Why sustainability is a competitive advantage

Security and enabling a hybrid workforce is top of mind for every organization right now.

But I think the issue that sits on top on that list – or at least it should – is sustainability. Sustainability is increasingly important to strong vendor and customer relationships and business operations, and I see it as a win-win issue.

Before the pandemic, maybe one in every ten meetings I would hear sustainability mentioned. Now, it’s every meeting.

A lot of the increasing importance of the sustainability conversation has to do with COVID and how we’ve all changed in the last two years.?It used to be that sustainability was more of a cost or a risk than a boon. But living through COVID has, without a doubt, changed us and our business practices and thinking.

Even beyond COVID, in every news cycle now, there are so many terrible natural disasters. Everybody understands that sustainability is a global and local problem we have to address; it’s something we have to be prepared for and plan for. To put it simply, it’s “must do”, not “nice to do”.

We must figure out how to live and work sustainably in the world we’re living in now, not the one we wish we were living in.

What is motivating the conversation on sustainability?

I suggested that the pandemic has changed how much businesses care about sustainability. I don’t mean the actual virus. I mean that we’ve undergone a period of intense global change and challenge and it’s had an effect on how we perceive the world and how we act in it.

During this period, we as a society saw the benefits of community, communication, agility and adaptability, using technology to solve problems. It used to be that a proof-of-concept was needed before anything could go into production. Now, due to what we’ve learned and experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are much faster to move concepts into reality if it will help them and their customers. They’re more proactive in the face of potential disruption.

As organizations, we’re beginning to apply this new way of thinking to other important problems we’re facing.

My customers are telling me a couple things. They're saying, first of all, they don't see their governments solving issues of sustainability alone.?If the industries don't join the effort, they don’t think it'll get done. Business leaders are realizing they need to be, and they can be, part of the solution.

What’s more, the new generation of employees deeply care about sustainability ?as an issue. It’s hard to attract and retain those new employees if you don't have a good sustainability perspective and strategy.

Are they taking leadership because of the desire to proactively manage the availability of resources, or?legislative requirements, or inclement weather? Some of the customers we’ve spoken to would argue yes.

Are corporations concerned with and taking leadership on sustainability for altruistic reasons? Yes.

Are they taking leadership because shareholders and investors are asking the board if the organization is hurting or helping the planet, and if the board has plans? Yes.

Are they taking leadership because it could be commercially profitable? Yes.

All of these things can be true at the same organization at the same time, or only some of them. My customers have shared a huge range of reasons for their increased interests in sustainability; I’ve only listed a few here. I know Lenovo’s own ESG motivations originate in our desire to do right by our planet and our customers.

It’s okay for organizations to have layered motivations. Sustainability is not only the right thing to do, it’s not only being pushed by many employees, shareholders and investors, it’s also a business opportunity. It’s the definition of win-win-win (people + profit + planet).

Fundamentally, I think, there has been a change in mindset. Taking action on sustainability is now recognized as the right thing to do. That is key.

What changes can we make, and help others make?

At the beginning of the pandemic, people noticed that they made a bigger impact on the climate by far than they did the prior 15 years, when they were actually trying to make an impact on the climate.

Unfortunately, those effects weren’t lasting. What did last was the increased worry people are suffering: 43% of people are more worried about climate change now than they were before the pandemic. So what else can we do to create the kind of lasting structural changes we need to sustain our economies and our lives?

Different parts of the world are at different stages of this conversation. If you want to do business with or within the EU, it’s incredibly important to operate sustainably, for example. But I think, globally, we are all working to get on the same page because we’re all starting to see that we have to in order to succeed in both the short and long term.

Nobody really wants to go back to the old status quo. They all want to improve on what they were actually able to do over the last 18 months, and do better than that 18 months from now.

Many of my customers are adding sustainability KPIs into their businesses. They’re ramping investment criteria to incorporate those goals, adding performance KPIs to employees and executives, and putting plans for bonuses and compensation in place tied to the goals, too, just like they would with any other critical business endeavor.

Addressing sustainability in a proactive manner has put my customers on the front-foot with their boards, investors, employees and customers, who all want answers. Crowdsourced sustainability initiatives have increased employee engagement and ownership. What’s more, sustainability is an issue that requires, as Gianfranco Lanci put it, “a global, ambitious response”, which requires creativity and innovation from every organization. I’m always going to be in favor of organizations investing in creativity and innovation.

Let’s look at this briefly from Lenovo’s perspective. We’re very interested in maximizing what we can do in the sustainability arena; everything we learn shapes our strategies moving forward. There are so many things we can do ourselves as an organization to operate more sustainably, but also so many things we can do to help our customers attain what they’re trying to attain.

●????Manufacturing can be a big drag on the climate. There are many elements we can improve, such as using different components and pieces and less plastic.

●????We can change the way we package products, and the way we ship them.

●????Longer battery lives are useful for saving on energy costs.

●????There are big opportunities in recycling and reusing our products, too, opportunities that we pass on to our customers in giving them choices they didn’t know they had.?

●????In services, we offer carbon offsets, and we’re looking at ways we can manage repairs remotely and in the cloud, rather than technicians travelling or shipping things back and forth. Mixed reality solutions are really great for this.

All of these efforts, and many more of our initiatives in the ESG space, have knock-on effects that benefit the customers who use our products and work with us. We also have practical experience implementing sustainable initiatives that we can share with enterprise customers to help them along similar paths. Our proactive approach is a competitive advantage.

How do you get closer to your customer and what they want? How can you do so profitably? More than ever before, sustainability initiatives are going to rank high on your list of ways to answer those questions.