The last word
“τα πάντα ρει και ουδέν μένει” (everything flows, everything changes)
Heraclitus 544-484 BC
As I sign off after 11 years at CISL, I can’t help but reflect on how business - the audience I have spent most of my career challenging, educating and supporting - has evolved over this period, and share some personal insights about the risks and opportunities ahead.
Since joining CISL, I have witnessed a step change in business ambition on sustainability. The philanthropic approach of ‘giving something back’ initially gave way to ‘stakeholder materiality’, and eventually to a focus on commercially driven solutions - staying competitive by understanding society’s needs and helping solve pressing problems. The transition is one from reactive corporate social responsibility to longer-term ‘enlightened shareholder value’ and finally, at least aspirationally, purpose-driven organisation. No longer confined to the heroic efforts of under-resourced, isolated CSR teams, sustainability is now being led by increasingly well-informed executive teams and, lately, even boardrooms.
The conversation has moved, for the most part, from ‘why should my company act or lead’ to what needs to be done differently, how to deliver it and how to finance action. Business-led initiatives and coalitions advancing net zero or the protection and restoration of nature, have become commonplace and even traditional platforms of neoclassical and elitist thinking, from the World Economic Forum to the Economist magazine, have begun featuring these issues prominently.
The story of how these changes occurred can help guide further bold steps in the future. Business leaders, reluctantly initially, opened up to the evidence presented to them by scientists and NGOs on the changing climate and earth system. I experienced this first-hand as the Director of The Prince of Wales’s Business & Sustainability Programme (BSP) in 2012. By ‘translating’ the data coming out of the IPCC and the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s work on ‘planetary boundaries’, among others, and connecting it with global socio-economic trends, business leaders began to recognise not only the pressures business activity was placing on the earth system, but also the implications (risks) for their business resilience and success. The fact that such conversations took place in a ‘safe space’ created by CISL among business peers, experts, academics and ‘provocateurs’ was clearly an ingredient of their success.
Standing back from those events, it is clear now we were witnessing a shift in narrative among business leaders towards preparedness to invest in meaningful sustainability action. A global movement of informed CEOs and finance leaders was emerging - not just a cadre of specialist CSR teams - which would become vital to business engagement with the Paris agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The rising demand for knowledge gives me real reason for optimism: during my tenure, the BSP alone coached over 1,000 senior executives and the significant growth of CISL’s in person and online executive education over the past few years.
Many of these people understand that their organisations are part of a wider system that must also transform in order to facilitate change. Initiatives such as the Corporate Leaders Group, which was originated by CISL in the mid-2000s, exemplify the opportunity for business to leverage its voice for progressive action on climate and sustainability challenges.
Perhaps the single most decisive factor in business progress has been the evident success of companies that have embarked on a genuine mission of change and impact. These exemplars demonstrate how an alignment between commercial success and purpose can keep them competitive and resilient, reward them with talent, stakeholder relationships and market performance, and establish profile among peer groups, supply chains and networks as pioneers.
Of course, the job is far from done. In fact, looking at the Great Acceleration data and speaking with leading scientists, one quickly senses how far we still have to go. Sadly, the majority of corporate plans for net zero will need to be upgraded very soon, for example. That’s not to say they have been produced in vain. On the contrary, they are helping to establish the right internal mindset and are contributing to an ever more powerful movement externally. But looking at the state of the world, it is obvious that corporate ambition and crucially, the level of investment and organisational transformation, must rise significantly, and do so now rather than be protracted over the next decade.
Looking ahead, there’s cause for both concern and optimism. Dominant business models remain firmly unsustainable, destroying more natural and social value than they create. The sustainability skills gap - the lack of well-trained and competent people at all levels of the organisation - is more obvious than ever. Business schools in the main continue to prepare executives for an economy of nature degradation, wealth concentration and inequity rather than the transformations needed to course-correct. And I remain sceptical about the impact of seemingly well-intentioned movements such as ‘ESG’ which although it surfaces important issues through improved transparency, focuses on risks and implications for business rather than critical innovation and impact.
Over the last 50 years our business systems, cultures and aims, along with the management theories and education underpinning them and the worldviews, policy and investment frameworks steering them, have been guided by a very limited range of success measures: essentially profit maximisation for companies and their owners. As a result, becoming a truly sustainable business - one that thrives by adopting strategies, business models and operating practices that are resilient, restorative, circular, net zero and inclusive, and takes a leading role in enabling required system change - is extremely challenging, particularly when the economy in which the business sits is not itself sustainable.
In order to maximise wellbeing for all – including nature – we must break free from that hold which will require vision, courage, creativity and accountability in abundance, especially when organisations have to make tough decisions about the short-term. The risk is that companies and their stakeholders balk at the task and stay in their comfort zone in the face of uncertainty and disruption. That comfort is illusory however, and potentially fatal. The big lesson I have learned during my time at CISL is that when transition is underway - and it has been for a decade now - there is no going back. A second is that the rewards of engagement significantly outweigh the discomfort. Just ask the business leaders whose companies are thriving by leading the charge.
One of the questions I have been asking business leaders, and I recommend you ask yourself, is which of your current business practices and activities do you think society will deem unacceptable or inadequate within three years?
As I close this inspiring and unique chapter in my career, I am deeply grateful to all my colleagues, faculty, clients and partners who have enriched my own knowledge and mindset, keeping me focused on the difficult questions and teaching me how to accept, embrace and navigate meaningful and impactful change.