How to develop and activate a successful sustainability program

Three key insights from the North American Sustainability and Responsibility Summit

Earlier this month my colleague, Vernon Turner, and I attended one of the world-leading sustainability conferences, the North American Sustainability and Responsibility Summit (NASRS) in Austin, TX. While the event took place during one of central Texas’s worst ice storms in decades, a sense of warmth and collaboration permeated throughout the event’s presentations, breakout sessions, and receptions. As one of the first in-person ESG-focused conferences since the global pandemic, the event served as an opportunity for Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) and other sustainability leaders from organizations of various shapes and sizes to share insights and best practices around sustainability programs.??

3 Key Insights to enable a successful sustainability program?

As a follow-up to that event I have summarized the key insights and takeaways for organizations looking to develop and accelerate a successful sustainability program. These are based on recommendations from leading sustainability experts and executives at NASRS. The three key insights for developing and activating a successful sustainability program are as follows:?

1. Develop a bias for action???
2. Establish and execute on an integrated digital strategy??
3. Secure collective engagement and personal ownership for sustainability programs

While I will give a brief overview of each of these themes today, in the coming weeks, I will publish a series of interrelated articles that provide further details on each topic and will offer guidance and recommendations on how to implement them.

Insight 1 - Develop a bias for action

As ESG professionals, we would love to fully characterize our organization’s sustainability footprint before rolling out organization-wide commitments and the underlying initiatives to achieve these commitments. By doing so we believe that we would gain a solid understanding of our sustainability impacts, including emissions across scopes 1-3. Unfortunately, if we take a waterfall-like approach we lose precious time, time that would be better served positively affecting our ESG impact. Instead, we should heed the advice of the Michael Okoroafor, the CSO of McCormick & Company, at NASRS:?

"Think big, start small, scale fast"

Insight 2 - Establish and execute on an integrated digital strategy

Digital technologies play a fundamental role in successful sustainability program development since they enable KPIs to be characterized, monitored, and socialized. Why is an integrated digital strategy so important? As management guru Peter Drucker said:??

"If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it."

The three core components of a robust digital strategy include: data, analytics, and visualization. A digital strategy that includes these three components enables ESG leaders to quantify the progress towards their commitments and monitor the impacts of specific initiatives. Organizations that do not have in-house expertise around these digital technologies should consider engaging strategic advisors, like Cognizant, to help them develop and execute a digital strategy to enable their sustainability programs.?

At NASRS, David Allen, VP and CSO of PepsiCo Foods North America, summarized the importance of digital technologies:?

"Digitization enables improved sustainability decision making throughout organizations."

Insight 3 - Secure collective engagement and personal ownership for sustainability programs

Organization-wide engagement is fundamental to the success of sustainability programs. The two core components of successful engagement are: frequent communication with key stakeholders and personal ownership to deliver on sustainability objectives.

By frequently communicating the core components of corporate sustainability programs throughout the organization, CSOs begin to establish the support they need to deliver on these programs. For maximum engagement, sustainability program highlights should be socialized via town hall meetings, green teams, and LinkedIn.

Perhaps more important to the success of sustainability programs is for organizations to distribute ownership for sustainability initiatives to leaders with the power to enable the necessary change. Overarching sustainability programs must be segmented into workstreams based on those groups in the business that can positively affect change. Then, commitment must be secured throughout the C-suite to deliver on KPIs.

As Page Motes, Head of Global Sustainability at Dell Technologies, clearly stated at NASRS:?

"Goals and priorities must be pushed down from the top to executive teams and throughout their organizations. Then, the appropriate governance and operating models should be put in place to ensure the program's success."

Successful sustainability programs bring numerous benefits to their organizations, including: revenue growth, cost reductions, and increased market valuation.?I look forward to sharing perspectives on how sustainability leaders can expedite these benefits in the coming weeks.

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Next up - A detailed look at Insight 1 - Develop a bias for action

I hope to see you in a week for the second article in this series, which will go a bit deeper into Insight 1 – Develop a bias for action. Until then, take care and keep the rubber side down…?????

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Ryan Schmidt is a leader in Cognizant's North America Sustainability practice. He helps clients to create and implement actionable sustainability programs that leverage digital technologies to accelerate their initiatives. Ryan has an extensive background leveraging data and analytics to unlock new business outcomes especially in the high tech, retail, manufacturing, and public utility sectors. In his spare time he enjoys riding his bicycle, coaching youth basketball, and spending time with his wife and two children.?

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