In a recent survey of the CBI Sustainability Community members, “Organisational Change” topped the poll as the subject most businesses would welcome help with. The fact that this ranked even higher than “tackling supply chain emissions”, which itself is a devil of a job, is not surprising to us.
In our work with a wide range of businesses, we have seen high levels of recognition amongst leadership teams that environmental concerns are shaping customer, government, and investor expectations and hence must be addressed at the top table. But the vast majority are struggling with moving into real implementation.
Business leaders are exceptionally skilled at addressing challenges, with proven approaches grounded in analytical thinking, foresight, and top-to-bottom mobilisation of resources. But here’s where the Net Zero challenge is particularly gnarly;
- When businesses are diagnosing the hot spots and setting targets, we’re still operating in a context where “counting” organisational emissions can feel more art than science, lacking consistent methodologies and highly dependent upon widely varying averages and proxies. The things we like – granularity, certainty, and trends – are all largely absent. For any “fact” we surface, we’ll find five other versions of that truth. Compared to the near-perfect sales and financial data many of us are accustomed to this is a minefield.
- When we do have some reliable numbers, business shifts into solution planning. But here again, the Net Zero challenge is complicated, with little consensus or long-term certainty about the technologies which will best carry us into the next decade. Much of it is still in trial, some not invented yet. The markets for alternative fuels and materials are exceptionally volatile, making the business case we write today out-of-date by Friday, and making financial planning borderline impossible.
- When dispersing accountability into our functions and targeting our teams to deliver, we face even more complexity. Solutions for decarbonisation often require a deeply transformational change to business operations, spanning all functions and calling for connected, system thinking. Ownership doesn’t sit neatly with the CMO, the CFO, or the COO – and hard-working Sustainability Departments often lack the power to influence serious change. In fact, often, the goal cannot be achieved within the business’ own four walls, calling for collaboration with industry peers, suppliers, policymakers, and citizens.
All of this means that our usual protocols don’t work well and can leave businesses wondering where to start. Throw in a cost of living crisis, supply chain upheaval, wars, and natural disasters – and it’s no wonder that for some businesses, the urge to defer action is strong.
But the climate crisis cannot be RACI’d, KPI’d or spreadsheeted into submission. We won’t solve it with slick corporate reporting or playing safe by making cost-effective tweaks to our plastic. We will need to unblock our people’s brilliance and create environments where their natural creativity and adaptability can thrive, without letting the organisation get in their way.
The good news is that your people are truly energised to work in this way – have any of us honestly not sometimes wished the corporate treacle could be avoided so we could focus all our efforts on delivering the mission? Here are some of the things we’ve seen work powerfully in service of this idea:
Start by starting. With so many unknowns and lots of change and complexity, it would be futile to try and Gantt-chart your way to net zero. In the words of Dr. King, “you don’t have to see the whole staircase to take the first step”. Our advice is to think big in terms of ambition and vision for the future, but start small and learn quickly. Start by identifying a goal – something that could be achieved (at a stretch) in 8-12 weeks but also represents a meaningful leap forward and an early ‘win’.
Build a crack team. Assemble an A-team, no more than 7 of your best people who represent the key functions implicated in the issue, and hot-house them on a sprint to co-create a workable plan of action. You need a mix of the right skills and mindset. People with a bias for action, a tolerance for ambiguity, and a knack for coming up with creative ideas to overcome inevitable challenges. The team should have as much autonomy as possible. Don’t make them go up the chain for approvals, don’t demand 50 page PowerPoint decks, remove as much time-draining protocol as you can and empower them to move quickly and deliver results.
Progress over perfection. No one has ever done this before, and there will definitely be mistakes. You have to set this expectation, and everyone involved has to embrace a ‘learn and adapt’ mindset. While stakeholders expect you to have an iron grip and complete confidence in most aspects of your business, they actually welcome transparency anchored in an authentic desire to improve when it comes to environmental impact.
Beware of the HIPPO (the Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion)! The more senior you are, the less likely you will have time to grasp the detailed complexities. If you create an environment where your experts are confident to table ideas, where connection and collaboration are celebrated, and where all colleagues see Net Zero as a shared mission and not someone else’s job – you are more likely to surface the powerful thinking which protects and builds your future business. Give airtime to junior colleagues, and demonstrate (time and time again) that you are able to listen and learn when you don’t know the answers. Thank people who lean in beyond the strict boundaries of their day job.
Work in the open! Share and collaborate as if the future of life on earth depended on it! Where our natural instinct in business is to compete, we must come to terms with the reality with climate change, our fates are co-dependent, and the more we can share what we’ve learned, the faster we can improve. Join groups like the CBI Sustainability Community and the many specialist working groups on key issues and contribute vociferously.
Undoubtedly, solving the real structural and technical challenges surrounding our race to Net Zero is utterly essential. Dependable data, robust technical solutions with appropriate infrastructure, stable market development, and sufficient available capital – these are all key components of our ultimate success. But even with all these in hand, we humans will need to work together, respond, and adapt in ways our business life may not have typically encouraged. We can’t wait for a silver bullet, we need to embrace progress right now by unblocking the brilliance which exists in all businesses today.
Susan Thomas is the ex Sustainability Director at Asda, now the founder of Snowstorm Consulting which offers support to all organisations striving for progress toward a healthier, fairer, and more sustainable food system. Joe Turner is co-founder of Kindred, a consultancy partnering to support organisational change by building more adaptive human ways of working within businesses. They can be contacted for further information at [email protected] and [email protected]
