Sustainable Business - from the horse's mouth

Yesterday evening, I attended a networking round table event - organised by Corporate Culture. The title for the discussion was "What is sustainable business and how is it different from CSR" A really interesting subject, with a few surprising outcomes.

Discussions were led by Mike Barry, who leads on Marks and Spencer's Plan-A campaign - In 2007, they came up with 100 commitments that would improve the sustainability of the company.

Both the CEO of Corporate Culture, John Drummond, and Mike are on the ACEVO sustainable business steering group, so we were in great company.
Also around the table were the top people on the issue from Investec, Royal Mail, Sainsbury's, Fairtrade Foundation, WWF, Arcadia Group, Unilever, Coutts & Co, Northern Foods and Tata Beverage Group. We were joined by Steve Howard, CEO of BITC for a short while also.

Mike's presentation looked at the case for creating a sustainable business, why it's different from CSR, how it works for them, followed by some thoughts for the future.

I won't transcribe the whole thing, as interesting as it was, but here are some choice quotes or things that resonated particularly with me:

*Everyone has at least one competitor that is redefining from CSR to sustainability; you can't afford not to do it.

*Sustainable businesses need to cover everything on the sustainability spectrum, not just the few good PR opportunities that CSR may cover.

*Human change is crucial. Those who can drive change are the ones who will succeed.

*Value chain is important - look outside to your stakeholders, suppliers, consumers and seek to build relationships with them and take them on a journey.

*The dull things are still important - things we can't make media hay out of still need to be done.

*It makes money! Plan A was expected to lose £40m in its first year. It is now making £50m profit.

*The low hanging fruit, the easy wins are gone. We need to focus on making difficult decisions, always involving trade-offs.

The discussion that followed was most interesting. Very quickly, we dispensed with a conversation on the language used. Do we call it CSR or sustainable business? Many thought it didn't matter, but I argued that it really does. CSR is 'yesterday', it's been exposed as shallow, PR driven and incomplete. Sustainable business is modern and progressive, it's 'tomorrow'. When talking to external stakeholders, especially in the third sector, it is vital that an image that looks forward to an enterprising future is presented.

What lies underneath the language, of course, is the most important - the activity carried out by the corporation. We all agreed that the fence painting and similar activities speak to a severe lack of understanding of what is needed.

Steve Howard brought up government - he had been to a discussion with Cleggeron yesterday morning to discuss Big Society, and said one big message from the session was championing the need for working in partnerships across sectors. This is great news for our work with the sustainable business forum, and I hope to capitalise on this mood by introducing our brokering and matching service. If two political parties can come together and form a working partnership based on transparency and collaboration, it gives us hope!

Final thoughts on the evening -

Change is key. Those who effect change, who champion a sea change within their organisation, who can garner the right amounts of support, and influence others will be the most successful.
We also need to take a role in translation. We all exist in a value chain, with stakeholders on either side of us - suppliers (of ideas, goods, services) and consumers (of our message, ideas or goods). We need to translate the passion of the consumer and ensure this appeals to the sensibilities and objectives of our suppliers. When we can achieve this kind of joined up, innovative and progressive thinking, we will be well on the way.