5 Common Mistakes Business Leaders Make When Working With Sustainability

?I have had the pleasure of working with more than a hundred companies and discussing, helping, and presenting sustainability to thousands of business leaders over more than a decade.

And looking back, I can see that there are a handful of things that I see again and again,? as common mistake.

Here they are, and also a bit about what you can do to solve it.

1. The work and the strategy around sustainability is detached from the core strategy for the actual business. You have your regular approach, basically business as usual, and then you have different kind of initiatives going on under the umbrella sustainability. But it's all detached.

With this approach , you will never get a solid business value and you will never gain real credibility. Sooner or later, somebody will call you on it and say: “You can really say that you're a part of a solution if you just continue business as usual”.

2. There is no clear assignment of responsibility to ensure implementation. This goes at all levels. We need clear assignment at leadership level as well as the technical people. Everybody needs to have clear understanding of where you're going, what they should do and have the ability to actually do it.

I've seen it over and over again.? Setting huge targets, but not assigning the relevant responsibility to the people that must have it.

3. Not deploying the necessary resources and attention is the third common mistake

You have a target, you have a strategy, you are clear about where you want to go, but there is very little room for people to get there. I strongly believe, and I'm a strong advocate of saying that working with sustainability is an integrated part of what you do. It's a new way of doing, it's not something you do on the side. So you might say, well, why should it require additional resources?

Well, the key word there is that it's a new way. People need time, resources, and ability to actually figure out that new way is and integrating it into the existing fabric of the operation.?

4. Aim too low in the target for where you want to go. If you set a target for your work on sustainability that is too low, then you are going to miss out on the really juicy and interesting part. It is when you set a really ambitious goal, you will start to rethink the way you do your business.?

You will come up with smarter and better solutions. Simply because you have to think differently and harder about the solution as it soon becomes evident that the usual approach will not suffice.?

You will also gain far more respect and far more interest from the world around you, which again, open up doors to new markets, to new client types, attract small talent, attracts new partners.

There's so much value to be gained if you really join the group of businesses that want to make a positive impact on the world.

5. There is really no actual commitment from you. You, the business leader on top. If you are not part of it, that sends a very strong signal, but it also means that it's going to be really difficult if not impossible to make actual change to the way you do business, if you are not involved.

Business leaders, CEOs, and the whole C-suite, they must be part of the transition. They have to engage.

And if not, you will not see the kind of results that you're looking for.

Those are the top five mistakes that I see business leaders make when they try to work with sustainability. I really hope you don't tick all the five boxes, but perhaps you tick some of them.

And if you do, I sincerely hope that this post has inspired you to do things differently from here on.

I wish you a pleasant journey.