ESG and Sustainability Strategy 🌱
“What I’ve learned about sustainability in corporate environments is that it’s not a business function. It’s not a person. It’s not policy. It’s a way of doing business, even if it sounds cliche, but it really is about the way companies do business the way they and their decision makers behave.”
We had a brilliant chat with Julia Höglund, Director of ESG and Sustainability Strategy, at SB+CO. As a self proclaimed “activist in a suit”, Julia started out in finance and corporate sustainability in Sweden, before taking a leap of faith and moving to London to work in Climate Advisory and helping customers to transition their journeys towards #Net Zero.
Check out some highlights from our podcast below, where we spoke about all things #sustainability in business, balancing sustainability with profit, and making sure sustainability efforts are authentic 🌎
—
Listen to the full podcast episode on:
Spotify: http://bit.ly/40tmRqj
Google: https://bit.ly/3MyLURv
Amazon: http://bit.ly/3TFBzs5
Apple: https://bit.ly/3Qf0st1
—
Wil: How do you define sustainability in business? Andwhy would you say it’s such an important issue for organisations to address today?
Julia: “What I’ve learned about sustainability in corporate environments is that it’s not a business function. It’s not a person. It’s not policy. It’s a way of doing business, even if it sounds cliche, but it really is about the way companies do business the way they and their decision makers behave.
It’s sort of a way of doing business rather than one single decision or function at the time. I want to quote Larry Fink here, the CEO of BlackRock, because I think he put it very well, in his letter to CEOs a couple of years ago when he said, It’s stakeholder capitalism — which means that you sort of have to listen to and respond to the expectations of not only your shareholders and your customers, but also your employees and your suppliers and the communities in which you operate. And that’s sort of how you become successful as a company.
So it’s a way of doing business in a long term mindset that will help you become more more successful over time — and resilient.”
—
Ksenia: “When corporates come to you, how do you balance what they think they want, and what you, as an expert in the field, know they need?”
Julia: I love this question, because this is literally what keeps me up at night. It’s that balance of being a good consultant and bringing good service, but also know keeping true to yourself and having the integrity. When I was a graduate and started working, I was kind of seeing myself as an activist in a suit. I kind of came out of academia, and read about the realities of our supply chain — I wrote my dissertation in Bangladesh and saw how like the working conditions were. So I was kind of angry when I came into the corporate sector. And I once went into boardrooms in my first month working, telling them everything they were doing wrong. But I learned from that — that’s not how you create change. That’s not how you inspire. That’s not how you solve. So it didn’t go so well!
My greatest learning there is that you really need to be a critical friend and a problem solver and you need to bring the reality to your customers in a sort of bite sized way to create change. That’s everything from having a clear action plan to something you deliver or even trying to push them to go a little bit further — you don’t have to bring the whole challenge to them at the same time. My job is really to solve their problems, make them successful, make the people I work with successful but sometimes that means challenging a brief. So for example if they want a sustainability report or really snappy marketing campaign without having the strategy behind that backs it up, I will always challenge that and I will always say why don’t we start with analysing your material issues to your companies and build a strategy from there.
—
Wil: “We see a lot greenwashing campaigns that are just pure marketing speak rather than actual meaningful, positive impacts. So how do you ensure that the sustainability efforts are authentic and creating the right kind of impact?
Julia: “Yeah, it’s a very hot topic at the moment and still learning everyday from it something that we thought was right, six months ago, it’s not enough now. For those that don’t know what green washing is, it’s, it’s about making a claim about your environmental performance, or the performance of your organisation or your product that is sort of overstated or nuanced. And I want to say that, because from my experience, it very rarely comes from bad intentions, it’s more about lack of knowledge, or being very excited about promoting a product.
My recommendation nowadays is to avoid all big statements, like, you know, being a sustainable company, or having a sustainable product or even more sustainable products is now just a bit risky, you need to back it up with proper lifecycle assessments — prove that it is more sustainable — and more sustainable to what? Always have references and footnotes to where you can find more, and just generally be more transparent and more humble. There are very little companies, very few companies and products nowadays that are purely sustainable. So to avoid that kind of language, I would say, just tell it as it is. It’s “we’ve reduced carbon footprint with 15% compared to our previous product” — that’s the transparency and trust that I think consumers want.”
—
Ksenia: “How can brands balance the need for profitability, with the desire to become more sustainable? And what are some of the challenges that you’ve seen arise from trying to balance these two things?”
Julia: I think the biggest challenge is that short term profit and sustainable value creation have two different time horizons. And short term profit drives most corporate behaviours today. And as soon as profit is down, or costs are up, sustainability initiatives and investments are being withdrawn, which is kind of obvious in this sort of capital environment that we’re currently operating in, especially with listed companies.
So no one has really cracked this code, unless you’re a purely sustainable business from the beginning. And the more you grow, the more profit you have, the more sustainable your output is. But what we have seen big companies do to try to tackle this, is, first of all, to put an internal price or internal monetisation on social and environmental values, for example, Microsoft, Unilever, have put an internal price of carbon and they include that in the way they measure return on investment on projects. So that’s sort of one way they try to nuance that and balance it out.
Another way is to (and this is one I’m really passionate about, and helping a lot of our clients with), integrate social and environmental goals into the way that executives are being compensated. I know McDonald’s, BMW, Starbucks, Nike, for example, they’ve all linked their CEO and executive pay to diversity targets. And that’s accountability. I think it’s the core and all of this sort of leadership and accountability, being brave enough to put that core centre of the way that value is being generated.
—
Ksenia: “How do you see the future sustainability evolving over the next decade? And what can we all do to ensure a more sustainable future for ourselves and future generations?”
Julia: “I’m reading so many reports and new stats, which I think we all do every day, it just feels like everything is just becoming darker and darker. It’s hard to stay hopeful with all these sort of dooming facts. But there are a few things that really make me able to sort of hold on to the hope. And they might not be the most obvious ones.
The first one, which I’m really passionate about is that the way we measure value is changing. Investors are starting to care about sustainability for real, and regulators have started to move, especially in the US, UK and EU but also in Asia, and standard setters are starting to require companies to be transparent in the same way. So the reason why I think this matters is because it really brings the limelight to how sustainability is actually, the way you do business. It’s not just about this is your profit, and great thing that you have few sustainability initiatives, but actually puts like a level playing field to the ones that are actually trying to do good, and the ones that just want to talk about it. So I think that sort of transparency is really a good driver, also for leaders to actually see their company and the impact that company has in a very sober light. So I really, honestly think that’s going to have a big difference on the way companies are going to act and which can have a really big impact on on the world. So I’m hopeful about that, especially when information also is starting to become more audited. Coming back to my, the sexy start of my career, I still think audit and assurance is a really important part of this journey.
The more exciting bit that keeps me hopeful is the thinking about the future of leadership. And what are the next generations of leaders going to look like both in terms of diversity in terms of diversity of thought, diversity of background, but also thinking about the proportion of leaders that are going to have climate anxiety. That’s going to be a really big driver to how we do business, which previous generations might not have had as much of. So I think that’s sort of keeping me hopeful.
Also knowing that in the sustainability, professional space, there’s a lot of women, and we are now sort of climbing into the corporate ladders and entering the boardrooms and executive rooms because of our experience and expertise in sustainability. So that makes me makes me very hopeful going forward.
In terms of what what can we all do, I always try to think that small things matter. It’s so easy to sort of think “what does my recycling do” or “if I shower a bit shorter”, or “if I take the train instead of the flight”, it’s so easy to think like why does it matter? But I always tried to think that, you know, everything started with that — everything starts with those small decisions. Even in companies it starts with one person, one decision, one idea, one conversation. And I think that’s really important to hold on to in order to have some kind of hope.
—
Wil: “What would be your biggest piece of advice to a business leader or early stage startup founder who is listening and looking to incorporate sustainability or sustainability practices into how they do business?”
Julia: “I would say congratulations, because going back to what I said from the beginning, that sustainability is a behaviour. It’s not about being a function, you don’t need a function, if it’s a startup, you don’t even need a head of sustainability, you just need to make sure that the mindset of the balancing, social, environmental and financial results is incorporated in the way you make decisions and do business, that’s going to make you grow sustainably. And as a founder or as the leader of the company, you will really be the one leading the way. So live as you preach. I’ve worked with a lot of startups and scale ups with this topic, and it’s a lot easier when it’s manageable, and you can make sure that everyone understands what it’s about and everyone understands the purpose of the company, and acts thereafter.
Be very clear on where the company stands on those issues. It doesn’t mean that you need to have a sustainability policy, but just write down — what are your commitments? What is it that you want to do? What do you stand for? And who would miss you, if you were gone? I think it’s a good way to start if you’re, if you’re a startup leader.”
—
More about SB+CO
SB+CO is a sustainability, ESG strategy and responsible business consultancy, that advises companies on strategy, sustainability, ESG, stakeholder engagement and more — and frequently a combination of all of these.
Today, they lead a highly experienced and diverse team in London, with associates across Europe and the US, as they help some of the world’s largest corporations and iconic brands pivot their business models towards a more sustainable, equitable and successful future.
A huge thank you again to Julia for joining us on the #MettaTalks podcast. You can connect with Julia on LinkedIn, and learn more about SB+CO on their website.
Listen to the full podcast episode on :
Spotify: http://bit.ly/40tmRqj
Google: https://bit.ly/3MyLURv
Amazon: http://bit.ly/3TFBzs5
Apple: https://bit.ly/3Qf0st1
Check out some of our other articles —
- How to make your startup both innovative and sustainable
- How to “Speak Startup” in the PR World
- Financial Planning with Impact
- Ecosystems Thinking
- 15 years in Climate Tech — What’s Changed?
- Analysing Iraq’s Startup Ecosystem
—
#Metta #MettaTalks #MettaTalksPodcast #startup #founders #ecosystem #entrepreneur #sustainability #techforgood #womenintech #femalefounders #DEIintech #inclusivityintech #esg #esgreporting #greenwashing
