The Painful Journey: Overcoming Internal Transformation Challenges for Sustainability and Impact

We get it, transforming into an impact-focused organisation is tough.

As a service consultancy, we're so focused on our partner's impact journeys that we parked our own.

But now, MING is starting to have a vision of where we want to go, and we want to share it with you.

Meet Julia, our Impact Manager, and Will, our Global Growth Director. Our authors for this month's MING piece.

They keep it real when talking about our multifaceted perspective on impact and its challenges, but most importantly, its opportunities.

You might wonder how Impact and Growth can work together, but we assure you they make a great team.

Being impact-focused doesn't mean sacrificing growth, and in fact, we believe it's the opposite.

If you're leaning in, wait no longer. Scroll down to read the full newsletter, and write back to let us know what you think.

– Matthias, Marc & Sebastian

Psst. This is just a snippet of our newsletter.?Subscribe here ?to receive the full one right in your inbox.

MING article

The Green Digital Consultancy without a Green Website: Our Sustainability Journey

MING Labs’ small steps to impact and sustainability

“On this journey, where we aim to be a leader in thought and action, it's crucial to lead with authenticity and transparency. While we initially pieced together unaligned initiatives, we've since charted a clear path forward. We don't claim to be perfect or leading the way just yet, but we have the ambition, motivation, and drive to take action.”

8 min read?

Explore Here

Related article

European Financial Review

Authenticity is key: Achieving sustainability from the inside out

4 min read

Main Takeaways

• Authentic sustainability is crucial for high ESG performance. Superficial strategies can lead to scepticism and hinder benefits.
• Sustainability is in demand from investors, customers, and employees.
• Sustainability must be ingrained in a company's DNA, and not just act as a public relations tool.
• Boards must support a company's sustainability mission, or institutional investors may apply pressure.
• Suppliers must meet sustainability values to mitigate risk and make sustainable supply chains part of the strategy.

It has to be an inside job: Transformation for sustainability and positive impact will be successful if anchored in an authentic sustainability identity, lived through strategies, practices, and policies.

Julia Wunderlich

Impact Manager at MING Labs

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Related article

Economist

A new playbook for sustainable business

4 min read

Main Takeaways

• Businesses need to embrace ambitious zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality goals.
• Sustainability needs to be an integral part of the core business strategy, and sustainability data has to be embedded into core business processes.
• New forms of leadership and corporate governance are needed to drive sustainability decisions in every facet of the value chain.
• Companies need to extend their leadership on sustainability outside their own operations and engage with partners to achieve ambitious sustainability goals.
• Companies need to engage with governments to shape a regulatory landscape that creates an enabling environment for the sustainability transformation.

SAP's numbers prove that adopting Green Digital principles and taking responsibility for the entire product value chain is essential in reducing a company's environmental impact, as exemplified by their staggering 84% emissions resulting only from customer product usage.

Julia Wunderlich

Impact Manager at MING Labs

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Word of the month

Impact Journey

The transformation for positive change

Related article

Harvard Business Review

How Sustainability Efforts Fall Apart

6 min read?

Main Takeaways

• Many companies are launching sustainability initiatives, but most programs get stuck and are unable to scale.
• The "hidden enemies" of sustainability are organizational practices that tend to favor routine and incremental approaches over radical and transformative journeys.
• The four main categories of hidden enemies are structure and governance, processes and metrics, culture and leadership, and methods and skills.
• Companies tend to silo sustainability into ad hoc departments, which limits its power and relevance within the organization.
• To achieve sustainability at scale, companies need to embed sustainability into business processes, transform their culture and leadership, and adopt new methods and tools designed specifically for sustainability.

Sustainability efforts are easy to have, the hard part is putting them into action.

Julia Wunderlich

Impact Manager at MING Labs

Read

For further exploration

Harvard Business Review

What Does Your Company Really Stand For? ?

7 min read?

Financial Times

The struggle for the soul of the B Corp movement ?

7 min read?

Twitter commentary

UK Green Economy

"EarthDay 2023 is landing on April 22nd to inspire action, encourage investment in our planet, and introduce global populations to the green revolution. Here are 5 positive, sustainable changes you can make within your business for Earth Day 2023:

1. LED lighting is a quick, easy win for businesses looking to decarbonise

2. Develop a clear, meaningful environmental policies for your business

3. Encourage public transport use and low carbon travel

4. Encouraging public transport use and low carbon travel

5. Reducing your waste in a five step approach: Prevention, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, Dispose"

Read ?

?Meme of the month

What's Next?

The increasing carbon footprint of the world is a significant concern that businesses must address. It’s crucial for us to take control of our impact and lead towards a greener future.

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