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  • Sustainability Is the Short CEO in the Room

    6:09 pm on July 18, 2011 | 0 Permalink | Comment
    Tags: CEOs, CSR, human behavior,

    I picked up Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink at a garage sale yesterday, and was enthralled at some of the data he has gathered about the way our brains work. Gladwell at some point polled half of the companies on the Fortune 500 to find out (not surprisingly) that the majority of CEOs are white men.

    He also found out that a majority of them are TALL. In the U.S. population, 14.5 percent of men are six feet or taller. Among CEOs at the Fortune 500, 58 percent are six feet tall or taller. Even more striking, said Gladwell, is the fact that in the general population, just 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among the CEO sample, nearly a third were six foot two or taller.

    Today, sustainability feels like a short CEO in the boardroom – the same unconscious bias in attitude that causes us to favor tall white guys causes us to also lean toward strong economic growth, rather than sustainable development, as our overwhelming indicator of the ‘right’ road.

    Can we change? Well, it is hard to change unconcious attitudes, as we aren’t, well, conscious of them. But Gladwell posits that positive associations with new ideas can really help. You must be exposed to the new on a regular basis.

    So that’s why more CEOs – the short, the tall, female, male, black, white, and brown – need to ride bikes. And compost, put solar panels on their roofs. Grow their own greens. Get out of the corporate limo and walk. Practice and get exposed to what sustainability preaches.

    In a recent Price Waterhouse Cooper study of 1,200 CEOs, five challenges emerged that corporate executives were most concerned with.

    The top challenge was “how to tap into growing customer sentiment about environmental and corporate responsibility?”

    And the answer is, Try some on for size. Most of us, CEOs included, have grown up in a world that reinforces an unconscious bias, I would wager, against some of the practices that could be deemed sustainable. To really “tap into customer sentiment” it takes one (green consumer) to know one. We all need more exposure to sustainable practices. Like riding a bike, some of them might even turn out to be fun.

     

     

     

  • Will the Middle East become more responsible?

    8:05 am on February 3, 2011 | 0 Permalink | Comment
    Tags: , , , , CSR, , Middle East, Revolution, , , ,

    Is the Middle East ripe for sustainability? Corporate Knights, “the magazine for clean capitalism” just published The global 100, its take on the world’s most sustainable corporations. Not one of them is based in the Middle East, nor has there been an entry from this region since the list began in 2005.

    Unfortunately, Transparency International‘s Global Corruption Report 2009 paints a dire picture for the MENA region: “Corruption is prevalent and widespread in the MENA countries… it is deeply rooted in the political infrastructure of the state (mainly military dictatorships, totalitarian regimes or monarchies); the institutional infrastructure of the public … and develops as a result of the relatively limited opportunities for public participation. Several other factors that contribute to providing opportunities for corruption and encourage limited transparency in the region include regional and/or national insecurities, the prevalence of conflict and heavy dependence on oil revenues.” Yet we’d like to believe there is a chance that this will soon change.

    Monumental are the demonstrations in Northern Africa where people are expressing their discontent with the way things are. They are demanding a change of leadership—one that will respect human rights, freedom of speech and improve living conditions for all, not just a few. Beginning in Tunisia, the so-called Tunisia effect has inspired similar demonstrations in Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen and now Egypt where there is real potential for dramatic change.

    For the moment, sustainability, let alone corporate responsibility, is not top of mind as fed-up citizens fill Cairo’s Tahir Square in support of a more sustainable social system based on freedom and an end to corruption. Might a more transparent and responsible government allow for more transparent and responsible business too? At a minimum, more attention to this matter? Northern Africa’s hot and dry climate make it particularly vulnerable to climate change.

    There is hope. A new survey of the region’s corporations by the Sustainability Advisory Group, suggests that although sustainability reporting has a long way to go (too many of the business leaders they surveyed did not see climate change, water conservation and waste as important to their business) strides are being made. More companies are recognizing the benefits of corporate responsibility. To assist them there are organizations like Carboun an advocacy initiative promoting sustainability and environmental protection in the Middle East and SBA, an international NGO active in the promotion of sustainable and environmental action in the Arab and West African countries. This and the promise of new leadership make this area ripe indeed.

     

  • From Being Green to Doing The Right Thing

    8:22 am on February 23, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Comment
    Tags: , CSR,

    Consumers’ perceptions of companies’ green credentials are more than a bit skewed, as New Scientist shows with its fascinating juxtaposition of  image versus reality in the business world. What New Scientist did was to mix data from an Earthsense survey from 2008 of 30,000 consumers and their ideas about industries’ eco-credentials with scores from Trucost on those industries. What emerges from New Scientist’s scatterplot graphic is that non-consumer industries are generally doing better at environmental performance than the public realizes, while many consumer industries are doing worse.

    Many a sustainability professional may take this as proof that companies, especially in technology, chemicals, and industrial goods and services, need to blow their own horns, broadcast their advances, and write their CSR reports in consumer-friendly language. Meanwhile, the food and beverage industry may simply need to clean up its act.

    But then there’s the cautionary tale of Whole Foods, which has had a sustainability focus and a green-tinged image from its first day in business, versus Safeway, which certainly hasn’t. According to Amy Westervelt at the Solve Climate blog, Safeway actually scored better than Whole Foods in CERES 2008 report on sustainability in the grocery industry.

    Because it has always touted its own horn (and because of its CEO’s outspoken media presence) Whole Foods is now under the media microscope, while Safeway has the benefit of relative privacy while it pursues sustainability goals.

    Which could lead many a company to question the value of hanging out the green wash. Or the greenwash.

    While it may hurt Whole Foods to have its actions and policies scrutinized, and benefit Safeway to have relative cover for its own attempts, transparency has got to be the best policy. Not because it is trendy, or green, but because it is the right thing.

    One of the reasons behind the food and beverage industry’s poor performance in the Trucost numbers is its huge lack of transparency. Masses of consumers would cry, carry on, and turn vegetarian if they knew, really knew, what factory farming and low-cost fast food production has led to. Ask Jonathan Safran Froer.

    When you raise children, you find yourself not infrequently having to think about why you say, or do, or question the opinions and beliefs you hold, and not infrequently you will have to tell your child “We do this because it is right.” That is not to say that there are immutable truths that should never be questioned. It means, after thinking things over, that this “rightness” is frequently the bottom line, the message we give our kids and the standard we hold them to. If they want our trust, we expect each of them to develop a moral compass, and to tell us the truth.

    And what’s good for the kids should be good for companies, too.

     

  • Sacked for Sustainability

    4:22 am on October 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Comment
    Tags: CSR, employment,

    Some of us treat our sustainability beliefs as a religion. We religiously recycle, religiously ride our bikes to work, religiously buy organic foods, and religiously defend the idea that practices such as these make a difference to the world.

    But should these beliefs be protected under Britain’s (or any country’s) religious discrimination laws?

    That’s the question Tim Nicholson, formerly employed at Grainger property company, wants the courts to decide.

    Nicholson lost his job in 2008, and he says Grainger chief executive Rupert Dickinson “treated with contempt” his ideas on sustainability.

    Not hard to imagine in the clash of priorities between a CEO and a sustainability officer, but it does seem rather callous to fire the person you essentially hire to give that type of view a voice in the company.

    Nicholson said he had a hard time doing what he considered his job, and was unable to put together a carbon management strategy for Grainger because he couldn’t get access to necessary data.

    Grainger, on the other hand disagrees that Nicholson’s views should be protected under the UK’s Employment Equality (Religion and Beliefs) Regulations, because they are “scientific” or political rather than philosophical or religious.

    Here’s company representative John Bowers quoted in The Guardian:

    “A philosophical belief must be one based on a philosophy of life, not a scientific belief, not a political belief or opinion, not a lifestyle choice, not an environmental belief and not an assertion of disputed facts.”

    That’s a great irony, for if Grainger absolutely believes Nicholson’s beliefs around global warming could be scientific, i.e. provable and true, than instead of firing him they should be letting him take over the company.

    Here is Nicholson from a story at the Oxford Times:

    “I believe we must urgently cut carbon emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change. This affects how I live my life … I encourage others to cut their carbon emissions and I fear for the future of the human race.”

    Putting aside for the moment the legal question of whether Nicholson’s firing should or shouldn’t be protected, what should sustainability advocates do when faced with the these differences of opinion with their employers?

    Most people’s gut reaction might be – they should find another job. But if we are all accepting of the “facts” of climate change and furthermore the threat of some catastrophic results of that change, shouldn’t we all be pushing as Nicholson did, even if the effort is ultimately futile?

     

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