Ready to take your Sustainability up a league?
I’m shaking the lactic acid out of my legs the day after the toughest cycle I’ve done in a long, long time (possibly ever), a 75-mile sportive around the North York Moors with plenty of brutal ascents and descents (the pic above is actually from the Yorkshire Dales, but we did quite a few 25%+ climbs yesterday). What shocked me was, having come in the top 9% on the ‘Standard’ route in the 64-mile Cyclone sportive a month ago, I just scraped into the top half of the ‘Standard’ table yesterday. Added to that, at least two thirds of the participants did one of the two much longer, tougher routes than the one I did. It was sobering – I was suddenly plunged into a different league and it wasn’t entirely a comfortable experience.
There are definitely different leagues in the Corporate Sustainability world. At the top we have those such as Interface, Unilever, Tesla, GE and, arguably, Marks & Spencer who are transforming the way they do business. The next level down contains the kind of business that signs up to the RE100 (100% renewable energy) pledge which will be tough to meet, but who aren’t going through such a level of transformation. Below that are the companies who may be doing exciting things, but don’t have really challenging targets. The bottom two leagues are those who are following the rest at a distance and those doing nothing.
What I find interesting and frustrating in equal measure is that many practitioners define themselves against the others in their league rather than aiming to leap up to the next level. Like my cycling, doing well at one level feels much more comfortable than being mediocre to poor in the next level up. But if you stay in your comfort zone, your efforts will inevitably plateau.
So what are you going to do to challenge yourself? Stretch targets matching those in the league above make a fine starting point.