The sustainability challenge: How is the transition to sustainability to be achieved?
According to an article by Christoph Lueneburger and Daniel Golemon in MIT Sloan Management Review, consumer expectations regarding products’ environmental and/or social impacts, have changed. Soon, sustainability will not be a choice for companies to make, but a necessity for survival. Tweet This!
How is an organization to make the transition to sustainability? What does this transition entail? How is any sustainability initiative – which is essentially different from other corporate initiatives – to be effectively realized? There are three separate phases in successfully carrying out a sustainability initiative, each requiring different skills and competencies – including, most importantly, leadership competencies – from the individuals involved:
- Making a clear and convincing case for change: As many organizations are not receptive, or are even reactive to sustainability (unaware of the opportunities involved), the individuals leading the sustainability effort – the sustainability leaders – must be able to communicate a convincing sustainability vision, collaborate, and influence others, also possessing change leadership skills.
- Turning vision into action: In this phase, the sustainability vision has to be translated into a complete change program consisting of specific initiatives and firm commercial targets. For this to happen, sustainability leaders must be skilled in results delivery and, at the same time, have a commercial orientation, being able to take corrective action when needed.
- Developing a long-term sustainability strategy: As sustainability becomes a core value for the organization, creating competitive advantage, sustainability leaders have to be able to anticipate future needs and trends, pursuing partnerships and encouraging innovation.
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This article was compiled using a publication by MIT Sloan Management Review. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the publication’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the link below: