Earth Day: Sustainability professionals do it all
They are asked to do every corporate function, but are they up for it?
This week, I’m taking a break from the ESG to recognize sustainability professionals:
Happy Earth Day!
Sustainability, biodiversity, and climate change have a complicated relationship with a business. Depending on the business model and value chain, there may be intersections regarding ESG and material risks and opportunities, but there may not be. As a result, sustainability professionals might be working across purposeful projects, material issues, or non-material matters.
The past weekend, we celebrated Earth Day, and just a week earlier was Environmental Professionals Day. On Earth Day, I posted a smaller tribute to the people working to solve our most pressing planetary challenges. Here’s what I wrote:
For the professionals working in this space, it might feel a bit like Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. You need to simultaneously be the multiverse equivalents of an environmental scientist, a lawyer, an accountant, a procurement specialist, a beacon of hope for employees, and a customer relations specialist, all while following your passion.
I know, I know, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is an overplayed analogy for how complex and interconnected our world is, but seriously. If there is one area of expertise right now that matches Evelyn Wang’s multiversal journey, it is a sustainability professional.
A lot goes into saving the planet and building a resilient business around the environmental transition and climate risk, and companies need help figuring it out. Today’s sustainability professionals are expected to do it all. However, as I’ve written before, many corporate jobs are focused on not necessarily driving the impact that purpose-led people are interested in. With this in mind, let’s look at the roles sustainability professionals might be asked to fill, complete with instructions on accessing the powers from other universes.
NOTE: You are clearly a nerd if you understand these references.
Universe 1970: An environmental scientist
Action to Access: Must walk into a river of fire.
Skills Gained: Understanding inter-connected planetary systems
For those sustainability professionals who understand the science, you might be lucky enough to find a company that understands its externalities (the costs of its operations that go unaccounted for) and its risks and has some purpose-led budget. This is one role where change and impact can happen. An environmental scientist should be a top advisor to the board and executives, delivering deep expertise on specific topics and helping to shepherd the transition to a sustainable and resilient business.
Still, many environmental scientists have deep expertise in a particular area, and this topic is broad. Executives may expect these professionals to be experts in everything related to earth systems, which may not be the case.
Universe 12: A lawyer
Action to Access: Must continuously roll a die until this in this order is achieved: 2, 4, 3, 6, 1, 5
Skills Gained: Translating complex regulations and keeping the company out of litigation.
There are already many global regulations regarding environmental protection. Since attention to climate change and extreme weather has reached a fever pitch, new regulatory proposals are regularly coming. Compliance with existing laws is one thing but monitoring and translating the IPCC reports and other data or monitoring crises to predict new regulations is a full-time job.
Companies may engage in policy advocacy with regulators to address regulatory risk before it hits, and companies look to sustainability professionals to fill the position. Sustainability professionals may be asked to provide feedback along these lines.
One emerging issue may arise as sustainability professionals participate in industry consortiums, leading to questions about anti-trust regulations that sustainability professionals may not be aware of.
Universe 🦄: An accountant
Action to Access: Must scribble accounting numbers all over body with a sharpie.
Skills Gained: Quantify impact across operations and the value chain in numbers.
Disclosures are the current focus of the corporate world’s attention to sustainability. As a result, sustainability professionals are expected to know a range of standards and the previously mentioned regulations. So much of the attention today even focuses on just one environmental metric - carbon.
Still, it is worth noting that accountants only measure what happened and report it; they don’t drive financial decisions. For a sustainability professional, measuring may not be their end goal but a step in the journey toward understanding impact. If the company doesn’t evolve into action, it can be demoralizing.
Universe 2002: Investor Relations
Action to Access: Must douse socks in fossil fuel oil and put them on.
Skills Gained: Eloquently converse with shareholders.
Financial services firms continually assess a company’s performance on ESG and sustainability and make investing, lending, and funding decisions. As a result, sustainability professionals may be asked to provide context to Investor Relations teams on the company’s work. Unfortunately, with so much confusion on what shareholders and banks are looking for and a potential lack of knowledge on investment trends (SRI, Impact, ESG Investing, ESG Integration, divestment, etc.), sustainability professionals may find themselves quickly out of their depth.
Universe A113: A procurement specialist
Action to Access: Must build a 2-foot by 2-foot cubical structure out of trash.
Skills Gained: Making strategic purchasing decisions based on environmental considerations.
With an accountant’s attention, sustainability professionals are being asked to look into disclosures in the supply chain and calculate Scope 3 emissions. In addition, they may be asked to collect suppliers’ data and engage them on upstream or downstream project work.
Still, climate risk is another area they may be asked to weigh in on. Between the company’s assets and those of its supply chain and logistics, someone who understands planetary systems needs to layer on new perspectives on risks as extreme weather events continue to grow.
Universe 23: A marketer
Action to Access: Must dunk a basketball at regulation height.
Skills Gained: Wielding the keyboard and graphics to create a narrative.
Companies engage in all kinds of activities today regarding the planet and sustainability. A sustainability professional may be consulted in the storytelling around the company’s work, disclosures, and work. But, like any marketing, the sustainability professional must look out for platitudes against the reality of what is published. There are new accountabilities from stakeholders, and over-promising what was delivered or making commitments that can’t be met are significant problems (see greenwashing).
Universe 26,000,000: A customer relations specialist
Action to Access: Must embarrass self on a Zoom call in front of the entire company.
Skills Gained: Always be selling.
Many companies today leverage their green credentials to capture new opportunities by layering sustainability on their products and services. Still, this requires a knowledge of sustainability, especially if your target is other sustainability professionals at target customers. Nothing destroys credibility like someone attempting to converse on a purpose-led topic but doesn’t understand it.
Sustainability professionals will likely be called in to be the genius in the room on sales calls, especially as these new opportunities are present.
Universe 1977: A new hope for employees
Action to Access: Must go into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters.
Skills Gained: Inspiring others and opening up new possibilities.
Coming out of COVID and regularly seeing the effects of extreme weather, employees now have a sense of purpose and want to bring that to their job. Executives would be wise to capitalize on this shift by creating internal communities and supporting a culture around it. If you need help getting started, find out how Drew Wilkinson supported these efforts at Microsoft in this article.
Sustainability professionals who understand this topic can seize this opportunity to scale their purpose through others. Still, this can be taxing when balanced against the reality of business and climate change. Inspiring others is challenging work!
Advice if you are a sustainability professional
Unfortunately, the world is in transition right now. Boards don’t understand the intersection of sustainability or ESG with the business, nor do they know the risks involved around the environment in some cases. Building on your expertise with a little range could take you far in business, but you must be willing to do the tough slog through all the other roles here. In the business world, there’s a lot of enablement to do, shifting priorities, and fluctuating budgets.
If you only are in it for the purpose, you might find a more direct impact elsewhere with government or academic work, NGOs, and philanthropic endeavors.
So, the question is, what are you up for?
It’s a lot, so be sure you know when to walk away if something doesn’t align with your expectations. Also, be patient, but realize you have a lot of power, too! Your knowledge has value.
Advice for everyone else
Sustainability is impacting businesses in new ways that are wildly unpredictable. So seek out those with your sustainability expertise at your company, find your peers at other companies who have begun the work to integrate sustainability, and find ways to intersect this topic with your work. You certainly can and should pivot your deep expertise around this topic in a general way to help share the load.
There is also a flip side to this. As you can see from these examples, there is nothing but opportunity to supplement your role with some sustainability expertise, no matter what your job is!
Solving our most pressing environmental challenges will take all of us working together toward common goals. Unfortunately, we can’t rely on the multiversal sustainability genius to save us all.
It’s only when we come together that we got this.