A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION
Among the inspirational corporate mission statements and sustainability targets that are increasingly becoming a business hygiene factor, something important is distinctly lacking, how is any of this stuff actually going to get done?
Environmental issues are now enveloped into wide-ranging ESG strategies that by their very nature are so broad in scope they lack any meaningful detail or vision for implementable change in the near future. There is a general preoccupation with the "appearance of doing something" and a lack of "seeing things through" from a commercial and operational perspective.
Oliver Shah | The Sunday Times
“At its mildest, ESG is an irritation. At its worst, it damages the causes it claims to support by creating the illusion that action is being taken when it is not. I have previously recommended replacing ESG with CDP — common sense, decency, and pragmatism."
FROM COMPLEXITY FIND OPPORTUNITY
Environmental strategies can often be accused of overpromising and underdelivering, but stripping away the layers of complexity invariably shows this stems from a failure to resolve 3 fundamental tensions:
Business growth and commercial performance must be more explicitly linked to sustainability targets.
Current consumer preferences will change with longer term shifts in human behaviour.
Supply chain and operational efficiencies need to elevate and enrich the brand experience.
From Chilly’s bottles to Oddbox subscriptions, and Deepop communities, future focused businesses are already establishing the model for sustainable growth by embracing these opportunities. For more established brands this change will be defined from the top down, but delivered from the ground up.
While the boardroom provides a vision and framework for action, innovation will come from teams on the ground creating the products, systems, and services needed to thrive in this new, rapidly evolving environment.
BRIEF. CREATE. DEVELOP. REPEAT.
Too often the approach to creativity and design in business is linear, risk-averse and mechanical.
Effective cross-collaboration across all areas of your organisation is now more critical than ever to harness collective perspectives and expertise. Conventional agency models and ways of working are not driving the change to meet the shifting expectations of governments, investors, customers and consumers.
A team shouldn't “go away and come back with the answer”; the best solutions are built collectively.
In this environment, insights can be more inspiring, ideation faster, prototypes improved iteratively, and, crucially, failure embraced as part of the process and knowledge on which to build. This allows creative thinkers from different disciplines to come together with “non-design” professionals to design future products, systems and services.
Adopting this highly collaborative and inclusive approach, both internally and with external partners, has the potential for ideas to resolve some of the most critical challenges that we face including reducing or eradicating waste, closing the loop on circular systems and creating products and services that change human behaviour for the benefit of our communities and the planet.
On 28-29th June we are taking part in Reset Connect, the flagship event of London Climate Action Week with a diverse audience of investors, business leaders, sustainability experts, and entrepreneurs. We will explore how creativity and design thinking applied across all levels of business can drive realistic, implementable initiatives needed to deliver on broader environmental and sustainability targets.
Please get in touch if you would like to connect to find out more here