Feeling daunted by the prospect of tackling climate change? Try thinking about geese – or more specifically, geese as they fly in formation. By creating an arrow to reduce wind resistance, taking turns at being the leader and falling back when they tire, they move together towards one goal.
“Geese share the load, and that’s what we need to do when it comes to climate, because no one individual or organisation can do this alone,” says, Sally Uren, chief executive of Forum for the Future, a non-profit that works with companies and others to advance sustainability. “That’s super-important because the mental load and anxiety can be crippling.”
Meeting net zero emissions is certainly not for the faint-hearted. For businesses, it means extracting from the atmosphere the same volume of carbon emissions that they generate. When this is no longer possible, they must offset the impact of their emissions by buying carbon credits, which pay for emissions-reducing measures such as tree-planting or carbon capture and storage.
This, of course, calls for a good deal of scientific expertise and technical knowhow. But there’s one tool that is often underappreciated: the right mindset.
“For me, the culture part of this is fundamental,” says Emma Wilcox CMgr FCMI, chief executive of Society for the Environment, which is responsible for registering professionals with proven competence in environmental work. She shares Uren’s view that people should not feel they are alone. “It’s letting managers and leaders know they’re supported in coming up with new ideas. That’s how an organisation can learn together.”
Sally Uren, chief executive of Forum for the Future
The scale of the climate challenge can prompt one very human reaction: extreme anxiety. Take this for a sobering fact: In 2020, during the pandemic, when half the global economy was shut down, emissions fell 6%. Yet some estimate that, to remain on track, global emissions must drop 8% a year until 2030.
And for most companies, the biggest chunk of their carbon footprint is their Scope 3 emissions, that is, those that lie in the hands of others. The supply chain is particularly challenging. Today’s global supply chains are long, complex, run across borders and involve hundreds – or thousands – of suppliers, their suppliers and the suppliers of those suppliers.
No wonder that, for some managers, the prospect of having to make sufficient emissions cuts to meet net-zero goals can set the head spinning.
While being consumed with anxiety is clearly not going to help reach net zero, Uren believes managers do need to grasp the urgency of the challenge and the need to ensure that business operates within planetary boundaries, while balancing that sense of urgency with an approach that looks for opportunities and not problems.
What does this mean in terms of personal qualities? “Ambitious, determined, adaptive,” says Uren. “Adaptive because, when it comes to Scope 3 emissions, we really don’t know how to get to net zero in some parts of the supply chain.”
Emma Wilcox also recognises the need for managers to be nimble and flexible in approaching the challenge of climate change. “It’s having people who are inquisitive, who are open to change and who are not afraid of making mistakes,” she says.
The Compass for Just and Regenerative Business
In 2021, Forum for the Future released a publication called The Compass for Just and Regenerative Business, in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Aimed at helping organisations embed different ways of thinking and acting in their operations, the guide also aims to help create a “regenerative mindset” – one that rejects traditional extractive models of business, which deplete natural resources, and instead recognises the interdependence of humans and the health of the planet. View the Compass for Just and Regenerative Business report.
The ultimate change management challenge
What the comments of Uren and Wilcox suggest is that, for many managers, helping their organisation meet net-zero goals means implementing what is essentially an exercise in change management.
“Absolutely,” says David Grayson, emeritus professor of corporate responsibility at Cranfield School of Management. “For many years now I’ve been including in my teaching the change management models.”
And as with any change management exercise, he says, meeting a net-zero goal calls for a leader to set out a vision for the future, establish where the company is today and define the steps needed “to get from today to tomorrow”.
Creating tangible steps towards big climate goals is something Unipart’s John Neill CBE CMgr CCMI advocates. “It’s no good telling people we have to prevent temperatures going above 1.5 degrees. That’s overwhelming,” says Neill, chief executive of the global manufacturing and logistics group. “You have to make it actionable. And it’s got to be relevant at every level in the business because everyone can play a part when you design the right blueprint and provide the right leadership.”
John Neill CBE CMgr CCMI, chief executive of Unipart
Complex issues need human communication
Underpinning this vision-to-action approach is another human trait that is vital to a successful emissions-reduction strategy: the communications skills. “It’s really important that it’s done in the right way. In my experience most people do want to make a difference, but they often don’t know what to do,” says Wilcox. “So it’s not about beating people up – it’s helping them understand what they can do.”
Not that the conversations will always be easy. Uren points out that a net-zero strategy may involve asking people to change the way they do things and, sometimes, with an additional cost involved. “To successfully deliver a net-zero strategy, you have to influence all parts of the business,” she says. “So if that negotiating, influencing muscle is not well developed, you’ll really struggle.”
This is where highlighting the opportunities that low-carbon solutions offer is an important part of communicating. “It's about telling authentic stories that can inspire people – stories that can be retold and that get other people excited,” says Neill.
- Six truths for the modern manager”: Following COP26, we asked the Guardian’s environment correspondent Fiona Harvey for her take on net-zero leadership
- Creating a net-zero economy – the leadership imperative: watch this CMI discussion with a group of experts and CMI Companions
- Check out these change management resources
Unipart does this in various ways. As well as one-on-one conversations, the company has a number of communications channels through which to tell the stories Neill refers to. These include Grapevine, an internal video news programme; and Spark, a social media channel on which any employee can post pictures of the company’s sustainability-related projects.
This is all about being able to motivate employees, something Grayson sees as a critical personal skill for managers. “Ultimately you want to inspire people,” he says. “That’s how you build a sustainable culture – it’s about empowering people to come forward with ideas.”
Of course, that’s not to say expertise in environmental engineering and climate science will not be needed. But as Uren points out, a whole industry has grown up around helping companies with some of the technical challenges of managing their carbon footprint, such as measurement and reporting. “All the management consultancies now have sustainability units and can do this quickly and easily,” she says.
But when faced with a challenge that calls for systemic change, she believes that the right mindset is a must. “Ultimately, the challenge of net zero is a human one,” she says. “What will enable us to rise to the challenges in front of us is digging into our qualities as humans.”
Sarah Murray is a regular contributor for the Financial Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Economist Group and others. She has spent more than two decades exploring the relationship of business to society and the environment and, more recently, the role that investors can play in helping solve complex global problems such as poverty and climate change.