Translating Eco into Economics: The Leadership Pitch
How Sustainability Officers Can Get Leadership Support For Sustainability
I spent part of last week at the BLD Southeast Conference in Atlanta, hosted by B Local Georgia, where I met a number of amazing individuals involved in sustainability. Everyone there was part of the B Corp movement—an entire ecosystem of business leaders focused on using business to do good for society.
Looking around that room, you’d think it was easy to get support for corporate sustainability initiatives. The conversations revolved around how to do sustainability bigger, better and faster.
But then I realized a sobering truth.
Georgia now has 40+ B Corps. A new record! That’s a testament to our local community’s commitment to doing business the right way and is great news!
But sadly… that’s out of 1.5M companies that exist in the state of Georgia. B Corps represent a mere 0.003% of businesses in Georgia (and similar percentages elsewhere).
If issues like climate impact and environmental sustainability are going to make a dent in the business community, they need to appeal to those not already in the business-as-a-force-for-good choir.
If you’re in a sustainability role in your organization (and you’re not in that 0.003%), how do you secure funding for the critical work you need to do?
All business efforts need funding to happen—whether in the form of staff positions, consulting budgets or investment dollars. Sustainability is no different.
How should sustainability professionals pitch their work to the leadership team to secure funding?
Be Like Finance
One way to not do it (and apologies to my new B Corp friends!) is to focus on how much good you’re doing or going to do.
Should you trumpet the amount of carbon your team has helped reduce? Absolutely! Should you highlight how much water use you’re reduced, how much waste you’ve cut, or how much you’ve reduced reliance on the local electrical grid? Without question!
But those qualitative accomplishments shouldn’t be your primary story. They might be what motivate you, me and our colleagues who are trying to make a difference, but they shouldn’t be the focus of your pitch.
“But wait!” you say, “my CEO/president/division head/company owner is 100% committed to climate impact & sustainability. That’s what s/he cares about—that’s what I should talk about! Shouldn’t I focus on that when lobbying for more resources for my team?”
Nope.
Here’s why:
As much as it’s painful to admit, “doing good” is for 99% of businesses a luxury for profitable times. And just like any luxury, when business slows down, it’s likely to be cut and all your work will be undone.
Ask yourself this—if revenues drop and the choices are either keep the sustainability group or risk bankruptcy, how long will your sustainability group survive?
Compare that to the finance team.
Is finance a luxury in any organization? If anything, in most it’s an unfortunate necessity—no one may like them, but the company has to have them to file taxes, collect revenues, pay vendors, issue reports and monitor the bank accounts.
Nothing luxurious about that—it’s critical to the business.
Your sustainability group needs to be as critical to the the day-to-day operations of your company as finance is. You can’t be a luxury, you have to be a necessity.
How to Be a Necessity
Tell the good that you’re doing, but instead of focusing on it, focus on the business impact you’re making. There’s two ways to do this, and one is better than the other.
First, the less-impactful option: Focus on your defensive impact.
Are you optimizing your firm’s carbon footprint? Reducing your use of plastics? Minimizing water usage? Reducing waste?
Great! Your story isn’t one of carbon, plastics, water and trash though—its about getting in front of coming governmental regulations and shifting client demands.
This is a defensive strategy story—you’re making investments today to avoid worst-case risks to the business tomorrow. You can explain how it’s cheaper to deal with regulations now than in the future and how you’re protecting the business from future risks.
Voila! Getting ahead of future needs and requirements is not a luxury. It’s a business necessity, just like forecasting & budgeting or setting aside cash for taxes.
A better positioning?
Focus on the offense.
Don’t explain your work as altruistic or even defensive. Show how it enables your company to capture additional market share and expand the business. Focus on how climate-friendly products & operations can make your business more competitive and create a strategic advantage for your firm.
Your sustainability group, in that context, isn’t a cost at all—it’s a strategic investment the firm is making to the future growth of the business, on par with investments in operations, geographic expansion or new products. Sustainability is a growth vehicle with clear returns, and your business has the opportunity to invest to unlock those returns.
In that light, it’s irrelevant whether your company’s leadership cares about the environment or not. They don’t even have to believe in the science.
If they’re in business, they probably believe in money. And more money is better. Show how your group makes more money for the firm and your team is a logical investment.
Example
I spoke with representatives of a climate-friendly industrial chemical company last week. (Yes, I was surprised such a thing exists too—I won’t bore you with details, just know that there are environmentally friendly chemical alternatives to many, if not most, industrial chemicals).
For their clients, shifting to more sustainable chemical inputs made sense on both the fronts I mentioned above:
Defensively, switching to greener chemicals gets ahead of a shifting regulatory environment that is beginning to restrict or ban many traditional, dangerous options. It also preemptively addresses downstream customer requirements to stop using more dangerous chemicals or reduce your carbon footprint as a supplier.
Defensive bonus: Because transportation costs are a significant component of the climate impact of a chemical supplier, climate-friendly suppliers often have networks of distributed facilities closer to their clients’ manufacturing facilities. This both reduces the carbon generated because transportation requirements are reduced and makes it less likely the client’s supply chain will be disrupted by things like natural disasters happening multiple states away.
These requirements may be manageable today, but are only going to increase over time. Better to address them today, when changing inputs is manageable and less expensive, than in the future.
Offensively, the chemical company’s clients have found they can unlock new markets by offering more sustainable products. This is either through marketing (“PFAS-free products!" for example). Or, interestingly, because they found that the greener alternative was a cheaper alternative, giving the client company a chance to lower prices to capture more market share.
Whatever the details for your business, by putting climate and environmental sustainability at the center of your business’ operations, you’re making it a necessity for the future success of your organization.
And not only do necessities not get cut when times get tough, they also get the funding they deserve. Focus on the business impact of your work.