The issue of moving sustainability from merely a box-ticking exercise towards embedding it as an aspect of organisational culture that has shared value and is impactful and transformative is a complex one. That was but one of the messages arising from the inaugural Chief Sustainability Forum in April 2024.
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The goal of the forum – a partnership between ESG Africa Conference and the National Business Initiative (NBI) and hosted by Alexforbes – was to help “CSOs [Chief Sustainability Officers] learn from each other on issues of common interest in order to move the ESG and Sustainability agenda forward”, according to NBI chief executive Shameela Soobramoney.
The discussion centered on the challenges to making the shift from a compliance mindset, as well as potential solutions.
“This means sustainability and/or ESG is integrated into company operations, strategy and risk processes and most importantly, thinking,” says Wendy Poulton, a director at ESG Africa Conference.
Many CSOs at the forum indicated it could be overwhelming when they had to be all things to all people, especially in cases where there was no concrete scope to the sustainability agenda.
Suggested solutions included being very deliberate about materiality, where in the value chain to focus and ensuring that accountability lay with the responsible individual.
Participants heard that organisations in the early stages of the integration of sustainability might struggle with defining a concrete scope. However, as they unpacked the risks and opportunities as well as understood where in the organisation these lay, what the stakeholder expectations were and started to measure performance and impact, more clarity would emerge.
The challenge was to ultimately scale up efforts so that all material aspects were covered, organisation wide. However, one obstacle they might encounter was competition for limited resources, especially in the case of short-term priorities.
The CSOs noted that longer-term, more transformational initiatives would often be sidelined in favour of shorter-term activities offering an immediate more obvious impact. To overcome this, the forum suggested:
- Collaborating within and outside the organisation and identifying appropriate leverage points. This requires intensive engagement, understanding of needs and barriers and raising awareness at all levels in the organisation;
- Not trying to have all the answers but rather listening, mentoring and finding common ground to add value to the line manager, as well as contribute towards the corporate goals; and
- Incorporating harder measures such as inclusion of sustainability targets in incentive schemes; data-driven, stretch targets and KPIs; and company policy changes.
CFOs at the forum said change had to be both bottom up and top down to be successful. Particularly at senior leadership level, the issue of short-termism versus the risk of doing nothing on longer-term issues (possibly at greater risk) was found to be a critical issue, which needed to be recognised to ensure a balanced and robust strategy. If this did not happen, then trade-offs – often not explicitly verbalised – would not be addressed.
Decision-makers needed to be able to make sense of the complexity for themselves and others and deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, participants heard.
They also needed to be humble, invite diverse views and be willing to pivot and shift as the world shifted. In addition, they needed to be open to new ways of doing things in order to be able to identify and explore opportunities.
CSOs said they had to walk the wobbly tightrope between helping move the organisation forward, influence its direction together with others and making sure it was ready for change. However, having leadership buy-in made this job easier and quicker.
Participants said it was critical to put in place the right skills, not just skills such as problem solving, critical thinking and systems analysis, but also interpersonal skills and advocacy. In addition, skills development for sustainability and ESG had to be extended company-wide to include the financial, procurement, HR and operations staff who nowadays all need some form of awareness and knowledge.
Concluding the event, Lee Swan from Alexforbes said she was “learning every day and has adapted and grown in ways she could never have imagined”.
Swan epitomises the mindset of a successful CSO – being willing to embrace the idea that this is a lifelong learning journey and being humble enough to accept you might not always know the answer but are willing to create it with others.
For more information, please contact Wendy Poulton, director at ESG Africa Conference at [email protected] or Gillian Hutchings, head of membership and communications at NBI at [email protected]
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