SUSXL London Climate Week Roundtable June 2024 Key Takeaways

Context:

The SUSXL London Climate Week roundtable, 24th June 2024, brought together a unique grouping of senior sustainability executives to explore advanced strategies for achieving accelerated sustainability goals in corporate settings. 

We were joined by executives and sustainability leaders from Microsoft, Meta, Thales, Ecologi, Accenture, Zinc VC, Greencore, BAM, Laing O'Rourke, Southeast Asia Climate and Nature, Motherson, BoxFund, GenZero, The Danish Refugee Council, Carbon Better, Legitimate Leadership amongst many others, representing a diversity of thinking and shared vigour to get more done, quicker.

The primary discussions focused on compassionate leadership, corporate collaboration, and coherent communication. The below provides a summary of the key insights shared by participants and outlines the main takeaways and actionable steps for sustainability executives.

We thank our event sponsors, Ecologi and Thales for making the event happen. We thank our topic leads, Wendy Lambourne, Toby McCann and Adam Boita of Legitimate Leadership, Thales and Ecologi respectively. We thank our event moderator Marc Lawn. We especially thank our valued participants.

Session Leaders:

Wendy Lambourne, CEO, Legitimate Leadership

Toby McCann, Head of Air Solutions and Sustainability, Thales

Adam Boita, CMO, Ecologi

Marc Lawn, Founder, The Business GP

Davis Mukasa, MD, SUSXL

Simon Brown, Partner - Corporate Innovation, Sustainable Ventures.

Summary Tenets:

Caring

Bold executive leadership that sincerely cares, trusts and empowers its staff to lead, represent and enact changes.

Collaboration 

Genuine and sincere collaboration between companies, along the chain, in the industry, across industries and with new innovative companies and solutions. Always keeping an open mind and an ear to the ground.

Communication 

Unabashed open and frank communication regarding sustainability projects and activities internally and externally. Honesty, vulnerability, integrity. 

Courage, Conviction 

The courage to act, lead and put sustainability projects out there despite potential skepticism and blowback. The conviction and steadfastness that you're disrupting things for the better longer-term business, people and environmental reasons.

20 Key Takeaway Points:

1. Communication as a Tool: Effective communication is crucial for educating and, crucially, engaging all stakeholders. Do not underestimate.
2. Storytelling: Use storytelling to illustrate your sustainability efforts: both successes and challenges. Be creative but be sincere and honest.
3. Transparency: Transparency and clarity in our communication builds trust.
4. Overcoming Barriers: Address media apathy and cultural barriers using clear and compelling messaging.
5. Understanding Perspectives: Leaders should prioritise understanding the diversity of perspectives and thinking in their organisation.
6. Self-Reflection: This is a good starting point for personal and organisational improvement.
7. Leadership and Trust: Demonstrating genuine care builds trust within teams.
8. Capability and Accountability: Leadership should provide means, capability, and accountability.
9. Inspiring Leadership: Leaders should be the type of managers that inspire their teams.
10. Importance of Collaboration: True collaboration is challenging but essential for sustainability.
11. Clear Missions: Successful collaboration requires clarity of mission and strong leadership.
12. Strategic Procurement: Procurement should focus on sustainability goals, not just transactions.
13. Radical Collaboration: Embrace radical collaboration to achieve substantial change.
14. Innovative Economic Models: Explore models like Doughnut Economics to drive sustainability.
15. Caring Leadership: Integrate care as a core component of leadership.
16. Balance Care and Growth: Create a supportive and dynamic work environment that balances care and growth.
17. Intent in Leadership: Leaders should align their actions with the intent: give rather than get.
18. Decentralised Sustainability Roles: Develop roles within each department to foster autonomy and effective internal communication.
19. External Communication: Highlight achievements and areas needing improvement
20. Trust and Transparency: Organisations should show their actions and explain the rationale behind their sustainability efforts.

Conclusions & Actions:

The roundtable discussions provided valuable insights emphasising the importance of effective communication, thoughtful leadership, collaboration, and innovative approaches to sustainability. We aim to keep these conversations going beyond and between events. The key takeaways and actionable steps are summarised below:

Enhance Strategic Communication:

• Develop decentralised sustainability roles within each department to foster autonomy and effective internal communication.
• Focus on transparent storytelling externally, highlighting both achievements and areas needing improvement to build trust with stakeholders.
• Responsible Parties: Communication Teams, Department Heads

Foster Thoughtful Consideration and Self-Reflection:

• Encourage leaders to engage in self-reflection and seek to understand diverse perspectives across the organisation.
• Responsible Parties: Leadership Teams, HR Department

Implement Caring Leadership Practices:

• Develop training programmes that emphasise caring leadership and growth-oriented practices, ensuring leaders demonstrate genuine care and commitment to sustainability.
• Responsible Parties: Leadership Development Team, HR Department

Promote Effective Collaboration:

• Define clear missions and objectives for collaborative projects. Reevaluate procurement processes to ensure they align with and support sustainability goals.
• Responsible Parties: Strategic Planning Team, Procurement Department

Adopt Radical Collaboration and Innovation:

• Explore and pilot new economic models and innovative practices that promote sustainability. Leverage radical collaboration to drive systemic change and break away from business-as-usual practices.
• Responsible Parties: Innovation Team, R&D Department

Align Leadership Intent with Sustainability Goals:

• Regularly remind leaders to align their actions with the intent to give rather than get, fostering a culture of sustainability and trust within the organisation.
• Responsible Parties: Leadership Teams, Organisational Development

Next Event: 

The Innovation Collaboration Gathering (ICG) London 

18th September 2024, Sustainable Ventures, London

For more details about our roundtables and events, please email davis@susxl.com

Thank You.