It's Time to Challenge the Sustainability Expert Status Quo
LinkedIn is doing such a fantastic algorithm job for our team at Medoola that our feeds are now jam-packed with sustainability experts. It's at a point where we are losing the significance of the word's meaning (in the context of improving the long-term well-being of people and the planet) and muddying the waters between career trends and genuine expertise.
It forces us all into a position where we must carefully consider what knowledge we consume and how it changes our judgements.
So how can we effectively see through the murk to ensure the people and firms we hire are not pushing false news and agendas for profitable gain? We look at why the service industry has formed and ways to navigate through the noise to hire with confidence.
It's 2023, and those 2025, 2030 and 2050 targets are creeping up on us fast. So too, is the emergence of sustainability as a fully-fledged service industry.
A decade ago, we began Medoola's operations to build sustainable procedures and processes into the core of all our client's packaging and supply chain activities. In truth, many Consumer Product Brands needed more time to get to grips with sustainability. It was a 'nice to have' addition to corporate agendas and very much at the early adoption phase. We desperately had to break down the resistance and barriers back then.
“An expert is an ordinary fellow from another town.” (Mark Twain)
Jump ahead a couple of years, and the sustainability and circularity advocates began popping up in LinkedIn titles. Now, you only need to glance at your daily feed to see a continual scroll of sustainability experts. And that's because sustainability stirs emotions, and everyone with an opinion can contribute to the debate. That's healthy, and it's powerful and essential for collective change. But is it right to put views on par with expertise and offer it as a service?
Ways to navigate through the noise.
To be sure you and your business take purpose-driven action with clarity and meet realistic and successful transformations, we've put together a few tips to ensure the people and firms you hire are the best.
Create a strategic statement at a project level.
Before engaging with any experts, always consider which aspects of sustainability are critical to your project and establish a strategic statement. Your business may already have a corporate strategic statement for sustainability, most likely ESGs.
Still, it's easy to lose focus at a project level when sustainability is a vast topic that covers socio, economic and environmental factors. Of course, the holy grail is to capture all three - the sustainability sweet spot - for every project. That's where the right person will flourish. However, they can only thrive if your project statement is specific and timely - like a SMART goal.
Sustainable buzzwords, legislation and grandiose targets, such as Carbon Neutral by 2030, have sent businesses into a blind panic. With blind panic comes rash decisions like producing ESG reports based on legislation and buzzwords provided by experts/consultants that don't understand your industry.
Copy-and-paste strategies are not sustainable solutions, and now, more than ever, we must take a step back and put energy into setting achievable objectives. After all, taking transformative steps is about successfully reducing your impacts rather than failing. Ensure you hire experts who know your niche and prioritise small actions over generic targets.
领英推荐
All consultancy costs money; sustainability consultancy is no different, but if you see these experts as contractors, they will act like contractors. Instead, we must look through a fresh lens of collaboration to get the most success out of sustainable projects.
A great start is to rid your concerns regarding return on investment and instead appreciate experts adding value incentives in their proposals independently. It's a sign of good-quality collaboration because they are as invested in the project as you are.
Another thing to remember is sustainability is a long-term journey, not a final destination. You will want to retain great collaborators, which requires a significant element of trust.
Beat the Bias.
We have all seen how easy it is to try and point blame at one industry, one brand, and one material, but rather foolhardy to accept this without understanding the effects.
"Most of our assumptions have outlived their usefulness." Marshall McLuhan
For sustainable success, avoiding assumptions and emotional decisions is essential. The right experts will be open-minded and able to explore your business and supply chains objectively to understand where you can make genuine improvements. All businesses carry a unique set of parameters, and only the analysis of these can determine the tangible value steps.
Sustainability is often about resilience planning, so listen out for those cues when hiring an expert.
Prioritise 'If you can't measure it, you can't manage it
Building a sustainable strategy makes this engineering 101 term supremely relevant. The starting point for any expert hire is for them to understand your baseline and consider solutions against it. Aim to ensure you know all the metrics, carbon, land, water, energy and impact on the ecosphere first, as it will allow you to collaborate effectively and create a high-value roadmap that evolves your business into a sustainable success story.
With target deadlines against us, it's more important than ever to impact your sustainable journey positively. Change can happen with the right collaborations in place; remember to:
We are sustainability change makers striving for continuous, sustainable efficiency in packaging and supply chains. Our vision is to build processes and equities that transform brands into sustainable success stories.