10 Steps To Turning Your Company Into A Sustainability-Driven Innovator

Wednesday 30 January, 2008

(Author Credits)

Organisations that wish to grow profitably in the future must focus their efforts to benefit shareholders, society and the environment simultaneously.

Concentrating on any one of these areas at the expense of the other two may compromise a business’s long-term success. A focus on sustainability provides the best means to implement this triple-pronged strategy simultaneously, enabling organisations to innovate, differentiate themselves and succeed.

1. Make innovating for sustainability a part of your company's vision
   
   Update your company's stated visions, mission and list of values or principles to ensure that sustainability is at the heart, so that your company is publicly identified, both internally and externally, as sustainability-driven.
   
2. Formulate a strategy with sustainability at its heart
   
   To really be effective, sustainability must be included in a new formulation of your business strategy. Simply bolting it on to an existing strategy is likely to leave it marginalised and insignificant.
   
3. Embed sustainability in every part of your business
   
   Create an ongoing process for getting each part of the company to recognise and understand its environmental, economic and social impacts, and get each part thinking about how they can use that knowledge to innovate through a systematic and integrated approach.
   
4. Walk the talk
   
   Top leadership in the business has to believe in it. Staff and other stakeholders need to hear their leaders explain regularly what responsibility and sustainability mean for the business and the innovation possibilities they hold, and see the actual programs implemented.
   
5. Set up a body with the power to make sustainability matter
   
   Many of the leading sustainability-driven companies have a board committee devoted to ensuring that things move ahead. Others have a leading non-executive director in charge, while others still have a mixed committee of executives and non-executives. Whatever the arrangement, it is essential that the company regularly addresses sustainability and its strategic opportunities at the very highest level of decision making.
   
   The most effective sustainability committees fulfil the following purposes:
   
   
   1. Consider, review, evaluate and supervise integrated environmental, social and ethical policies.
      
   2. In collaboration with top management, make sure that responsibility and sustainability are taken into account during strategy formulation.
      
   3. Advise the board of directors on responsibility and sustainability issues.
      
6. Set firm rules
   
   Establish a code of conduct on sustainability covering both your employees and other stakeholders in your business, stating clearly that anyone who doesn't adhere to it has no place in your company or connected to your company.
7. Bring your stakeholders on board
   
   Identify all the stakeholders in your business - shareholders, employees, suppliers, customers, the communities in which you operate - and engage with them on thinking about sustainability. Actively encourage them to participate in your innovation and encourage them to develop sustainable opportunities themselves.
   
8. Use people power
   
   Ensure that sustainability is a clearly stated value at every stage of your people management process, whether it's advertising for staff, hiring, induction, performance appraisal, remuneration or promotion. Create a training department that includes a strong focus on creativity and innovation based on sustainability.
   
9. Join the networks
   
   A growing number of organisations, networks and other bodies dedicated to encouraging sustainable business are emerging. Get involved with appropriate groups. Take part in sustainability investment rankings and monitors.
   
10. Think beyond reporting: Align all business systems with the company's vision of sustainability
    
    Corporate social responsibility reporting helps focus the business on Shareholder and Social Added Value with Environmental Restoration (S²AVE), but it should not be viewed as an end in itself. Sustainability should run through every core system, from talent management to supplier evaluation, customer relationship management (CRM), and, of course, the balanced scorecard. This approach can turn focus into coordinated action that matters.

Author Credits

Sponsored by BT and Cisco. BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in 170 countries. Principal activities include networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications services, and higher-value broadband and internet products and services. For further information visit the web site: www.bt.com. Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. For further information visit the web site: www.cisco.com.