Cause. He is currently a member of the US-India Track II Climate Diplomacy project of the Aspen Institute. He writes regularly for Bloomberg View and the Huffington Post. Mr. Pope is also the author of three books: Sahib, An American Misadventure in India; Hazardous Waste in America; and co-author along with Paul Rauber of Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress, which the New York Review of Books called "a splendidly fierce book."
In this episode, the topics discussed include:
- The clean energy revolution .
- The new reality: climate change can be solved with opportunity, no sacrifice necessary.
- Carbon emissions and food systems: shipping, storage, waste.
- The overuse of the word efficiency: legacy, creative, and innovative maybe better words.
- Cities and their role in solving climate change - they are a source and a solution to the problem.
- In lights of the U.S. pullout from the Paris Agreement, why should there be hope?
- The role of corporations in climate change.
- Corporate alignment with NGOs.
- Branding and labeling of sustainability initiatives.
- The current pace of commitment made by the U.S. for the Paris Agreement.
- The importance of employee engagement to a company’s innovation.
NOTES
Carl Pope
Health co-benefits from air pollution and mitigation costs of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study
Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet
GLOBAL CLIMATE ACTION SUMMIT
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
As Senior Vice President Global Client Care, Dave Pogue is leading the development of socially responsible, market driven solutions to align corporate responsibility principals into CBRE business practices through a strategy called Shared Advantage.
In his prior role as Global Director of Corporate Responsibility, Dave oversaw CBRE’s development, implementation and reporting for all aspects of corporate social responsibility, including environmental stewardship, community engagement and corporate giving.
His leadership has produced an award-winning sustainability platform leveraging thought leadership, service delivery and industry associations to raise worldwide green building standards. Program achievements include development of CBRE’s $1 million Real Green Research Challenge; delivery of co-branded BOMA BEEP training to more than 24,000 attendees; and recognition as the first manager of commercial property to certify more than 700 buildings in the LEED® for Existing Buildings rating system. CBRE has been honored by the EPA as a ten-time ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year and recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council® with the Leadership Award for Organizational Excellence.
CBRE has also been included in the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America and the FTSE4Good Index for four consecutive years.
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- Corporate citizenship and good business
- Stakeholder engagement
- Millennials
- Shared values
- EPA ENERGY STAR
- Building scoring
- Benchmarking
- LEED EB
- WELL certification and Delos
- Shared Advantage
- Reporting sustainability
- Nabers Australia
- GRESB
- Barron’s 100 Most Sustainable Companies
- Corporate transparency
- Green Building Adoption Index - Maastricht University
- CSR
NOTES and REFERENCES
International Green Building Adoption Index
CBRE Recognized for Transparency about Carbon, Energy
Barron’s 100 Most Sustainable Companies
The Global ESG Benchmark for Real Assets
NABERS
Green office environments linked with higher cognitive function scores
Global Major Report - Live Work Play: Millennials Myths and Realities
CBRE
Podcast
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
CB Bhattacharya is the H.J. Zoffer Chair in Sustainability and Ethics at the University of Pittsburgh. Previously he was the Everett W. Lord Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing at the School of Management at Boston University. CB received his PhD in Marketing from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in 1984. Before joining Boston University, he was on the faculty at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University.
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- University of Pittsburg’s Center for sustainable business to bridge academia and the private sector
- Sustainability generalist — positional the role within an organization
- Thought leadership — or curating meetings within companies to find linkages — such as the link between HR and sustainability
- Sustainability and marketing, investor relations, and procurement
- Creating sustainability ambassadors within and organization — taking ownership of sustainability
- Employees are yearning to find a sense of meaning
- Three phase path to sustainability ownership: incubate is when the CEO and executive team comes together finds common ground regarding sustainability, to entice employees or get them engaged with sustainability initiatives, and entrench means acting in a sustainable way becomes routine.
- Reporting progress is important as a means to inspire employees
- Employees must be empowered through training: incentives, promotions, fulfillment, celebration
- A company’s purpose is almost always linked to sustainability
- Expanding ownership means it is not “our company”, instead it is “our planet”.
- When an organization has a sense of purpose, it comes to life
- Marks and Spencer documents sustainability knowledge
- Culture and strategy must work in tandem
Intent without the ability to mobilize employees makes it difficulty to make sustainability goals succeed - Many people want to work for a higher purpose, not solely financial
- Shared understanding of the meaning of sustainability is important for each person in the organization
- Goals must be clearly defined and articulated
- Sustainability must engage all parts of an organization
- Unilever is the third most looked up company on LinkedIn after Google and Apple — Unilever is also a sustainability leader
NOTES
Book order info: Small Actions, Big Difference
Center for Sustainable Business
Small Actions Big Difference
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives.
Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations. Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
Alex Castro Pérez is currently heading IKEA Home Solar & Energy Services, the business unit on a mission to accelerate the global transition to affordable clean energy. He also leads sustainable innovation & corporate business development, related strategic investments and partnerships.
Before joining IKEA, Alex headed global functions across R&D, Engineering and Supply Chain for leading multinationals in the Food Processing & Packaging, Medical Device, and Automotive industries. His experience also includes seeding and advising start-ups in different sectors.
In this episode the following topics are discussed:
- Sustainability and innovation
- Why is IKEA in the market of residential solar
- The better everyday life for the people
- People and planet positive
- Climate action starts at home
- Soft cost acquisition in home solar
- Systemized and make the customer journey more simple when buying solar
- Automize the buying process with transparency and engagement
- Breadth and depth of understanding life at home and the solution of helping people lead a more sustainable life
- Pricing with transparency
- Installation booking made simple and un-intrusive
- Why do people buy solar?
- Creating a clean energy movement
- IKEA’s energy goals for 2030 — becoming climate positive
- The IKEA LED story
- The IKEA work culture
About the Ingka Group:
Ingka Group (Ingka Holding B.V. and its controlled entities) is one of 11 different groups of companies that own and operate IKEA sales channels under franchise agreements with Inter IKEA Systems B.V. Ingka Group has three business areas: IKEA Retail, Ingka Investments and Ingka Centres. It is the world’s largest home furnishing retailer operating 367 IKEA stores in 30 markets. These IKEA stores had 830 million visits last year and 2.35 billion visits www.IKEA.com. Ingka Group operates business under the IKEA vision, to create a better everyday life for the many people by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
John is one of the world’s leading authorities on sustainable development and developed the ‘triple bottom line’ business strategy. He is the author or co-author of 50 published reports, thousands of articles, and 19 books, including the no. 1 bestselling The Green Consumer Guide (1988).
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- 2019 is the 25th anniversary of the TBL
- People — Planet — Profit
- Accounting vs Purpose
- System change — not the accounting
- Double entry bookkeeping
- 6000 companies are engaging in sustainability reporting
- Branding and advertising — misleading with green
- HBR says this is first time any management concept has been recalled
- Social entrepreneurs
- TBL is not intended to be a mechanism to support tradeoffs
- Improve on two dimensions, and holding the third constant
- Tomorrow’s capitalism inquiry — Aviva Investors
- Crowdsourcing the revamp — using technology to communicate more widely
- How does shared value link to the TBL
- Competing language is a glorious alibi to do nothing at all
- What lies on the horizon for the revamp?We need framework and tools that drives business in ways that we have not seen yet
- Look at leadership companies, like Unilever, and explore what
- TBL thinking has delivered in their businesses. (Revamp 1)
- CEO must be on board
- The evolution of B2B platforms — Paul Polman — look at B2B platforms and look at what is working and what is not — do we need multiple platforms? (Revamp 2)
- The role of government and policy makers
- Financial markets through the lenses of the CFO and the tie to sustainabilty (Revamp 3)
- Larry Fink at BlackRock, “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”
- Avoiding the label of environmentalist
- John as an agitator —
- ‘Playfulness’ as an indicator of flexibility and embracing change?
OECD: 80 -90% of companies know a sustainability commitment is necessary - Corporate culture —
- The term greenwashing — safety and health diversity are easy to claim, but a CEO saying it is different than real results— someone at Board level must be directly responsible for performance
- Climate change, human rights, communicating TBL to Wall Street → learning journeys
- The sort of company that does TBL reporting and brand activism
- Comparing 1970’s corporate leadership to today
- SDGs
- The word ’sustainability’ and it being perceived as something bad
- A pending financial crash
- Dirty industries proclaiming sustainability — and the need to call out ranking without looking at what goes on behind the scenes
- The need to disrupt the ranking industry
- Provoking or calling out bad corporate behavior
- Incremental change is boring — disruption or civilizational change is more fascinating and engaging
- When words or phrases first appear they are like membranes — new concepts that engage — the more a term is used it becomes less engaging
- The forecast that the SDGs will equal 12T in opportunity — dissecting the number — skepticism and forecasts
- We have moved from looking at sustainability as an impediment and viewing it as an opportunity and instrument for transformation
- Big brands that disappear
- Paradigm shifts
John Elkington is the executive chairman of Volans, co-founder of SustainAbility, blogs at Johnelkington.com, tweets at @volansjohn.
NOTES
John's websites
John Elkington
Volans
Other websites
Aviva Investors
B Corp
BlackRock
Business and Sustainability Development Commission — market potential of SDGs
DJSI
Fast Company
GlobeScan
GRI
Tech Mahindra
Unilever sustainability
WBCSD
Wired
Sample of John's books
The Green Capitalists by John Elkington and Tom Burke
The Green Consumer Guide by John Elkington and Julia Hailes
Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business
The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan
The Zeronauts
The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways To Connect Today's Profits With Tomorrow's Bottom Line by John Elkington and Jochen Zeitz, with a foreword from Sir Richard Branson
Other books
Thomas Kuhn — The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Articles/blogs
The 6 Ways Business Leaders Talk About Sustainability
John Elkington has lit the fuse to blow up the “Triple Bottom Line” he invented
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
Dr Geoff Kendall is an entrepreneur whose experience spans sustainability consulting, high-tech startups, corporate communications and academic research.
Geoff holds a PhD in artificial intelligence, and has co-founded two software businesses. The second of these was acquired by a global technology company, where Geoff went on to serve as marketing director for three years.
Geoff switched careers in 2010, joining London-based think-tank SustainAbility, and for four years he led the communications team and advised some of the world’s biggest corporations on sustainable business models. In so doing he realised that there was no reliable way to measure how sustainable a company is now, and how much more it needs to do, and he wanted to fix that. So in early 2014 Geoff left to set up Future-Fit Foundation.
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- The Industrial Revolution and the past 250 years
- The Wealth of Nations — makes economic assumptions — that infinite growth is possible
- Infinite growth is not possible or desirable
- Growth vs. Sustainability
- Defining growth
- The good side of GDP
- Future Fit — the need to have a clear destination when setting sustainability goals
- Karl-Henrik Robert — the rules of the game that humans can flourish
- Business can only thrive if society as a whole flourishes
- Investment banking and the natural environment
- Indexes are missing necessary factors across sectors
- Some sectors have systematic problems
- We must get beyond assessment as defined by reporting mechanisms
- Future Fit is a management tool to assess progress
- 450 pages of guidance to map and track
- Disconnect in terms of what companies provide and what investors want — does a rating tell an investor anything meaningful?
- Trajectory — and credible story
- The bell curve of companies on the sustainability path
- Security of supply
- Companies that is paying attention and reducing impact — it is indicative of a better management team — resulting in better financial performance
- Systemic risks that business is exposed to
- SDG’s and Future Fit
- The Future Fit Development Council
- Future Fit Crash Course
- A lot of MBA programs do not talk about environmental impact
- Reevaluating company mission and purpose'
NOTES and RESOURCES
Geoff Kendall
Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)
Paul Ekins
Karl-Henrik Robert
Future-Fit Business Benchmark
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
David is Emeritus Professor of Corporate Responsibility. From 2007-2017, he was director of the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility and Professor of Corporate Responsibility.
He joined Cranfield in April 2007, after a thirty year career as a social entrepreneur and campaigner for responsible business, diversity, and small business development. This included founding Project North East which has now worked in nearly 60 countries around the world; being the founding CEO of the Prince's Youth Business Trust and serving as a managing-director of Business in the Community.
David has an Honorary Doctorate of Law from London South Bank University and was a visiting Senior Fellow at the CSR Initiative of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard (2005-10).
He has served on various charity and public sector boards over the past 30 years. These have included the boards of the National Co-operative Development Agency, The Prince of Wales' Innovation Trust and the Strategic Rail Authority.
He chaired the National Disability Council and the Business Link Accreditation Board; in each case appointed by the Major Government and re-appointed by the Blair administration.
He is currently chairman of the national charity Carers UK championing the role of 6.5million Britons caring for a loved one. He is a former chairman of one of the UK's larger social enterprises and largest eldercare providers, Housing & Care 21 during which the organisation made corporate history by becoming the first-ever not-for-profit successfully to acquire a publicly quoted group of companies. David received an OBE for services to industry in 1994 and a CBE for services to disability in 1999.
The Guardian has named David as one of ten top global tweeters on sustainable leadership alongside Al Gore, Tim Cook - CEO of Apple, and Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg: @DavidGrayson_
In this interview, the following topics are discussed:
- VUCA — volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous as related to the world of business (originally from American military)
- The idea of corporate sustainability being viewed as soft
- Diversity, climate change, social inclusion — businesses cannot afford to get wrong
- Even a small hairdressing salon in Cape Town see water shortages of business strains
- Black Rock, CEO letter, the need for business to be thinking longterm
- Doing business for the longterm = corporate sustainabilty
5 core attributes: 1. Purpose 2. Comprehensive Plan 3. Sustainable Culture 4. Skill and the Will 5. Advocacy - All five attributes must work together
- Innovation equalling sustainability
- Unilever invites public for ideas toward improvement
- Empowerment and engaging employees
- Collaboration with competitors
- Sustainable Apparel Coalition
- Social justice and sustainable development
- SDGs — the roadmap for the future
- If we can fulfill the SDGs by 2030 it is a 12T USD opportunity
- Every great social problem and global issue is a business opportunity in disguise
- If you understand you can identify opportunity
- Vodaphone mobile money
- Sectoral ratings and indexes for all major sectors
- CSI Europe
- Rankings and certifications are starting collaboration — for example GRI and UN Global Impact
- From pre-start, the aspiration of becoming B Corp
- A responsible business
- Hyper global inequality — a profound alienation felt by voters
- What must change in capitalism to survive
- Employee recruiting in regard to millennials — Paul Polman reports that half of Unilever’s workforce is millennial
- Employer of choice by millennials, and sustainability as a catalyst
- Daniel Pink and Drive: mastery, autonomy, purpose — doing what matters
NOTES and RESOURCES
David Grayson
Sustainability Leaders: Celebrating 20 Years of Leadership
GlobeScan
SustainAbility
SDGs
All In
Everybody’s Business
Mark Lee — SustAinability
Chris Coulter — CEO of GlobeScan
CSI Europe
New Power: How its Changing the 21st Century
The Future of
Business Leadership
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
Jason Jay is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan.
He teaches courses on leadership, strategy, and innovation for sustainable business. Jason engages students and alumni in hands-on projects with leading companies and organizations. These efforts help build a community of innovators for sustainability that includes MIT students and alumni, faculty and researchers, with partners in business, government, NGOs, and hybrid organizations.
Jason’s research focuses on how people navigate the tensions inherent in the quest for sustainability, as they simultaneously pursue their own self-interest and the flourishing of human and other life. This work includes deep case studies of cross-sectoral collaboration and hybrid organizations that combine social and business goals. These case studies have been published in the Academy of Management Journal and California Management Review. He also contributes to the MIT Sloan Management Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Greenbiz on the topic of sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI). A key finding of his research is that social innovation occurs through authentic conversations that hold the tension between divergent values and perspectives. With Gabriel Grant, he is the author of Breaking Through Gridlock: The Power of Conversation in a Polarized World.
In this episode, the following topics are discussed:
- S-Lab — MBA students learn about sustainable business practice
- Research and teaching initiative —
- MIT Sloan now teaches sustainability and has up to 95% engagement from business students
- Challenges from the past decade as a satiability advocate
- Some people dismiss environmental and social challenges
- Are there tradeoffs to align with sustainability?
- SOI — sustainability orientated innovation
- Breaking through the stigma of the word ’sustainability’
- Motivation is driving toward and innovation, or ‘regenerative’ and ‘flourishing’.
- Circular economy
- Supply chain optimization
- Operational efficiency
- Soil vitality
- Position vs opposition, as related to values
- People don’t like waste and want things to work better
- Do laws of climate change restrict freedom?
- FEMA and climate disasters
- Revenue neutral carbon tax
- The connection between innovation and sustainability — or SOI (Sustainability Orientation Innovation) framework at MIT Sloan
- Innovation is a startup context — and incorporating sustainability measures
- Lean Impact Measurement
- KPI’s — John Doer — and sustainability as a design constraint
- Nike and SOI — when analyzing GHG and carbon footprint — coming from gasses that inflated air bladders — they were using sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) — without sacrificing athletic performance — led to new shoe designs along with structural integrity of sustaining nitrogen
- Constraints can lead to innovation
- Stakeholder concept is important because it contrasts with shareholder
- Stakeholder capitalism
- Environmental and social NGOs
- How to prioritize who a stakeholder is and how to engage — Ceres
- Crafting a sustainability strategy and prioritize issues
- EDF, WRI, and 1% For the Planet
- The big challenge is the increased interests in sustainability, ESG, but a lot is being built on a shaky foundation
- SHIFT
NOTES and RESOURCES
Jason Jay
MIT Sloan
SHIFT
Book: Breaking Through Gridlock
Sustainability Orientation Innovation
SHIFT.tools
Strategies for Sustainable Business
#ceres #nike @MITSloanSusty
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
Andrew Winston is a globally recognized expert on how companies can navigate and profit from humanity’s biggest challenges. His views on strategy have been sought after by many of the world’s leading companies, including Boeing, HP, J&J, Kimberly-Clark, PepsiCo, PwC, and Unilever. Andrew’s first book, Green to Gold, was the top-selling green business title of the last decade and was included in Inc. Magazine’s all-time list of 30 books that every manager should own. His speeches for audiences around the world, and his new book The Big Pivot, lay out a practical and optimistic roadmap for how companies can thrive in a hotter, scarcer, more open world.
During the episode, topics discussed include the following:
- Is marketing expensive? Yes, if it is bad marketing
- The current landscape of corporate sustainability
- The role of business in society and the CEO
- The strategies and framework for corporate sustainability
- Sustainability mega-trends: climate, resources, and transparency.
- Renewables affordability has sped up clean energy
- The trend of major corporations buying renewable energy
- Food and agriculture trends; protecting soil and reducing footprint
- Companies leading the sustainability movement
- Low carbon economy
- Corporate social responsibility: diversity and inclusion
- Corporate sustainability benchmarks: GRI, GHG protocol, SASB and TCFD
- Goals around women in management
- The push toward corporate transparency and supply chains, or looking upstream
- Blockchain in sustainability as a tracking tool
- A resilient enterprise: thriving and flourishing
- Pre-competitive collaboration and working with competitors
- The role of the NGO
- Supply chains and measuring footprint: scope 3 emissions
- ROI as related to sustainability
- The sustainabilty - innovation crossover
- Health as a driver in buying decisions
- Millennials and preference toward responsible products
- Gen Z and Millennials; weighing sustainability as an important factor when choosing an employer
- The importance of the CEO in a company’s sustainability efforts
- The unpredictable future and preparing for extremes
NOTES and LINKS
Andrew Winston
Pivot Goals
The Big Pivot TED Institute YouTube
The Sustainability Consortium (TSC)
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
Anti-fragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
TCFD Knowledge Hub
SASB
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co
Susanne Stormer is a foremost global authority in corporate sustainability and serves as VP, Corporate Sustainability and Chief Sustainability Officer for the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, a globally recognized sustainability leader. Susanne sets strategic direction for the Novo Nordisk as a sustainability leader and pioneer in demonstrating long-term business value of incorporating economic, social and environmental perspectives into its market proposition. She and her team manage sustainability-driven programs, the company's Annual Report, engagements with ESG investors and stakeholders in the professional sustainability community, and communicate the value of the company's Triple Bottom Line business principle.
In this episode, topics discussed include the following:
- Sustainability in the DNA of a company
- Born with a social purpose in 1923: Novo Nordisk helps people with diabetes live better lives
- Scandinavia has a heritage of respecting the environment; and lessening environmental footprint
- What should we call a corporate environmental/social commitment ?
- A discussion about the Triple Botton Line
- Financial responsibility is tied to social responsibly
- Circular economy and environmental responsibility
- Relevant - Responsible - Resilient → the three keys to being a sustainable business
- Employee engagement as related to Millennials → people would like to work for a company that has a clear purpose and values-driven
- Sustainable engagement
- If you have a highly engaged workforce, there is lower absenteeism, fewer sick days, and higher productivity
- Patients are at the center of all decisions; one example is injectable devices
- Innovation inspired by patient engagement
- Customer loyalty → hospitals, Ministries of Health: companies look at the company behind the product
- Training the sales staff to tell the company story and share the companies mission, ‘story’ and values. When a bigger context is given, there is a higher rate of sales calls and in-person engagement
- Market value is higher than the value of what can be accounted for with tangible assets
- Intangibles are created through an engaged workforce, quality of management, strong purpose, anticipating business constraints or ability to be flexible as a company
- The personality traits of a CSO
- The importance of a supportive CEO
- The details of building a strong sustainabilty team and leaders within a company
- Embedding TBL values within the organization through storytelling
- Tips for great integrative reporting
- Sustainability tracking and roadmaps to corporate sustainabilty; the UN Sustainable Development Goals
- The Future-Fit business benchmark → what is needed at a minimum to do no harm to the environment and society - and tied to accounting
- Crafting stories that appeal to stakeholders
- Mistakes in messaging sustainability
- Great stories help earn the trust and confidence of stakeholders who sometimes become ambassadors and defenders of the brand, for example, in cases of crisis
- Making a business stable and resilient during disruption
- Key questions, what might disrupt our business in the next 5 - 10 years?
- The importance of feasibility in achieving sustainability goals
NOTES and LINKS
Novo Nordisk
Susanne Stormer
International Integrative Reporting framework
John Elkington - triple bottom line
Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business
ABOUT PHILIP BEERE
Philip is host of Corporate Sustainability; the podcast that explores companies and people who inspire innovation, improvement, and sustainable business practices through purpose-driven missions and initiatives. Philip is a longtime marketer, who consults companies on how to use stories and narrative to help build their brands. He says sustainability stories are one of the most powerful ways companies can manage their reputations.
Connect with Philip at www.philipjames.co