The Era of "Leading Big" on CSR Dawns: Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan

By Wayne Visser

“This world has tremendous challenges. The challenges of poverty, of water, of global warming, climate change. And businesses like ours have a role to play in that. And frankly, to me, that's very appealing.” So said Unilever CEO, Paul Polman, in a 2009 interview with McKinsey. He went on to say, “We have every day, in our business, about two billion consumers that use our brands, and so [there is] a tremendous opportunity. And if we do the right thing, we can actually make major progress in society.”

This drive to make a major difference seems, if anything, to have got bigger over the past year. At least, that’s the impression you get from Unilever’s new Sustainable Living Plan, which it launched last week. In it, they committed to double the size of the company, while halving the environmental footprint of their products, sourcing 100% of their agricultural ingredients sustainably by 2015 and helping 1 billion people out of poverty.

Commitments like that are what Sandy Ogg, Chief HR Officer for Unilever, calls “leading big”. Speaking to Polly Courtice, Director of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership earlier this year, he said, “There’s so much going on now in the world that if you don’t have amplification and time compression, then it doesn’t rumble. So I call that leading big. You can’t let it drool or dribble out into an organisation like ours and expect to have any impact.”

Jim Collins, author of Built to Last and Good to Great, calls it having a BHAG – a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. And Unilever is certainly not the first. In 1994, Interface’s CEO Ray Anderson committed to become the first "restorative” company in the world (giving back more than they take) and by 1996, outdoor clothing company Patagonia was only using organic cotton. More recently, Wal-Mart has committed to zero waste and 100% renewable energy; Coca-Cola has pledged to become water neutral; and Tesco plans to become carbon neutral.

The fact of the matter is that without “leading big” on sustainability and responsibility, CSR efforts no longer have any real credibility. That’s because there is overwhelming data to show that past efforts – CSR 1.0 approaches – have failed to reverse problems like biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, income inequality and corruption. Instead, continued unsustainable and irresponsible production and consumption has meant business is still more part of the problem than the solution.

“Leading big” is absolutely essential if we are break this pattern of CSR ineffectiveness. When people ask what CSR 2.0 really means, there are two ways to answer. One is to say that it is about a more systemic approach to CSR, one that tackles the roots of the problem, by applying the principles of creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality and circularity to the DNA of the business, namely through value creation, good governance, societal contribution and environmental integrity.

The second answer, which is far simpler and no less true, is to say that the dual ‘acid test’ of CSR 2.0 is admission and ambition. Companies have to be prepared to face up (and ‘fess’ up) to their impacts; to admit that they are still a long way from being truly sustainable and responsible; even to concede that they are part of the problem. And then companies have to show their ambition, their willingness to set bold, audacious targets that will reverse the negative social and environmental trends.

In today’s world of low-trust and information overload, only bold leadership on CSR will inspire action and build credibility. Unilever and others are pointing the way and deserve our congratulations and support. They also require our unrelenting scrutiny, to ensure that “leading big” is not simply “talking big”, but rather “acting big” – making real change happen at scale and at pace.

Reflection on "What the Green Movement Got Wrong"

By Wayne Visser

Last night, the UK’s Channel 4 showed a documentary called ‘What the Green Movement Got Wrong’. In some ways, it reminded me of The Apprentice – designed to spark conflict and generate publicity, but having very little to do with inconvenient reality. And of course, it succeeded. The live debate that followed drew indignant responses from the likes of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and George Monbiot. And while I shared some of their frustration, I am rather less inclined to trash the show.

The fact of the matter is that it raised some important questions about the ‘greens’ (although only the media still uses such an outdated label). Do they rely more on ideology and emotions than science and economics? Have they been right in their belligerent opposition to nuclear and GMOs? Is their distrust in corporations and new technology really justified? Do they slip into the trap of caring more about ‘green things’ than people, especially poor people in developing countries? For example, did they resist the use of DDT to control malaria?

Well, first we have to ask, who are ‘they’? The documentary lumped these mysterious ‘greens’ into one amorphous mass, creating the impression that it is a cogent and unified movement. Paul Hawken, in Blessed Unrest, estimates that there are over 2 million organisations around the world working on issues of social justice and environmental sustainability. What are the chances that they agree on anything, let alone the contentious issues of nuclear energy and GMOs?

The truth is that every movement, including sustainability and responsibility, has the full spectrum of players, from conservatives and Luddites to liberals and techno-optimists. There are those who believe that business and the market are the yellow brick road to utopia, and those who believe that only government policy can take us ‘over the rainbow’. There are pro-nuke and anti-nuke, pro-GMO and anti-GMO and all sorts of liquorice flavours in between.

Leaving the quality of the documentary aside (it was one-sided and contained various factual errors), the freedom to debate the issues is critical. If there’s one thing that drives me mad, it’s the demonization of anyone who happens to disagree with the crowd – and let’s be honest, the sustainability and responsibility ‘crowd’ does suffer from group-think mentality on many issues. Ideology, preconceived ideas and entrenched positions are stronger than most will admit.

My point is that debate is good. Dialogue is even better, but that requires listening, rather than defending dug-in bunker-mentality views. Dialogue is never going to happen in the bright lights of entertainment TV. But we do have a chance now, in the aftermath, to dialogue. The question is, are we mature enough to do so. When last did you change your mind on a key sustainability or justice issue? Are we prepared to practice what we preach about stakeholder engagement?

It was clear that Channel 4 had no intention of being either fair or transparent. As Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth pointed out during the live debate, they requested that they be interviewed so as to include their views in the documentary, but Channel 4 refused. No surprise there. Channel 4 is not about balanced programming, it is about poking the hornet’s nest to boost viewers and ratings; a sort of documentary version of Jerry Springer if you like.

In the final analysis, the documentary and the debate that followed belong to the last century. The world – and the sustainability and responsibility movement – has long since moved on from simplistic black or white, green or red, market or state, pro or anti thinking. We are in the era of complexity, of hybrid technologies and cross-sector partnerships, of multi-level governance and multi-stage CSR. We must resist the tabloid-style return to cardboard caricatures and melodramatic mudslinging.

Reflection on "What the Green Movement Got Wrong"

By Wayne Visser

Last night, the UK’s Channel 4 showed a documentary called ‘What the Green Movement Got Wrong’. In some ways, it reminded me of The Apprentice – designed to spark conflict and generate publicity, but having very little to do with inconvenient reality. And of course, it succeeded. The live debate that followed drew indignant responses from the likes of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and George Monbiot. And while I shared some of their frustration, I am rather less inclined to trash the show.

The fact of the matter is that it raised some important questions about the ‘greens’ (although only the media still uses such an outdated label). Do they rely more on ideology and emotions than science and economics? Have they been right in their belligerent opposition to nuclear and NGOs? Is their distrust in corporations and new technology really justified? Do they slip into the trap of caring more about ‘green things’ than people, especially poor people in developing countries?

Well, first we have to ask, who are ‘they’? The documentary lumped these mysterious ‘greens’ into one amorphous mass, creating the impression that it is a cogent and unified movement. Paul Hawken, in Blessed Unrest, estimates that there are over 2 million organisations around the world working on issues of social justice and environmental sustainability. What are the chances that they agree on anything, let alone the contentious issues of nuclear energy and GMOs?

The truth is that every movement, including sustainability and responsibility, has the full spectrum of players, from conservatives and Luddites to liberals and techno-optimists. There are those who believe that business and the market are the yellow brick road to utopia, and those who believe that only government policy can take us ‘over the rainbow’. There are pro-nuke and anti-nuke, pro-GMO and anti-GMO and all sorts of liquorice flavours in between.

Leaving the quality of the documentary aside (it was one-sided and contained various factual errors), the freedom to debate the issues is critical. If there’s one thing that drives me mad, it’s the demonization of anyone who happens to disagree with the crowd – and let’s be honest, the sustainability and responsibility ‘crowd’ does suffer from group-think mentality on many issues. Ideology, preconceived ideas and entrenched positions are stronger than most will admit.

My point is that debate is good. Dialogue is even better, but that requires listening, rather than defending dug-in bunker-mentality views. Dialogue is never going to happen in the bright lights of entertainment TV. But we do have a chance now, in the aftermath, to dialogue. The question is, are we mature enough to do so. When last did you change your mind on a key sustainability or justice issue? Are we prepared to practice what we preach about stakeholder engagement?

It was clear that Channel 4 had no intention of being either fair or transparent. As Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth pointed out during the live debate, they requested that they be interviewed so as to include their views in the documentary, but Channel 4 refused. No surprise there. Channel 4 is not about balanced programming, it is about poking the hornet’s nest to boost viewers and ratings; a sort of documentary version of Jerry Springer if you like.

In the final analysis, the documentary and the debate that followed belong to the last century. The world – and the sustainability and responsibility movement – has long since moved on from simplistic black or white, green or red, market or state, pro or anti thinking. We are in the era of complexity, of hybrid technologies and cross-sector partnerships, of multi-level governance and multi-stage CSR. We must resist the tabloid-style return to cardboard caricatures and melodramatic mudslinging.