Leadership
Exemplary cases of sustainability leadership and intrapreneurship, and the qualities, ethical principles and/or dilemmas inherent within them.
The Key to Transformational Change Leadership? Holonomic Thinking
“What happens when you cut a hologram in half?” Maria Moraes Robinson and Simon Robinson asked as a prelude to sharing what holonomic thinking means. When you cut a photograph in half, you get two separate images, but when you cut a hologram in half, the whole image can still be seen in each piece. Holonomic thinking represents a shift in consciousness from understanding an organization as a collection of individual parts, departments or programs, seen separately, to seeing the organization as a whole that expresses itself and comes into presence in the various individual parts. It means “standing in front of a customer or partner and being able to express the organization as a whole, being different and at the same time being the same.”
Unilever, WWF, Germany Named Sector Leaders in Driving Sustainability Agenda
Globescan and SustainAbility released their 2015 Sustainability Leaders survey today, asking experts to assess the progress that various institutions have made in advancing sustainable development since the historic Earth Summit in 1992.Results drawn from 816 sustainability experts across 82 countries indicate a positive perception of non-state actors and lack of confidence in the leadership of national governments. NGOs’ sustainability contribution is ranked highest among those polled, followed by social entrepreneurs, independent academic organizations, social change movements, and multi-sector collaborations.
San Diego, Aurora Among ‘Most Water Wise' Cities
San Diego, Calif., Aurora, Colo., Torrance, Calif., Poway Calif. and Hermosa Beach, Calif. are the cities with the highest percentage of residents that made pledges during a monthlong campaign in April to promote water efficiency.The 2015 Wyland National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation, organized by the Wyland Foundation and Toyota, involved residents from more than 3,900 cities making 391,325 pledges online to reduce their water use at home, around the yard and in their lives. The challenge addressed the growing importance of educating consumers about the many ways they use water, the organizers say.
What Can ‘The Systems View of Life’ Teach Us About Sustainable Leadership?
Fritjof Capra is the author of many best-selling books, including The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point, The Hidden Connections and The Web of Life. His most recent book is The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, co-written with his friend Pier Luigi Luisi. I recently had the opportunity to meet Capra in São Paulo, where we discussed this new systemic concept of life, and particularly what it means for leadership in organisations.
Report: Unilever, Coke Have Strong Water Management Practices But Most Food Companies Lagging
Unilever, Coca-Cola, General Mills and Nestlé rank highest among food and beverage businesses in managing scarce water resources, but most major companies need to adopt far stronger practices, according to a new report released Thursday by nonprofit sustainability advocacy group Ceres.
CVS Health Kicks Off 2nd Annual Fundraiser to Fight Lung Cancer
CVS Health today released its eighth annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, outlining the company's progress against its CSR strategy, Prescription for a Better World. President and CEO Larry Menlo stated that changing its name to CVS Health and no longer selling tobacco products reflect how the company is working to change the way health care is delivered. Menlo added that the company’s ultimate goal is to lower the cost, improve the quality of, and increase access to health care for patients and customers so they can live healthier lives.
Brands, Old-School Diplomacy & the New Humanities
We’re up to our ‘proverbials’ in Brand Advocates, Influencers & Champions. The social shock troops have to no little degree saved a lot of the big consumer multinationals from themselves. They have proved themselves both central in driving relevance and a vastly improved and far more respectful model of customer service. They are to that end critical in securing the survival of relevance in many multinational brands who until quite recently had acted with old school impunity and arrogance when called to account.But the blunt grassroots tool for creating better is just one of two required to secure an improved human existence in the face of our stratospheric levels of consumption and the brands who feed it.
Investors Push SEC to Require Stronger Climate Risk Disclosure by Fossil Fuel Companies
Sixty-two institutional investors representing nearly $2 trillion in assets have called for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to push for better disclosure by oil and gas companies of critical climate change-related business risks that will “profoundly affect the economics of the industry.”
Over 40 CEOs Urge World Leaders to Take Concrete Climate Action, Just as G7 Ministers Pledge to Do Just That
On Friday, 43 CEOs from some of the world’s largest corporations signed an open letter urging attendants of the upcoming Paris Climate Summit (November 30th-December 11th) to deliver an ambitious climate change agreement, while pledging to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. Released almost simultaneously, a report commissioned by the G7 Foreign Ministers also recommended concrete actions that foreign ministers can take to increase the climate-resilience of weak states.
A Meditation on the Meaning of Collaboration
As some of you will have seen, some time ago I coined the term ‘knotworks,’ which I defined as ‘networks with ego.’ My first articles about knotworks related to co-creation and the way in which many networks, projects and organisations eventually collapse due to underlying dynamics relating to ego, which people, especially leaders, fail to either recognise or address.
Coca-Cola Extends Funding for Replenish Africa Initiative By $35 Million
Coca-Cola on Thursday pledged an additional $35 million to support sustainable safe water access and sanitation programs for 4 million more people across Africa by 2020.This new funding builds on an original Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN) commitment of $30 million to bring safe water access to 2 million people across the African continent by the end of 2015 made at the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul in 2009. Coca-Cola says this funding will help to improve the lives of more than a total of 6 million Africans through sustainable access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) by 2020.
B Lab's ‘Best for the World’ List Grows to 120 Companies
A total of 120 companies worldwide were recognized on Tuesday for “creating the most positive overall social and environmental impact” by the nonprofit B Lab with the release of the fourth annual ‘B Corp Best for the World’ list.
JetBlue Once Again to Offset Carbon Emissions For All Flights During Earth Month
This week, JetBlue Airways announced it is once again partnering with the Carbonfund.org Foundation to offset the carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (CO2e) generated by all scheduled flights from April 1 to April 30, in honor of Earth Month. Now in its eighth year, this partnership has allowed travelers to offset part of the carbon footprint from their flights by making a donation to support carbon-reduction projects. To date, JetBlue says it has purchased offsets totaling more than 350 million pounds (158,000 metric tons) of CO2 and CO2e emissions.
Ellen MacArthur Foundation Taps Top Grad Students to Advance the Circular Economy
Innovation often comes from those who have not yet become entrenched in the status quo — they are better-positioned to recognize effective solutions that might otherwise be overlooked or seen as too as too radical by the already-initiated.This is doubly true when it comes to innovating for the “circular economy,” which is quickly moving from the fringe to the forefront of sustainable business thought. It is the idea that today’s take-make-waste consumption patterns should be eschewed for a more restorative process, where products are designed and marketed with reuse in mind.
March Madness: The Champions of Corporate Sustainability
March is here, and that means one thing to me — March Madness! For all its warts and shortcomings, the NCAA knows how to host a basketball championship. This tournament is so good that the first few days are now an unofficial national holiday, all leading up to the final game where one champion is crowned.
Starbucks' 'Race Together' Campaign Creates Social Media Firestorm
Companies, especially publicly owned corporations, carefully manage their image and messages. But this age of social media, changes in consumer tastes and demands for increased transparency have caused more companies to be bolder, especially when it comes to sustainability and social responsibility issues. One such company is Starbucks, which has often taken controversial stances on the Affordable Healthcare Act, minimum wage and now, race relations.
European CFOs Publish Practical Ways to Embrace Sustainable Business
Chief Financial Officers (CFO) from Unilever, Sainsbury's and more than a dozen other large European companies making up the Chief Financial Officer Leadership Network (the Network) have published four guides to help the finance and accounting community address the practical issues of integrating sustainability into their business processes and decisions.Prince Charles’ Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S) launched the Network in 2013 to bring together leaders in the finance, accounting, and investor communities to drive a shift toward resilient business models and a sustainable economy.
Trending: Big Banks Bringing Sustainable Investing Further Into the Mainstream
Investors of every stripe are increasingly using Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data to design their portfolios. While pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds have led early ESG integration, mainstream banks are following suit with significant commitments to sustainable finance. Last month, several prominent banks announced programs that indicate the further maturation of global environmental finance and the Green Bond market.
Association of Climate Change Officers Unveils First Professional Credentialing Program
The Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO) has announced its first professional certificate under the CCO Certification program.The Climate Governance Certificate provides a recognized credential to professionals who have developed the competencies and knowledge to integrate an understanding of climate change and related implications into their decision-making.
World’s ‘Most Admired’ Companies Also Are Sustainability Stars
Apple, Google and Berkshire Hathaway are the world’s most highly regarded companies, according to a new ranking by Fortune magazine.Amazon, Starbucks, Disney, Southwest Airlines, American Express, General Electric (GE) and Coca-Cola rounded out the top ten.
