STRATEGY
There needs to be a dedicated course somewhere in the curriculum where management students learn about the nature of our global challenges
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 life cycle, 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 laundry detergent and innovating in product design to bring to market detergents that work well at lower washing temperatures, reducing 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 supplied through national infrastructure; for Unilever to achieve its own goal of halving carbon footprint across the product life cycle, it needs governments to act to boost renewables and phase out fossil fuel power generation. So, Unilever executives have a leadership role in helping to encourage that to happen. It is because more and more business leaders are embracing this new kind of leadership role that we see
This new horizon to their role has required leaders to develop skills in areas that have not, historically, been a conventional part of their repertoire: contributing to public debate with an informed point of view; relating well with multiple constituencies; engaging in dialogue to understand and empathise with groups and communities with perspectives different to their own 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 life cycle, and sourcing 100% 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
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Ambition | BE IN BRILLIANT COMPANY
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