Book Launch: Strategy essentials for business leaders – Squaring the Sustainability Circle
2 MINUTE READ | NIGEL SALTER
If sustainability is now a fundamental prerequisite for doing business, how can business leaders approach it in a way that creates value for the business while also working for society?
That is the question at the core of the book – Squaring the Sustainability Circle, authored by Annette Stube, Lene Bjørn Serpa, John Kornerup Bang and Nigel Salter, Director at SB+CO.
PREFACE
It’s safe to say that very few companies, certainly in more recent years, have set out to be unsustainable, to harm the environment or to damage people’s lives or mistreat them. And yet it’s also true to say, still today, that very few companies have successfully got to grips with being genuinely sustainable while also being commercially successful. There seems to be an inherent challenge in the tension between aiming for sustainability and achieving commercial success that business leaders struggle with – the ‘squaring of the circle’, which we address in this book. It’s not that companies aren’t trying – more that companies are only scratching the surface and not making the extra effort to work through the complexity that squaring the circle requires.
Sustainability has now become a megatrend and a field that corporate executive teams and boards need to navigate with deep insight and with heightened instincts. It is now so prevalent that a mass of courses, articles and management books claim to almost guarantee business success if you simply tick the ESG boxes required by the Preface 9 ratings agencies, express support for the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and set some targets and goals that seem to be owned by the senior leadership.
In our experience, this sort of approach is over-simplistic and ignores the difficult task of managing complex changing trends and making the right choices for companies operating in very different sectors and markets.
This book doesn’t have a magic answer to this challenge but we do believe it is possible to work with more rigour and intent to square the circle and to make the sustainability agenda a central component of commercial strategy and business success.
How do you know where your business is going to be affected or where it is going to affect people, society or the environment? How to prioritise between the huge range of topics related to environmental, social and economic sustainability and how to identify which actions, options and risks are the right ones to respond to? And how to legitimise and protect the company’s brand by acting responsibly and in line with society’s rising and changing expectations?
This book offers some over-arching, action-oriented responses to this challenge. We don’t go into great depth on processes and tools. What we are trying to do is to give business leaders, board members and executive teams an overall understanding of the essentials they need to make sure that the businesses they work for are living up to their obligation to take care of the long-term interests of shareholders, while listening to other stakeholders’ needs and in particular now responding to what science is telling us about the condition of our planet.
The key point that underpins all our thinking is that sustainability has now become a pre-requisite and a non-negotiable for doing business. It can no longer be an after-thought or an adjacency. And it certainly can’t, if you want it to help support your commercial objectives and manage strategic risks.
The book is out now and is available to purchase in both printed and digital formats
Nigel Salter
Nigel has over 25 years’ experience advising global corporations on sustainability strategy and communications. His experience covers many sectors and all regions. He also chairs, leads or sits on multiple sustainability advisory boards and panels and is retained strategic counsel to several senior management teams.
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Do get in touch if you have any thoughts or if you’d like to discuss how we can help you with your sustainability goals.