BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
“There needs to be a dedicated course somewhere in the curriculum where management students learn about the nature of our global challenges”
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and engaging in multi-stakeholder collaboration with unconventional partners. Take consumer goods giant Unilever. Former CEO Paul Polman launched Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan in 2010 – a 10-year strategy to double the size of the business by 2020 – by setting targets such as helping a billion people to improve their hygiene habits; bringing safe drinking water to 500 million people; doubling the proportion of the food portfolio meeting stringent nutrition standards; halving the greenhouse gas impact of Unilever products across their lifecycle, and sourcing 100 per cent of raw materials sustainably. Over the course of the implementation of this strategy, many of these targets were met and good progress was made on many others. Unilever has become a benchmark for others to emulate. A corporate strategy with goals such as this has required leaders to drive cultural change within the organisation,
but also to lead change in consumer behaviour plus change among suppliers and competitors across industry sectors, and to engage with governments to lead change in policy frameworks. Consider the goal to halve the greenhouse gas impact of Unilever products across their lifecycle and think about laundry detergents. Part of achieving that goal is within Unilever’s control through, for example, reducing energy usage in the manufacturing process of the detergent and innovating in product design to bring to market detergents that work well at lower washing temperatures. This reduces the carbon footprint of heating water during the consumer use phase. But consumers still need to be influenced and persuaded to switch to washing at lower temperatures – so influencing that behaviour change is part of the leadership role senior executives must now embrace. And both Unilever’s own manufacturing facilities and consumers’ washing machines rely on electricity
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