Valutus

The growing threat of government retaliation against businesses. 👉 And what you can do about it. ------- About this post: sustainability leaders need to be catalysts – helping others grow their impact. One way to do this is to highlight risks that are being missed or underestimated. ------- 1️⃣ A fundamental part of Western capitalism is that you can criticize the government without retribution, whether you’re an individual or a company. 👉 But you can’t afford to take that for granted. It is very much under attack. I’ve written about this before, but the threat has become even more clear and open. 2️⃣ While the news this yesterday was largely about the rally at Madison Square Garden, there was also this clear distillation of the threat, from a conservative think tank: “Trump has had no issue calling out political enemies by name and threatening to use the force of government for retribution,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. An advisor to the former president gave additional support to the idea of government retaliation when he said: “I’ve told CEOs to engage as fast as possible because the clock is ticking … . If you’re somebody who has endorsed Harris, and we’ve never heard from you at any point until after the election, you’ve got an uphill battle,” the Trump adviser said. (Link in the first comment.) The US has laws against such actions. But statements like this make clear the intention to retaliate in spite of the law.   👉 The reason it’s against the law is that Americans, on the right and the left, know this is unacceptable. 3️⃣  Now is the time to nip this in the bud. Businesses and individuals need to oppose candidates who promise (or enable) retribution. 👉 When government can retaliate against those who criticize it, that’s not good for business–or for America. ☑️ What you can do:   » As an individual, you can vote. » As a business, you can give encourage employees to vote and give them time off to do so. » If your company makes political donations or engages in lobbying, you can align those with your values. #sustainability #government #America #business #society

What's bad for the hive is bad for the bee. 👉 Spoken almost 2,000 years ago. Still true today. ------- About this post: sustainability leaders need to be catalysts – helping others grow their positive impact. One way to do this is to use novel messaging. ------- 1️⃣ The author of the observation that what injures the hive injures the bee was Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who lived over 1,800 years ago. 👉 But it’s never been more true than it is today. 2️⃣ In the days of Marcus Aurelius, wars and disease weakened both the empire and those who lived under it. For example, take public health: the Antonine Plague killed an estimated 10%-15% of the empire’s population – and, in fact, it’s generally believed that the plague killed Marcus Aurelius himself. But today, what happens in one place can literally affect exponentially more people – such as through changing the world’s climate. 👉 And these effects harm individuals in ways they don’t always see. For example, the rise in intolerance and hate speech online affects the billions of people who use social media. 🚀 But did you know that *changes to the climate are actually making this worse?* And yet, that’s what’s happening, as two different studies – one covering 400 posts in China and one 4 billion posts in the US – have found. And then there’s the harm that comes from degrading the bedrock of society and its ability to respond to challenges. Sowing social division (e.g., through false information about other groups, hate speech, “us versus them” rhetoric) hurts social trust and social cohesion. In normal times, this hurts both the “hive” and the “bees” by undermining the foundation for economic and social activity. But when disaster strikes, the effect is even worse. Witness the people affected by recent US hurricanes who didn’t get help because they believed the false information spread by bad actors on social media and elsewhere. They didn’t get the help they needed. And the areas where they live will now recover more slowly because they didn’t, hurting even those who were spared by the storm. 3️⃣  Sometimes people respond by abandoning the “hive” to protect themselves. But this doesn’t work for long – if at all. 👉 After all, in ancient Rome, no one was more powerful or better able to protect himself than the emperor. But the Antonine Plague took even the emperor’s life. ☑️ What you can do:   » Spread the word. When you come across thinking that assumes individuals can thrive in the absence of a thriving community and world, push back. » Try different ways of putting this and see what works. For example, “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment” is another expression to try. (You can add society to the phrase if you want: “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of society and the environment.”) #sustainability #ROI #ESG #climate #society

Sustainability as a differentiator in a crowded market.

3 Lessons from Sustainable Brands 2024 👉 Three takeaways you can use. ------- About this post: sustainability leaders need to be catalysts – helping others grow their positive impact. A few times a year, great groups of leaders converge, and SB San Diego is one of those times. -------   1️⃣  Resist the temptation to do nothing. That backfires. Suzanne Shelton told attendees that traditional advertising techniques aren’t right for telling your sustainability story because they’re not designed with greenwashing laws in mind. 👉 But you also can’t stay silent, because if you don’t say anything, people assume you have nothing to say – or worse! The  cost of doing nothing is very frequently overlooked – in all aspects of sustainability. 🔗 I’ve previously written about how to deal with this; I’ll put a link in the first comment. 2️⃣  Don't just comply with regulations. Create value. I was part of a panel on turning compliance into value, and it was *packed,* with dozens of people standing for the full hour because there were no seats left. Even though most US companies aren’t subject to EU regulations (e.g., CSRD / ESRS), there’s growing recognition that between state regulations and those in other countries, we’re at the beginning of real growth in regulations. 👉 That doesn’t mean progress has to be replaced by reports and compliance. The entire session was about how you can create value in spite of regulation – or even through it! 🔗 I’ve written about the need to see sustainability regulation the same way as IT regulation. That link is also in the first comment. 3️⃣  You're being asked to do much more – but there are also more tools than ever to help you do it. One attendee commented on how many tools and platforms were on display at the event, and he was right. From carbon accounting to data management to massive climate risk models – and our own Valutus tools for quantifying ROI and accelerating CSRD compliance – there were tools for almost everything. 👉 It’s a good thing there are so many tools, because the demands on sustainability professionals keep piling on. Another session I was part of, Getting 4x More Done, focused on this problem. I talked about 3 key levers to help you deal with it: ·     Getting more capacity (e.g., show the ROI to get more help from the business) ·     Use your capacity more efficiently – e.g., through employing tools ·     Become a catalyst – influence others to raise their game, and thus your true, full impact And Phillip Clawson added a great, foundational tip: conduct a rigorous, critical analysis of everything that’s on your list to determine what you can cut. ☑️ What you can do:   » Think about these takeaways and how you can put them to use Monday morning. » If you were at the event, reach out to those you met. Content is great, but community and connections can be even better! » Add your takeaways and other lessons in the comments! #sustainability #ROI #ESG #SB2024SanDiego

Sustainable Brands 2024 Has Started 🎉 👉 Orgs like SB can help you get more done. ------- About this post: sustainability leaders need to be catalysts – helping others grow their positive impact. Sustainability organizations help. -------   1️⃣  I’ve previously written about what I’ll be presenting about at #SB24SanDiego (https://lnkd.in/ecN_mrv4) • How to get value out of regulatory compliance • How to get 4x as much done That isn’t what this post is about. 2️⃣  Stepping back, however: 👉 The value of a sustainability organization – like Sustainable Brands – is greatly underestimated. One of the ways to get 4x as much done is to partnerships, including those that go beyond your own value chain and corporate context. ⭐️ Like those you have with people you meet at sustainability events. 3️⃣  Three of the benefits of being part of a sustainability community or event: • Less “reinventing the wheel” – if you can meet someone who’s already solved the problem you’re beginning to think about, you can take advantage of what they’ve learned. • Learning from mistakes without having to make them yourself. “Experience is a good teacher. But the tuition is high.” A single mistake avoided can pay for the entire cost of involvement with a sustainability organization dozens of times over. When you have an honest conversation with someone, one of you will sometimes do something truly valuable: share a mistake you’ve made. Great opportunities to do this are (a) at an informal conversation at a sustainability event, or (b) as part of a sustainability membership group. • For a lot of people, talking with others who are passionate about the same things is energizing and reinvigorating, raising their energy level and helping them keep going. 👉 What you can do: » Join a sustainability-focused organization. This can be a broad-based organization (e.g., Sustainable Brands) or one focused on your industry or geography. » Attend sustainability-focused events. This can be multi-day conferences or short, local talks – the other audience members are great potential contacts, since they’re also there for the same reasons.   #sustainability #risk #ESG

Don't rely on opinion, go get the data!

Last night, Hugo Bethlem told me there’s a saying in Brazil: 👉 “Green companies can’t have red results.” ------- About this post: sustainability leaders need to be catalysts – helping others grow their positive impact. Part of that is understanding the nature of challenges they face. -------   1️⃣ This saying colorfully reflects a simple belief – a sustainable company can’t show financial losses. This is different from believing that the company can’t show large losses, the kind that leads to going out of business, because:  (a) that is true of any business, not just a “green” one, and  (b) it hardly needs to be said that a business can’t lose so much money it ceases to exist! 2️⃣ This is aligned with the fact that CEOs of underperforming companies are more likely to be fired if they have invested in CSR (or sustainability) than if they haven’t. (I’ve written about this before. I’ve put the link to that post in the first comment.) 3️⃣ This causes another problem. Because green companies (and their executives) are held to a tougher standard than other firms, short term results are even more emphasized. This makes it harder to invest in things that don’t pay back immediately – which is a large portion of potential investments. (A very common ROI requirement for investments is about 15%, which leads to a payback period measured in years.) An unfortunate additional factor: sustainability initiatives that are more impactful are more likely to be systemic – which often means they don’t pay back immediately. This is a painful mismatch with an inability to show financial losses.  👉 What you can do about this mismatch:   » Surface submerged value. This lets you show – and capture – the true financial value of sustainability. And to use sustainability initiatives to *improve* financial results. » If needed, begin with pilot programs. This allows you to both demonstrate value and contain any upfront costs, so they don’t cause big, organization-level financial performance issues. » Push back on the idea that sustainable companies should be held to a different standard. After all, companies often show losses when they’re investing in the future (Amazon showed losses for years, for example). Why should sustainable investments not be treated the same way? #sustainability #ROI #catalyst #climate #investment 

There’s one extremely valuable aspect of CSRD that gets overlooked… 👉 Requiring organizations to consider both sides of the risk coin. ------- About this post: sustainability leaders need to be catalysts. Showing value that is usually missed can really help. -------   1️⃣  It’s well known that CSRD requires double materiality. But often overlooked is the requirement to consider both risks and opportunities. (And impacts, with the three together abbreviated “IROs.”) There’s a quick way to do this: ❗ Recognize that the difference between Risks are Opportunities is frequently in how you look at them. 2️⃣ For example: if you’re making apparel, the increasing unpredictability of seasons is a risk to the business. It’s harder for the company to have the right amount of winter clothing in stock when it’s harder to know when winter will start! But it’s also an opportunity. If the company is better at dealing with this challenge than its competitors, it can take market share from them. Even the challenge itself is an opportunity to think differently about how clothes are made (e.g., to be worn in a wider range of temperatures) and delivered to customers. 3️⃣  This means that CSRD’s requirement to address *both* risks and opportunities should provoke different – and better – thinking. In the Valutus CSRD double materiality tools, we specifically include seeing both sides (risks and opportunities) as part of the process. But even if you don’t use our tools, you can make this part of your process. 👉 What you can do:   » Use CSRD requirements as a catalyst for thinking about the opportunities side of risks. » Think about how you can include this perspective in your own process. #sustainability #climate #catalyst #risk #opportunity

Compliance requirements are growing. How do you use them to create value?   👉 Below are some tips, I'll discuss live in São Paulo. ------- About this post: sustainability leaders need to be catalysts, internally and externally. Using requirements as a catalyst for real value is important. -------   1️⃣ Tomorrow, as part of my book-related travels, I’ll be in São Paulo at the 7th Global Conference on Creating Value. I’ll be giving a workshop on an increasingly important topic: ❗ How do you create real value from compliance activities? Here’s the answer I’ll be talking about tomorrow: You do this through a new vision and new tools. 2️⃣  New vision – Use requirements, such as double materiality and CSRD, to: • Gain a clearer picture of your company’s impact on the world: what is it, and what do you want it to be? • Expand your view of the effect of the external environment on your business: where is the world – environment, people, stakeholders – headed? Where are your risks and opportunities? 3️⃣  New tools – get more and better inputs, then make more powerful and clearer decisions. • For example, tomorrow I’ll be demonstrating our risk tool, which helped a billion-dollar company look at combined risk factors across almost 1,000 locations. And to see how they might evolve. • I’ll also be demonstrating our valuation tool, which helped ask new questions and inform better decisions about the financial value of key workforce factors – and how they, too, may evolve. 👉 When it comes to regulations, you have to “check the box.” And tools can help you do that more efficiently. ❗ But you don’t have to stop with checking the box. And you shouldn’t. 👉 What you can do:   » Flip your thinking about compliance, so you see it as a catalytic opportunity. » Use a new vision and new tools to make that opportunity real. (If you’d like to discuss partnering to make that happen, just let me know in a comment or a message.) #sustainability #CSRD #catalyst #regulation #ESG

He’s been working on sustainability for 50 years. I “talked” to his AI alter ego. 👉 Here’s how it went. ------- About this post: sustainability leaders need to be catalysts. Some are trying to use AI to reach more people and be more catalytic. -------   1️⃣ As I mentioned in a post last week, Gil Friend gave a provocative keynote at Climate Week NYC, including asking, “What if we did business as if we belonged to the living world?” ❗ Hundreds of people were there. But billions weren’t. Wouldn’t it be great if they could benefit from Gil’s perspective too? 2️⃣ Gil has been working on making that happen through his AI alter ego, Gilbot. Gilbot enables people to ask “him” anything and get customized answers based on decades of Gil’s writings, speeches, and anonymized conversations with clients. 3️⃣  Two observations about the content of the answers: 🔹 Overall, Gilbot did a pretty good job of covering some of the basics. In one case, it said: “Political resistance to sustainability often stems from a complex interplay of vested interests, ideological differences, and a lack of understanding or misinformation about the economic and social benefits of sustainable practices. For instance, the reversal of the Chevron doctrine highlights a judicial perspective that may see government regulation as an impediment to business, rather than a facilitator of common good, which can undermine environmental policies.” 🔹 Gilbot also added some of Gil’s philosophy in the answers: responses included reinforcing the business value of sustainability and asking me to go deeper: “Remember, sustainability is not just an environmental strategy, it's a business strategy that can reduce costs, enhance brand reputation, and drive business growth.” And: “What does this response provoke in you? You can post another inquiry below to drill deeper.” 👉 OK, but overall, how did it do? Here are two key takeaways. (a) It’s not as nuanced or provocative as flesh-and-blood Gil. For example, its responses about where to start were fine as far as they went. But they tended to be internally-focused, while most of a company’s impact is in its value chain. And they weren’t provocative. However… ❗ (b) That doesn’t mean it can’t provide tremendous value for the right audience. ❗ Easy, inexpensive access to pretty good advice could provide enormous value for people early on their sustainability journey. 🌟 And for those who need more than AI can offer, Gil offers one-on-one live coaching as well. 👉 What you can do:   » You can try Gilbot for yourself here: https://lnkd.in/eVZuqa3S. If you do, he’d appreciate you letting him know what you think. (You can direct message him through LinkedIn.) » And you can learn more about Gil’s live coaching here: https://lnkd.in/e99vSsTn #sustainability #climate #catalyst #AI #ESG