Transformational Board Leadership for Sustainability

Business leaders need to step up to the challenge of climate change World congress call for transformational leadership rather than incremental adjustment Business leaders have been painfully slow to address the challenge of climate change which requires more than incremental adjustment. If sustainable lifestyles are to occur in both developing countries and the developed world, business, economic and social transformation are required. Some people define sustainability in terms of enabling existing operations, growth and development to continue. For others, sustainability is living within the boundaries of what is possible given the finite resources of our planet. Reconciling the two requires transformational leadership. Many organisations need to operate differently and move more quickly. Boards making steady progress need to step up, provide transformational leadership, and embrace new models of organisation and business, and different strategies, methods of finance and forms of governance. However, many committed and well intentioned directors are comfortable with current practices. They feel successful, live well and consider they are doing a good job. For many years there have been a variety of options for transforming organisations, supply chains and how we operate. There have been a rich diversity in terms of how, when, where and with whom one could work, learn and acquire. They can have a beneficial impact upon the environment and reduce some drivers of climate change, yet traffic jams and associated pollution has increased. Many boards are only now looking at approaches, applications of technology, and business models that are far superior to current practices. Why the disinterest for so long? Are the laggards ignorant, lazy or just risk averse? Are they suffocating transformation? To provide environmental leadership, boards need to encourage diversity, challenge and creativity. They have to release potential, support innovation and inspire and enable entrepreneurship. There were AI environments in the 1980s. Many so called disruptive technologies are not new. They are only disruptive for the complacent, unaware and idle. The alert, imaginative and energetic see them as enabling technologies. Too often there is awareness rather than application. Knowing about something does not mean that it will be used to transform how a company is organised, operates and creates value. Impact depends upon how knowledge is used and for what purpose. Struggling UK retail chains announce store closures and seek arrangements with their creditors. Their CEOs and directors cite changing purchasing habits such as buying on-line as the reason for their discomfort. On-line shopping is hardly new. Twenty five years ago tribes in the Amazon basin were selling their craft wares via the internet. Why have companies run by highly paid business school graduates and advised by leading professional firms not been as imaginative. Why are so many companies so slow to seize opportunities and so determined to stick with outdated business models and protect past investments rather than create new options and choices? Is improvement rather than creating new options and choices opting out or a comfort blanket? Will boards have the courage to call time on profitable activities that make unsustainable demands on natural resources? Will they work with customers to create less environmentally damaging business models, offerings and lifestyles? Many boards follow rather than lead. They hope that something will turn up. Boards should inspire and make things happen. Are people in your company brought together in mixed discipline groups and asked to come up with more sustainable alternatives? Are key customers and their staff involved? What would they rather have? What would better enable them to achieve their sustainability objectives? Scientific and technological developments allow us to change aspects of the natural world and create new forms of basic life. Answers to questions such as what a company should do differently that would benefit the environment are often constrained by experience of current practices. Blue skies thinking might be easier to find in a local school than in a firm of consultants. We need to get directors who feel they have arrived to realise that they have not yet started to provide the leadership required to address environmental issues and the challenge of climate change