Sustainability, Ethics and Resilience: Building Company Value

Firstly a big thank you to all those who signed up to receive this newsletter. I aim to keep it concise and interesting, to highlight useful news and insights relating to the theme of Five Horizons the book (on Amazon globally) - how we may win competitively through forming strategy around ethics, resilience and sustainability in business.

The BIG NEWS in this edition is that Five Horizons reached #1 Best Seller on Amazon in its category during the launch week, and was tagged as #1 Best Selling New Release. Thanks to all those who supported me throughout this journey, including publishers Rethink and Panoma, book coach Mindy Gibbins-Klein, and Lucy McCarraher, Joe Gregory, Kinga Stabryla , Mike Jones and their teams. If you don't yet have the book, it is on all Amazon sites, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble. UK here and USA here.

In this episode you will find:

• An explanation of Five Horizons
• My interview on Sustainability Speaks podcast
• Why CSR is good business sense
• Watch Steve speaking at SalesForce annual partner summit
• Handling VUCA with VUCA
• Better ways to achieve net zero carbon as businesses
• Power generation with sustainability - real progress or green-washing?

I've been asked to explain 'Five Horizons' so here are a few words on this

The methodology suggests a means for businesses to study their own value chain, plus four interlocked value chains that make up their ecosystem; two value chains up the supply side and two down the customer side. When vulnerabilities, harm, and opportunities to do better are identified, then the steps prioritized will be plotted on the five time horizons, so business leaders demonstrate short- and long-range plans to differentiate.

The book provides a much broader set of techniques enabling business leaders to substantiate how the market disruption is about to affect each competitive market; how to be inclusive and accepting of outliers views to capture all insights and opportunities; and how to leverage strategic planning best practice to turn this into actionable plans.

The first 15 minutes of the launch event video provides a spoken introduction that I'm sure you'll enjoy - view here. Then you might watch the remaining interviews on related topics; informal conversations with five guests who offer great insights.

Register at the?Five Horizons site, to join the Five Horizons mission

Sustainability Speaks - Steve Sanders interviewed by host Saskia Wyld

I was truly honoured to be featured by Sustainability Speaks reaching new audiences on their podcast interview, discussing Global Citizenship and Five Horizons (strategy to win through resilience, ethics, sustainability). Links below to several platforms incl Spotify.

Re-listening to this I was struck how powerful a message it is, how helpful Five Horizons can be, and by explaining these principles and the approach to Saskia and her audience it allowed me an opportunity to put this across in straightforward and compelling terms.?

This is a 43 minute interview - I believe you will enjoy it and I encourage you to listen if you find the time to. Thank you.?Spotify here and Other platforms listed here too

Hear from a pragmatist why CSR isn't a 'nice to have' but is just good business

It was no surprise to find that this respected colleague and friend of many years has arrived at this conclusion, and is pressing this message into his network in Africa, Europe and Middle East - read this article from Guy Whitcroft

SalesForce and Steve's Five Horizons book introduction - shared values and vision

I had the unique opportunity of being the first speaker at this year's SalesForce annual partner summit online. The topic was 'Improving business valuation strategically in the age of stakeholder capitalism' and in 40 minutes the presentation covered many interesting aspects of the notion that businesses can do well by doing good; evidence the time is upon us when being purpose-led and principles-oriented in strategy is a competitive differentiator.

You can register here and view the replay on the SalesForce site

Handling VUCA with VUCA - solving turmoil with future leadership qualities

Here you can read another article from Guy Whitcroft about how to handle VUCA?– Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity reflecting on the work of Bill George, a senior fellow at Harvard Business School – VUCA 2.0 - who suggests that all layers of the business (and life for that matter) should have the following foundational VUCA qualities: Vision; Understanding; Courage; Adaptability.

Smart ways to achieve 'carbon net zero' and leverage for broader transformation

Talking with fellow BIP100 member David Wilshin, I've discovered the amazing work his company is doing to help others accelerate their progress to achieve carbon net zero, and translating that into cost and effectiveness transformation, increased profit and differentiation. Take a look at the Auditel website to learn more.

Also you can watch their webinar about why achieving carbon neutrality doesn't need to cost the earth. Click here to hear from their procurement, supply chain and carbon solutions experts on this fascinating topic.

And finally news from power generation industry: is this progress, or green-washing? I'll let you be the judge

David Ko and Richard Busellato are creating a movement towards Rethinking Choices - more about this will be included on a future episode. Imagine the global Oil, Coal and Gas industry under stewardship with sustainability at its core. Anyway, more of that later...

However, they did bring to my attention something that I'd like to share and leave you with a question The New Scientist publicised technology from a large global corporate that is transforming carbon from power plants into baking soda or similar useful byproducts - But is this genuinely good news? Or is it Green washing? Did this ￡17m spent on a project by this carbon heavy power sector produce negligible net positive impact; simply add value as positive PR for the sector?

There is worthy comment about alternative projects that are potentially of far more significance in the greater scheme of things. Check out this news of these two projects vying for government support, which is reassuring - a reminder we should be vigilant to question all that we read and be wary of claiming positive creds for something that might be deemed to be hypocritical under closer scrutiny.

"Businesses will only succeed if they compete in the mindset of the future, not how things were in the past..."

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