Organizational Change

The latest creative strategies and tools helping organizations to engage their teams in building market-leading, purpose-driven brands.

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The First Step to Efficient Sustainability: Define Shared Goals

Energy and sustainability are inherently linked. Energy efficiency pays dividends by trimming consumption and costs. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), implementing energy efficiency initiatives is the best way to act on climate change, as it can reduce CO2 emissions by 38 percent. However, becoming an efficient, sustainable business requires a collaborative effort from almost all parts of an organization.

Ford Reveals Vision for Michigan Central Station, Reimagining Future of Mobility in Detroit

After opening in 1913, Michigan Central Station quickly became where dreamers in search of new jobs and new opportunities first set foot in Detroit. Once the last train pulled out of the station 30 years ago, however, it became a place where hope left. The station became a symbol of Detroit’s hard times, a monument to the city’s struggles. As the new owner of the building, Ford is making a big bet on the future.

Employee Engagement 3.0: How Starbucks, Unilever Go the Extra Mile

Last week, over 2,000 representatives from our global community of sustainability practitioners, brand strategists, product and service innovators, thought leaders and other change-makers converged at SB’18 Vancouver to share their latest insights on a multitude of themes pertinent to all of those committed to improving business around the world. Here, we dig into brand and organizational efforts to recruit, retain and support an engaged workforce — and go the extra mile for employees in need.

Q&A: Nestlé's Work to Become a 'Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company'

Nestlé has been active on a lot of sustainability fronts lately, from water and climate policy to deforestation and workers’ rights, to plant-based

Hershey Releases 2017 CSR Report, Unveils SDG-Aligned CSR Strategy

Today, along with the release of its 2017 Shared Goodness Corporate Social Responsibility report, The Hershey Company unveiled Shared Goodness Promise, a new CSR strategy aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and centered around investments, collaborative programs and sustainable business practices aimed at making a positive difference in peoples’ lives.

Q&A: How TD Is Living Its Purpose, Driving SDGs with The Ready Commitment

TD Bank Group recently launched its corporate citizenship strategy to center on a new multi-year program, The Ready Commitment. Guided by the bank’s purpose, focus on creating shared value and desire to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), TD is targeting CDN $1 billion (US $775 million) toward community giving by 2030 in The Ready Commitment’s four focus areas:

Can Transparency Alone Transform the Fashion Industry?

Transparency has become a bit of a buzzword in the fashion industry and judging by the number of times it was mentioned at this year’s Copenhagen Fashion Summit, it is a trend that we are not going to shake anytime soon. Quite the contrary, transparency is reshaping how brands and retailers interact with their suppliers and consumers. But can it really transform the entire fashion industry? C&A Foundation’s Leslie Johnston hosted a panel of experts to find out.

Q&A: A Cattle Rancher Shares Her Beef with Food Labeling

In the sustainability world, the conversation around beef mostly involves reducing the environmental impacts of its production (deforestation, methane emissions, etc). But Cassidy Johnston can offer a perspective we don’t often get to hear in the Sustainable Brands conversation — a New Mexico-based cattle rancher and newly appointed Sustainability Officer for the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), Johnston is eager to share ranchers’ side of the story with the public and help dispel what she says are common misconceptions behind beef and its role in a sustainable food future.

South Africa Setting the Standard, Campaigning for #WaterWiseTourism

In response to a severe drought, citizens and businesses in Cape Town and the Western Cape have cut their water consumption by almost 60 percent over the past three years — a performance not yet matched by any other major city globally. Now the country’s tourism industry is sharing that for them, every drop counts, in a new campaign for #WaterWiseTourism.

Following the Paper Trail: APP’s Ongoing Quest to Restore Indonesia’s Rainforests

Since 1990, Indonesia has lost half of its rainforests. What’s worse, the rate of deforestation, currently at roughly two million hectares per year, is still accelerating. Heart of the issue being that ecological values remain difficult to measure in monetary terms. Such is the tragedy of the commons for a country with the world’s fourth-largest population: Its eagerness for economic development driven by the global market has made one of the planet’s most diverse natural habitats subject to exploitation for fast cash, rather than being protected as a crucial part of the global ecosystem.

SEKISUI: Building an Organization with Integrated Thinking to Balance Management, Environment

This post has been translated from Japanese — read the original interview here.

Your Organization’s Purpose Must Evolve

This is the eighth in a series of articles examining how business leaders and companies can transform their corporate culture in order to succeed in the midst of the impending Purpose Revolution. Find links to the full series below.

Safety First: NSF and the Quest for Global Food Sustainability

While weekly headlines tout the efforts of major food companies and NGOs working to increase the sustainability of the food industry through reducing waste, improving packaging and responding to consumer demand for healthier choices, organizations such as NSF: The Public Health and Safety Organization are working behind the scenes on an

Danone North America: The World’s Largest B Corp on the Future of Business

A global food company present in more than 130 markets, Danone has always had a purpose agenda, even when it was an unusual idea. Danone committed to combine economic success and social progress in 1972, when the company’s founder, Antoine Riboud, began Danone’s “dual project.” As Danone has grown, that commitment has been apparent in initiatives such as the Danone Way sustainable-development guidelines that have helped Danone subsidiaries improve their impact since 2001; and the establishment of Danone Communities, which began with a partnership with Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh in 2006.

P&G Smashes 2020 Goals, Raises the Bar with 'Ambition 2030'

The Procter & Gamble Company today announced it has achieved many of its 2020 environmental sustainability goals, has plans in place to meet the rest and has established new, broad-reaching goals for 2030.

What Matters Most to Millennials? Millennials Want to Matter

This is the seventh in a series of articles examining how business leaders and companies can transform their corporate culture in order to succeed in the midst of the impending Purpose Revolution. Find links to the full series below. The business world has been obsessed with the millennials for quite some time now. Millennials are the largest working generation and have considerable influence as purchasers and drivers of consumer preferences. Yet we believe that leading corporations don’t understand the millennial mindset.

The Key to Authentic Engagement: Purpose Metrics that Matter

This is the sixth in a series of articles examining how business leaders and companies can transform their corporate culture in order to succeed in the midst of the impending Purpose Revolution. Find links to the full series below.

Trending: Footwear Takes Steps Toward Sustainability

As a division of the fashion industry, the footwear sector has a hefty environmental footprint. However, a slew of emerging brands are gearing up to change footwear’s future, raising the bar for the rest of the industry by embracing sustainable sourcing, ethical labor practices and transparency.