Sustainability: Who Leads? Who Knows How To?

With new skills, corporations can be catalyst for change

By Tony Pearson and Isabel Rimanoczy

Why is it that the growing literature on CSR seldom deals with the salient issue of developing the leaders who must ensure their organization’s sustainability process? This large and useful literature on CSR focuses on technology, compliance, risk management, ethics, third-party verification and the marketing tools needed to bring about desired culture change. But, few articles address the daunting task of identifying, then developing, the competencies, mindsets and behaviors essential to those entrusted with blazing the organization’s new path to sustainability.

Why is Developing New Leadership Important?

Without debating the merits and demerits of green policies, there is a groundswell among private and not-for-profit organizations toward the triple bottom-line mentality. Many national governments, especially in the developed world, have shown their intention to address social and environmental aspects of business, and U.S. legislators are aware of the increasing need for corporations to affirmatively engage in CSR efforts.

It is, however, the business world that can be, and often is, the lever for change. To act effectively in this role means that the corporate world must partner with NGOs and governments to confront the challenges, and must train its leaders in what are new skills and mindsets.

What is Involved?

Investing in green technologies is not the whole answer.

As Peter Senge et al state in a new book, “The necessary Revolution: How individuals and organizations are working together to create a Sustainable World:” “A sustainable world, too, will only be possible by thinking differently. ... Today’s innovators are showing how to create a different future by learning how to see the larger systems of which they are a part and to foster collaboration across every imaginable boundary. These core capabilities--seeing systems, collaborating across boundaries, and creating versus problem solving--form …. the tools and methods, for this shift in thinking.”

In our work with developing leadership in global organizations, we have found this same need for new critical thinking, and it is part of the leadership development process. Along with the need for learning how to lead in the global business arena and managing increasingly in a virtual environment, the new leader must develop competencies that can manage the cultural shifts flowing by the triple bottom line mentality. The old skill sets may not be enough because the needs have changed.

Who is Responsible for Developing the New Leadership?  

Is it the CRO? Is it Talent Development? Or Human Resources? Maybe all of the above.
But unless the development program has the explicit support and input of senior management, and indeed the board, the effort aimed at lasting change is threatened.

How Can It Be Done?

The effort must start at the top, but it is important to engage the whole organization in the process.  How can we make sustainability part of the business culture, part of a new way of thinking and acting? Some key points include:

• Engage the whole. Engaging the whole organization means getting input from all levels, from factory-floor workers to the CEO.
• Cascade. Any meaningful change requires  professional development programs that start at the top and cascade throughout the organization. It cannot focus solely on external stakeholders or on senior management.
• Step out of the classroom. Traditional training is just not going to develop the skills, attitudes and critical thinking needed by new leadership. Thinking innovatively doesn’t occur as a result of a lecture; it tends to result from a hands-on approach to solving real organizational challenges, reflecting on what needs to be done to address them, considering actions taken, and learning from those actions.
• Drop the cases—Pick up your case. Case study approaches only have a moderate impact because they do not reflect the organization’s daily reality. When the training is anchored in the current challenges of the participants, engagement is at its highest and real learning takes place. The first principle of “Action Reflection Learning,” a book on connecting learning with solving business problems, is that learning is optimal when its focus is owned by, relevant to, important and timely for the individual. This is materialized in  leadership programs, where leaders work to solve actual CSR challenges confronting the organization. As they work in teams supported by a Learning Coach who helps extract learning, the managers address the new CSR challenges, which thus become the vehicle for their learning.
• Spread it. The newly developed leaders have the task of making their learning explicit, and ensuring that it becomes institutionalized—a part of the new thinking.
• Measure it. Measurement of the results of both the problem’s solution and the change in behaviors is not only possible, but necessary; ROI can be measured, which is important to organizations whose budgets are challenged.

Tony Pearson and Isabel Rimanoczy are partners in Leadership in International Management. For more information, visit www.limglobal.net.