Leading the Sustainable Organization: The Quest for Ethical Brands and a Culture of Sustainable Innovation

(Hardback)

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Our current leaders have failed to move quickly or decisively to address the challenges of climate change, biodiversity and sustainability. The book offers a blueprint for a new generation of leaders to transform industry and create a new, more equitable future.

Leading a sustainable organisation requires more than marketing slogans and good reporting. It requires identifying the value of sustainability for all stakeholders and the development of specific transition and change plans that deliver a different type of organisation. Noble aspirations in treaties and policies are a necessary part of the picture, but leaders must create organisations that enable daily actions. Making sustainability happen is a series of leadership choices.

• Creating strategic differentiation to compete on sustainability business opportunities.
• Crafting a purpose that inspires employees to give their best.
• Building and sharing a knowledge model about why, what, and how to do sustainability.
• Ensuring that sustainability efforts are woven into values and ethics.
• Deploying a transition plan with clear action steps that move from compliance to alignment.
• Making sustainability part of the culture and identity of an organisation.
• Weaving personal commitment to sustainability into team performance.
• Telling the story of sustainable results in all business communication.
• Maintaining commitment in the face of inevitable derailment factors.
• Future proofing the organisation to stay on the sustainability journey with a sense of long-term value creation.

The current generation of leaders has failed to make the progress needed to delay the worst effects of climate change and biodiversity loss, so the challenges become harder. The book offers a chapter-by-chapter blueprint of key actions that can be learned and shared. The goal is to enable business leaders to accelerate action, make better decisions and ensure that sustainability becomes part of the DNA of any organisation.

Author Bio

Managing director, SustainLearning LLC, former managing director of Harvard Business Publishing and former chief learning officer, United Nations Development Programme.