Making the business case for sustainability: how to talk to senior leadership about climate

This article was originally published on the Lune blog.

Sustainability makes good business sense.

But, it can be a struggle getting senior leadership teams to understand this and to prioritise it accordingly — McKinsey research found that only a quarter of CEO’s have sustainability as one of their top three priorities.

If you’re part of a sustainability team in a company — whether it’s your job role or a voluntary passion project — this can be incredibly frustrating.

We often hear from keen sustainability champions who are raring to go with climate initiatives, but aren’t sure how to persuade their senior leaders to engage with them. Sounds like you? Then you’re in the right place, because we’re about to dive head first into the topic, covering:

• Part 1: How to persuade senior leadership to make climate a priority
• Part 2: The business case for sustainability

Part 1: Persuade leaders to make climate a?priority

Our no.1 piece of advice when speaking with senior leaders and stakeholders is to make sure you’re selling sustainability as a commercial proposition.

In order to become a business priority it has to make good commercial sense. In the past, working on sustainability has been seen as a cost centre, and this may well be how your senior leadership team are viewing it. To win them over, you need them to see sustainability as a growth opportunity.

Think of it like pitching any new project or initiative to a business, Dragon’s Den style. Except that you’ve also got the climate scientists, school strikers, climate legislators and more standing behind you, adding weight to your argument from all possible angles. Combining the two is powerful.

Here’s how we’d suggest you go about it:

• Stage 1: Find your fellow sustainability champions
• Stage 2: Do your research — get into the company’s mindset
• Stage 3: Build your business case
• Stage 4: Set up a conversation

Stage 1: Find your fellow sustainability champions

Working in a silo is never going to be beneficial, either for your workload or for your sustainability goals. Working with others will help to lighten your burden and bring different skills and connections to the table, whilst also increasing the pressure on senior management to take notice.

It’s highly likely that there are others working at (or advising) your company who are just as passionate about climate change as you are, and would love to see it on your company’s agenda. Seek them out. Shamelessly stalk LinkedIn and Twitter for any signs of climate action amongst your colleagues — we dare you.

Ideally, you’re wanting to find someone who is influential in your organisation’s decision-making process. This might be a senior member of the team, or it could be a prominent external stakeholder such as a board member, trustee, academic advisor or so on. Someone who, once on board, will be able to add backing and substance to your idea in conversation with those senior leaders — or even to help you gain access to the procedures or budget you need to make progress on sustainability.

Alongside identifying senior champions, you could also create a working ‘green’ or ‘sustainability’ group at your company to work on sustainability with you. Something like this may already exist in your company. If not, it’s as simple as sending an email or Slack message, or asking for something to be posted on your company intranet or in your staff newsletter.

Stage 2: Do your research — get into the company’s mindset

The key concern of senior leaders is their commercial goals and targets.

And if you’re going to successfully pitch sustainability to them as something that will help them towards those goals, you first need to understand:

• What those existing commercial goals and targets are
• What problems or blockers there currently are in hitting those goals
• What the decision-making process is at your company for new projects
• Who the key stakeholders are in that decision-making process
• What the more specific goals, priorities, and motivations are of those key stakeholders

All of this information will enable you to create a strong argument for how sustainability aligns with and supports the existing commercial goals and priorities.

So do your research first.

Read your company’s business plan back to front, rewatch CEO staff briefings, ask your seniors a tonne of questions. This is also where those senior sustainability champions come in handy — this is information they’ll already have to hand and be able to give you insights on.

Stage 3: Build your business?case

Use the information you’ve gathered to develop the killer business case for sustainability at your company, based on how it fits in with the commercial goals of the organisation.

We’re delving deeper into what exactly the business case for sustainability is in the next part of this guide — and you can even download a free slide deck template at the end.

For now, a few pointers on how to build an effective business case:

• Speak their language — use the words and phrases that you’ve heard from senior management to bring sustainability into the ‘known’ for your senior management, demonstrating that sustainability is closely aligned with overall corporate strategy and not a separate, foreign, and risky entity.
• Provide evidence — back-up your claims with research that proves the business benefits that focusing on climate impact would bring. Bring examples and case studies of businesses in your industry that are successfully differentiating through sustainability. Show quotes from existing customers and fellow employees about their view on the company’s existing (lack of) environmental work.
• Create a vision for the future — don’t be tempted to spend time criticising the company for the lack of work they’ve done so far on environmental impact. Instead focus on looking forward to the areas of opportunity for your business, for instance cutting costs, winning customer loyalty, becoming an industry innovator. Set out your vision for what success would look like in this arena, and how it would propel the company forwards.

Stage 4: Set up a conversation

Now you have everything you need to enter into a productive conversation with the senior leaders and decision makers in your company, so all that’s left to do is set a time and pitch your heart out.

Our (free) slide deck template for pitching the business case for sustainability might come in useful here.

Make sure you include next steps in the conversation, and ensure these are simple actions to get started on sustainability. Often this first step is going to be to open the conversation more widely, engaging all employees in the process as well as board members, investors etc. Or it might be that there’s an initial piece of work to be done to identify the areas of sustainability that make sense for the business to focus on.

Equally, if there’s appetite for immediate action, you might want to consider carbon offsetting and removal. Purchasing credits for high-quality carbon offset and removal projects is a way to have an immediate positive impact by funding projects that are leading the way in solutions to climate change.

It’s a great first step in your climate journey whilst working on a wider sustainability plan.

Having a first step like this will ensure that momentum stays high by showing that positive climate impact can be made quickly, and you should start to see the business benefits from this to add coal to the fire. Which is not a great pun to use in the context of climate change, we now realise.

Part 2: Making the business case for sustainability

It’s clear that businesses have a pivotal role to play in tackling climate change, from reducing emissions throughout existing supply chains to coming up with new, lower impact solutions.

But what’s in it for the business?

Well, a lot, as it turns out.

For a long time profit and purpose have been seen as at war. That’s changing, with movements like B Corps that effectively combine the two growing more and more rapidly. Climate positivity doesn’t have to cost you revenue. Businesses can generate economic value by addressing social and environmental problems.

The key ways that sustainability creates value to a business:

• Win customer loyalty
• Increase profitability
• Improve employee proposition
• Make immediate cost savings
• Create opportunities for innovation
• Manage future risk.

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