[MUSIC] This is Mike Rosenberg in Strategy and Sustainability. This is session six on developing the sustainability strategy for your business. In this segment, I'm going to talk a little bit about how to actually do that, how to craft the plan within the framework I introduced before. So where to start? The first place is scope. What is the scope of the ambition, and where are we starting from really? I mentioned Ray Anderson when we talked about Pay For Principle, when we talked about that strategy. Ray Anderson was the CEO of Interface, a company in Georgia which makes carpet tiles, I think the largest in the world. In 1994, he had, what he called, a spear in the chest moment, when he realized he really wanted his company to do something completely different. He drew this picture and called Mount Sustainability, I think he drew in every meeting he went with the company and said we’re going to get to the top and the top is going to be zero footprint. And I said 2020 is the goal and the company is still working towards that goal. And they're getting close to 2020, so it's going to be interesting to see if they make it even though Mr. Anderson passed away a number of years ago. But the real question is, what is the time frame and what is the goal? And are we looking 20 years out? He started this process in 1994, so 2020 was far away when they started. But the goal is zero footprint, which is quite a lofty goal. Yeah. Part of this has to do with the effort required, which again, depends upon where you start from. So I think this, again, is something for the board of directors to decide, which is how far out do we want to go, how far do we want to go, and how much effort is the firm willing to spend to get there? Very, very important, and if the right answer is to obey the law, that's okay. If it's the right answer for that business. The process, I would start with defining time frame, geographic scope, and functional scope. Maybe hold meetings every three months or every two months, or whatever. I would look at the history of the company. Look around the geographies that one's working in, looking at the competitive landscape, what other companies are doing in this space. I would at some point, present the present situation, and where's the company today, what is its footprint in different categories? To what degree are interest groups paying attention or not? And again, all this needs to be phased over time, both to give the team who's working on this time to get the work done, but also be able to get on the schedule of the people who need to decide. At some point, I look at future scenarios, do a very deep scenario planning process. And maybe a deep technical review on with the company's products and services actually are and what's going on in that technology space going forward. Eventually after doing this steps then you might be in the right situation to actually choose a strategy and start to work on the lines of action that one would need to get where you want to go. And finally, work on the communication plan. Now this is an illustrative map of a process, but they key idea is to work a very specific milestones, spread out over some time period to have time to actually get really good quality rigorous work done, to do the math, as I say. But also to give people time to assimilate the ideas and to get their heads around it. Communications of course has different issues in different places. So shareholders. What do shareholders need? They need to understand the compelling logic of strategy. Why is this important? Why is it necessary? How much money are we talking about? And what are the benefits? Customers, I believe, just need an honest and transparent story line. Whatever you're doing, they just need to know what you're doing and why you're doing it and why it's okay. And if you're doing less or more, that's probably okay as long you can explain it very clearly. Employees and again depending upon the scope of ambition, they need to understand what's in it for them, why should they worry about these things and how much their behavior has to change. Partners or suppliers and the different companies involved, what's expected from them? And again, clear expectations is the best policy. And finally, with communities, interest groups and even civil society as a whole, it's about being transparent and clear. Being able to talk about where this company has been and where is it going. And in some cases, especially dealing with localist groups, you might need to have a compassionate strategy about how to help people get their heads around what they need to understand. So, communications is a very huge issue to talk about in a couple of minutes but it's a very important issue in the success or failure of many these initiatives will be found in the approach to how to communicate, both inside and outside the company. [MUSIC]
