I had the pleasure of travelling to Amsterdam and the wonderful Arendshoeve, Garden of Amsterdam, for the World Sustainability Congress – the flagship gathering for our sister community, Sustainability Leaders.
While there’s no doubt the demands of chief sustainability officers have changed over recent times, it was energising to see so many in attendance, sharing, learning, and remaining focused and optimistic about the job at hand.
While CSOs remain responsible for their organisation’s sustainability strategy, for orchestrating internal and external stakeholders to drive improvements in business practice and for complying to an ever-increasing swathe of regulation, to be effective in today’s business climate increasingly demands a different set of capabilities.
Because there is more scrutiny, CSOs are being challenged to deliver tangible P&L impact, competitive advantage and shareholder return. In short, they are being asked to positively impact the economics of the business.
Of course, it has always been the case that sustainability, done well, is the manifestation of good, long-term business strategy. And while the political backdrop might have changed and investor sentiment cooled, the fundamentals have not. Sustainability is, more often than not, good business.
Naturally, the ‘P’ word came up consistently in Amsterdam, not surprising given the difficulties involved in addressing Scope 3 and the relevance of procurement in that particular battle. And there were a good number of procurement professionals in attendance, too. This also makes sense, the function is not just part of the solution, in many cases it is leading the strategy.
Take some of those procurement leaders who have taken on responsibility for sustainability. Amanda Davies at Mars Snacking, Kraft Heinz’s Janelle Aydin, Willem Mutsaerts of Givaudan, Kathy Presto at HH Global and, until very recently, Henkel’s Bertrand Conquéret (pictured above), who has handed over procurement but remains president of the company’s global supply chain and its CSO.
During the Congress last week, procurement and supplier collaboration came up again and again, and one word that kept cropping up as part of that was “resilience”.
That probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. If we were to take a step back and think through the realities of global business, the geopolitical landscape, the complexities of global supply chains and how sustainability and procurement play into all of it, resilience is a thread that flows through it all.
When CPOs and CSOs work closely to build a vision for supply resilience that secures resources and sources of supply for the long term, sustainability improvements will be a happy byproduct.
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