A day of sustainability and the future

On Tuesday morning, I attended a breakfast seminar, titled "What's next for Sustainability - is the message getting through?", and in the evening was a Firm Elite dinner, with the conversation focussing on "Communications in a digital world - how do we need to adapt in order to ensure our organisations' sustainability in tomorrow's political, social, environmental and economic atmosphere?"

In the morning, we were a collection of (mostly) businesses, with a few thoughts from invited guests Doug Johnston - Director of Ernst and Young's Climate change and Sustainability Services team; Alan Knight - sustainable development advisor to many corporates including Body Shop, Coca-Cola, the UN, and currently the Virgin Group; and Harry Wallop - Consumer Affairs editor at The Telegraph.

This was a day of discussing Sustainable Business, and how we talk about it, communicate how we are doing and engage stakeholders. One thing became very apparent by the end of the day - it doesn't matter what field you work in, how close you are to sustainability or how senior you are, some people JUST DON'T GET IT!

Example - I brought up the idea of creating sustainable partnerships between civil society and the private sector at the breakfast meeting. Among the good and the great of sustainability and some of the top 'CSR Professionals' in business. I was asked to clarify what I meant. I didn't use any big words, I didn't use particularly long sentences. I simply asked what they thought of cross sector collaboration for social and commercial benefit, and how we (as a group of enlightened souls) can take this concept further.

So I asked again: Partnerships between businesses and charities not only contribute significantly to the aims of charity and philanthropy, but they also have the ability to make considerable savings within a business. So is it not possible for businesses to look outside their sector to other stakeholders when trying to effect sustainable change?

The response was, in essence, "well, it's really the job of the charity to come up with the idea" How infuriating.

I compare that with my experience of Sara Dixon's Firm Elite Dinner I attended in the glorious Caledonian Club, yesterday evening. My co-host Simon Card OBE introduced the discussion for the evening - how do we ensure sustainability?

Around the table were professionals from law firms, banks, charities, professional services firms and consultancy. We had a really interesting and diverse group of people, all talking about how we can sustain our organisations, and the really interesting thing was that it wasn't anyone's day job to think about this stuff. But all of us got it.

Conversation was lead by Brian Bannister, Communications Director at PwC and Filippo Addarii, Exec Director of Euclid Network - an ACEVO spin out and joint venture.

Brian gave us some very interesting anecdotal evidence from his experience of change management and crisis management within a large, global corporation. Some of his key messages were:

*Broaden your outlook to engage those who shape your environment.
*In our digital world, by the time you know you have a problem, it's usually too late!
*Talk to your most harsh critics. Battle with them and the other fights will be won with greater ease.
*The era of Corporate Philanthropy is over.
*Corporate leaders need to be brave to survive. Neither success nor sustainability will come from shying away from problems.

Filippo gave us an international perspective - we must focus on solidarity, and look to reclaim the magic we once had.

His story was from his first years in London - when all was opportunity and possibility. Now our fair city has lost it's claim to be the most innovative in Europe, and Filippo's question was
"Where have all the optimists gone?"

He went on to say that civil society is the secret weapon - the silver bullet to regain our global standing. People connect about problems and passions - civil society is passionate about solving problems, so surely it must play a significant role in bringing back optimism.

Brian followed this by reminding us all of his Liverpudlian roots, and letting us into a spot of scouse lingo with which few were familiar: Optipessimism. This is a state of mind through which one can share in the joy of great things, but revert back to the outlook of Eyore in the blink of an eye - never disappointed! I'm glad to say not many were keen to adopt this!

But as we moved around the table, hearing from our diverse group, it became clear that we were more optimistic than many. There was an agreement that in order to achieve sustainability, we need to make things realistic, rather than remain in the doldrums of ideology.

We agreed that perception matters - look to our colleague and fellow diner Heidi, reputation manager at Project Associates for cases of how important it is. We agreed that in order to understand how we are perceived we must look to all of our value chain, not just colleagues, or suppliers or consumers as individual groups, but also the way they connect to form a perception landscape.

Trust comes from this - public opinion, branding, all of these are based on how we communicate, and how we are seen.

We talked at length about CSR and philanthropy, and again agreed about how the narrative has indeed moved on to one of sustainability - a move to the pragmatic and away from the ideological.

Charities have excellent public trust, very often good branding, and are perceived as a paragon of virtue. So how can we, the diverse group of people around the table, learn from this? Also, many corporations would love to be as well networked as their colleagues in the third sector (I think here of Stephen Bubb of course - who has more business cards than most business leaders, and most importantly, knows what to do with them!)

I made a point that we can not just learn from it, we can use it. Business and charity can work together, creating sustainable supply chains, engaging consumers in a range of ethical and virtuous activities and both benefit in absolute equal measure. And this, we finally agreed, is the much debated (and misunderstood) Big Society - in action. Working. Without intervention from government, before it even entered our lexicon.

this is something we can work on, can develop and bring forward. But slowly - as another very astute diner pointed out, patience is a virtue - let's do things with consideration to achieve sustainability.

Final thoughts were around two things - firstly, Al Gore's comment that to go fast we go alone, and to go far we go together. We need to do what John Wayne did best - build a posse and tackle the problems together.

Secondly, Filippo asked "Where are all the optimists?" A clear sign that this was his first Firm Elite Dinner, as we were all at the table.