As few short months ago, I sat in a board meeting, and one of the more mature board members commented that \u201ccorporate sustainability plans were nice, but they mean nothing.\u201d\u00a0 In today\u2019s world, where social media can share a failure, this is a risky statement, and an even more risky strategy to have.<\/p>\n
My colleague at the table went on to say, \u201cat the business decision level, when revenue goals or meeting stakeholder objectives are in conflict with a corporate sustainability plan\u2019s activities, costs and initiatives, sustainability will always lose.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was taken aback by this, as this person was generally pretty savvy about the ethical complexities involved with sustainability.\u00a0 And since the person was an avid naturalist I was shocked that this was his position.\u00a0 Moreover, the board member\u2019s reach stretched out over a number of boards, small and large \u2013 corporate and non-profit.<\/p>\n
OK, nothing new here.\u00a0 If you have read a newspaper in the last 3 months, you know this story so far is not hard to believe.\u00a0 If a company\u2019s revenue or stakeholder objectives never conflict with sustainability objectives, then that company is doing something exceptionally right.\u00a0 However, in today\u2019s world where tension for budget in an organization is escalated by a weakened economy, it\u2019s more likely that conflict is quite common between sustainability objectives and the business\u2019 goals.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s different today? Is it a change in the domain of ethics that has driven this? Or is it something else?\u00a0 Let\u2019s consider BP, Halliburton and Transocean in the Deepwater Horizon<\/a> spill 10 April 2010. The media provided great coverage.\u00a0 However, it was the details shared over social media that really called into question the things that broadcast news could not cover.\u00a0 [I\u2019m not taking a stand or even voicing an opinion on right, wrong or fault \u2013 just stating the obvious role that social media played in uncovering aspects of the event that a decade ago would go unnoticed.]\u00a0 Within a month, Greenpeace<\/a> posted a piece with dozens of social-media-generated visuals and comments, and AdWeek<\/a> was writing about the death of BP\u2019s sustainability brand image. Within 2 months, the blogosphere<\/a> was discussing the inevitable re-imaging of the BP brand, and logo.<\/p>\n The point of this extreme case is to understand that sustainability must be more than an afterthought, it has to be deep in the core culture of a company, and pervasive in the company strategy across and throughout all levels of an organization and confidently owned in the C-suite.\u00a0 It\u2019s not hard to imagine the pain and loss felt by BP\u2019s leadership and staff after investing hundreds of millions of dollars over a decade to brand the company\u2019s sustainability image as \u201cBeyond Petroleum.\u201d<\/p>\n It requires serious leadership effort and commitment to keep the adopted sustainability plan on track, and a part of the company culture.\u00a0 If done well, it is not an afterthought or even a separate plan, it is the naturally ethical and constantly customer-centric way of doing business \u2013 regardless of what language, country, culture or ocean is involved.\u00a0 If not, it is inevitable that lack of commitment to sustainability\u00a0 will uncover hollow leadership. The discovery will be permanently communicated by the social media truth squad, a.k.a. \u201cthe public.\u201d\u00a0 The real costs are enormous, and perhaps irreversible.<\/p>\n What do you think? Can a company get away with a weak sustainability plan today, with social media out there to hold it accountable?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As few short months ago, I sat in a board meeting, and one of the more mature board members commented that \u201ccorporate sustainability plans were nice, but they mean nothing.\u201d\u00a0 In today\u2019s world, where social media can share a failure, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,4,10,64,8,49,100],"tags":[17,86,60,42,94,61,20],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decision-making","category-leadership","category-marketing","category-social-responsibility","category-strategy","category-sustainability","category-transparency","tag-agile-behavior","tag-culture-diversity","tag-ethics-values","tag-failing-learning","tag-resistance-to-change","tag-responsibility-accountability","tag-results-outcomes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/150px-Deepwater_Horizon_offshore_drilling_unit_on_fire.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p25ukk-43","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}