Sustainability Course for Corporate Communicators

At the world’s first summit of nation leaders determined to save the planet, more than a decade ago in Rio de Janeiro, I was part of the side show.

While the formal United Nations sessions tossed around calls for environmental treaties and the big idea of “sustainable development,” a group of multinational companies conducted their own conference and I was invited to be on a panel to talk about ways that this would impact the business community.

While the exact meaning of sustainability when tied to various national economic goals was not then clear — the general idea seemed to be that the leaders, especially those from the U.S. and Europe, would work this out when they got back home — it was clear to us huddling in a corner of the U.N. tent that business was about to be pulled into a major task of trying to align environmental and economic goals for the long term.

Taking charge of the situation, the business executives at Riannounced plans to coordinate through a new group — the World Business Council on Sustainable Development — and tstart providing the public with much more information, including metrics, on company green performance.

Corporate communicators in our group generated some discussion about how to take this idea and make it relevant to company stakeholders. My contribution was a talk about listening, reaching out to stakeholders with more emphasis on future, and shared outcomes. We dug into ways to sort out expedient and longer term strategies to set up sustainable communications.

This would become the basis of my consulting practice after that, working with and learning from companies going green.

The concept of sustainability has been in the mix, but always at least slightly esoteric in corporate contexts, not as immediately demanding as cleaning up pollution to meet requirements, or as satisfying in a public good or reputation sense as supporting a green cause.

That’s all changed. We’ve hit the tipping point.

The world war on carbon has driven sustainability into corporate C-suites.

Al Gore, the Oscars, the Nobel Prize, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democrat-control of Congress, energy prices — these persistent and combining factors have tipped sustainability into practical business reality.

If you mix the now mature level of environmental expectation with rising energy needs and add personal fear among stakeholders about risks — including investment risks — you’ve got the formula for management’s attention.

Climate change gives new life to NGOs — witness the TXU utility deal — and leads the previous non-financial issues now widely accepted as having financial materiality.

Snow, joining peers at the strategy table to sustain the company’s competitiveness and market value, corporate communicators need to move along this sustainability course:

Make the case.

Chart the course for sustainability that’s relevant to the company. This is a long-term program that will need dedicated resources. Top management and business operations buy-in and encouragement are critical to success. There must be a clear business case for sustainable performance and communication.

Take it upstairs.

Sustainable performance is a substantial corporate governance issue. Top management, once they’re convinced that the sustainability plan is rational and achievable, must get Board endorsement and involvement.

Internal alignment.

Internal communication has to achieve workforce involvement and operational accountability. This amounts ta culture change. The flow of information within the company needs to be adjusted so the whole company is aimed at sustainable performance.

Stakeholder activism.

Each stakeholder group — investors, employees, customers, suppliers, government — needs to understand, and in the best case be engaged in, the company’s strategies. Investor and government relations interactions are particularly important, because the opinions of stakeholders in these arenas can make or break management’s resolve.

Get allies.

Develop partnerships with interest groups, government organizations, customers and retailers, understand what their needs are and work collaboratively toward specific sustainability goals that all involved can agree on.

Think ahead.

Target the next generation of consumers and other stakeholders, recognizing that sustainability is aimed at future stakeholder benefits, by getting involved in schools and public education about sustainability.

Transparency.

Report progress (or lack of progress) in achieving metrics — such as carbon footprint reductions. Validate your claims. Get third party evaluation of both process and products.

Maintenance.

Create and use systems for internal and external feedback for continuous improvement in the sustainability program, keeping it relevant to the business and all stakeholders.

Sustainability is still misunderstood by a lot of corporate and agency PR people who confuse it with corporate citizenship and social responsibility, but it’s come a long way from the 1992 earth summit and into the well-house of corporate communicators.