Overcoming Barriers To Sustainability Leadership

Published: 04 January 2011

6 pages

Executive Summary

As firms upgrade their sustainability strategies they run into execution risks due to a lack of organizational capacity and leadership with power to make changes happen. Verdantix hosted a seminar of industry thought leaders to identify today’s challenges and potential solutions. Firms must deal with the inertia of existing organizational structures, the complexity of implementing change, pushback from Board members and a lack of involvement from the CFO. Firms with successful sustainability strategies have appointed Chief Sustainability Officers (CSO) with budget and authority to implement change, rejigged reporting lines for functional leaders in areas like energy and environment to report into the CSOs, and have authorized CSOs to set sustainability performance targets for general managers. To convince sceptical Board members that a Chief Sustainability Officer is required to deliver the sustainability strategy, executives can point to the growing wave of appointments at firms as diverse as Alcoa, Dow Chemical Company, IKEA Group, Orange, Vedanta Resources and Veolia Water.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WEAK ORGANIZATIONS MAKE SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY INEFFECTIVE
Sustainability Strategies Require Leadership Resources To Succeed
Sceptical Board Members Need Evidence To Back The Empowered CSO Plan

COMPANIES MENTIONED

AECOM, Alcoa, AT&T, BAE Systems, CA Technologies, CH2M HILL, Clear Standards, Dow Chemical Company, Eaton Corp, Flowserve, GE, Georgia-Pacific, Heidrick & Struggles, IBM, IKEA Group, Logica, Marks & Spencer, Orange, PepsiCo, Renault, SAP, Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), Standard Chartered, TechniData, Unilever, Vedanta Resources, Veolia Water, Wilbury Stratton