In this episode Lou is joined by Mark Lancelot from Better Business Design. Together, they unpack how the traditional role of the Chief Sustainability Officer is changing to survive, and how we might reshape the narrative around sustainability and circular economy goals to land positively in our global boardrooms.
Today, amid cost inflation, geopolitical conflict, and an ever-changing global business landscape we are staring down a massive shift in corporate sustainability and it’s starting to prompt some pretty big questions.
Does navigating the triple threat of media, politics, and boardroom backlash mean we need to change the playbook?
In this episode Lou is joined by Mark Lancelot from Better Business Design. Together, they unpack how the traditional role of the Chief Sustainability Officer is changing to survive, and how we might reshape the narrative around sustainability and circular economy goals to land positively in our global boardrooms.
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[00:00:00.000] - Lou Waldegrave
Is it game over for the traditional Chief Sustainability Officer?
[00:00:04.790] - Mark Lancelott
I don't think it's game over. I think it's changing.
[00:00:08.700] - Lou Waldegrave
Amid cost inflation, geopolitical conflict, and an ever-changing global business landscape, we're staring down a massive shift in corporate sustainability, and it's starting to prompt some pretty big questions. Joining me today to unpack how the CSO role is changing to survive and how we might reshape the narrative around circularity in global boardrooms is Mark Lancelott from Better Business Design.
[00:00:40.940] - Lou Waldegrave
Hi, Mark. Thanks so much for joining me today. I always love our conversations because they lead to so many interesting questions. I just want to… before we go into your experience and what you're up to with your current engagements and how you're seeing things transgress, I just want to ask, is it game over for the traditional Chief Sustainability Officer as we know them?
[00:01:09.160] - Mark Lancelott
I don't think it's game over. I think it's changing. The standalone CSO who's the conscience and the flag bearer and owning sustainability, I think that's changing. We're moving away from that. It is much more now about how to architect and integrate to help the business really embed sustainability, which is the journey many organisations have been on. That means a different focus, different skill set in some ways, and different relationships with the rest of your organisation. That's what I see. Some organisations are down the road on that, others are really on the journey and figuring out how to do that.
[00:01:53.960] - Lou Waldegrave
You've spent many years working with boards and executive teams to help them design strategies and structures that capture value. In your current engagements, am I right in saying that there's an increase in businesses choosing to greenhush or slash be far more hesitant discussing their climate and environmental goals? What are the hidden costs to this?
[00:02:24.040] - Mark Lancelott
It's definitely a feature and has been over the last couple of years. Particularly, the US Government Administration has accelerated that, but you could probably see it really since 2022 and the Ukraine invasion, there's been this shift. As you say, there is a cost to it. If you look at the surveys and the data, it appears many organisations are still doing as much internally, sometimes even more, but there's this choice that they've made to say less about it publicly.
[00:02:59.640] - Mark Lancelott
There are three risks around that. Firstly, there's a reputational risk in terms of not getting credit for what they're doing, as well as keeping out the firing line in a way. Secondly, there's a cost to their organisation and their employees. If they don't see the organisation talking about it visibly, they're less likely, perhaps, to use their discretion and put energy into doing the things that are in the margins of what they do. Then that's a second risk. Then thirdly, there's this systemic challenge. One of the features you can see is that organisations are stepping away from some of the industry coalitions because they're quite visible.
[00:03:47.120] - Mark Lancelott
That then really creates a challenge for the collective action for the market transformation, about policy and the way that markets work, about creating shared infrastructure. That would be the bit where, if you think about the transition towards a more sustainable future and a circular economy, that's probably the biggest systemic risk coming out of the greenhushing that's definitely happening.
[00:04:15.720] - Lou Waldegrave
Facing down, it's almost like a triple threat of media, politics, and backlash, I guess, from others. How can the Chief Sustainability Officer, as we know them, navigate these threats, and what hats do you see them taking on and wearing as opposed to their more traditional role?
[00:04:42.700] - Mark Lancelott
There are different patterns that we can see based on where organisations are on their journey. The role around reporting and disclosure, which has consumed many of them in terms of attention and bandwidth over the last few years. In some ways is shifting to finance who has more of a core competency in how you do financial and nonfinancial reporting. There's still an accountability there, but some of the responsibility in the doing of that, we see shifting into the finance role.
[00:05:23.620] - Mark Lancelott
I think there's a piece around external engagement and stakeholders, which is becoming increasingly important. Back to the greenhushing point we just talked about, what is also happening is that corporate affairs, particularly in larger organisations, is becoming a critical lever for that conversation around market transformation, around policy. We see some more organisations where sustainability is working more closely or perhaps even structurally aligned into corporate affairs, communications, and really pushing that external market transformation agenda.
[00:06:03.060] - Lou Waldegrave
They're becoming more of a strategist as well, or they're having to become, would you say, more of a strategist?
[00:06:09.220] - Mark Lancelott
Yeah, I think they're having to think about the long-term. One of the things I've been thinking about over the last six months is this challenge around time horizons, and the pace of how organisations operate and the different paces that they operate. The Chief Sustainability Officer has this real challenge around what can be decades long worries and risks that we're thinking about and how to bring that back into the organisation that might be focused on a quarterly or annual cycle if they're held to account by public markets.
[00:06:48.140] - Mark Lancelott
There's this real challenge around how you think long-term strategically, but translate that into the priorities and concerns of stakeholders who have shorter time horizons. That is the strategy role. How do you translate long-term into action and execution?
[00:07:08.380] - Mark Lancelott
Then, the other aspect of it is this idea of architecting and integrating. If you're not in a role where you have big teams of people, and you're driving everything, if you're instead trying to integrate and influence activity that might be happening in supply chain or procurement or marketing or sales or product development. You have to think about how do I do that? How do I create the right relationships, but then also the right structures and governance and decisional rights to make that effective? There's a strategy and architecting role, which I think is increasingly important to truly embed sustainability in the right way across organisations.
[00:07:52.330] - Lou Waldegrave
How we translate that with comms and things? Do you think that the way we talk about sustainability and circularity is currently going to make the grade, or is there a narrative we can look at that may land more easily in global boardrooms across businesses?
[00:08:15.920] - Mark Lancelott
I do think there's a change to be made for sustainability. I also think that circular economy has a fantastic opportunity to put itself at the heart of that. Again, what we've seen is concern about the shorter term rather than the longer term. Over the last 10 years, we've seen lots of mitigation targets being set, net-zero by 2050, 2045, and strategies to reduce the impact on the global world that we have, which is clearly important.
[00:08:56.560] - Mark Lancelott
My view is partly what's happened over the last four or five years is shorter term concerns and priorities have risen up the agenda, whether that's been about cost of living, inflation, now geopolitics, even things like AI, and boards and executive teams are having to really focus on the here and now to make sure that they can survive as a business to be in place in 2030, 2040, 2050.
[00:09:26.240] - Mark Lancelott
You start to see the language of narrative being about adaptation and what it means for our industry, what it means for our business, what do we need to do to be resilient. Resilience is a big theme. I think the security also is, particularly around things like material supply, supply chain risks. I see that as well as the economic case really being the opportunity and need to talk about sustainability in that way. Clearly, circular economy has that at its heart. Once you start talking about material circularity, that very much plays into resilient supply chains and how you get access to secure resources, as well as the economics case.
[00:10:24.830] - Mark Lancelott
My view is that circular economy, I look at many sustainability reports. It's quite often in there, and it's quite often the plastic story, which is a key part of it. I think there's much more that can be done to put circularity really at the heart of sustainability that talks to the genuine concerns of stakeholders and as a solution for some of these issues that they're wrestling with. You get this win-win as opposed to a trade-off conversation, which is how some of these debates have been framed more recently.
[00:11:01.490] - Lou Waldegrave
Can I ask you one extra question that I didn't prep you up for, but it's really interesting?
[00:11:06.580] - Mark Lancelott
Sure.
[00:11:06.950] - Lou Waldegrave
I was just thinking, listening to you, the questions that businesses are coming to you with and the advice they're seeking, has that changed considerably over the last couple of years? Are you having to pivot as well?
[00:11:22.560] - Mark Lancelott
Definitely. The days of people wanting a sustainability strategy and purely focused on some of these big targets, I see much less of that now. The challenge is, that's one priority amongst a number. How do we integrate and find the opportunities? I quite often see the business case for sustainability needs to be there in a way that it wasn't four or five years ago. Investments have to wash their face from a financial perspective as well as contributing to sustainability outcomes.
[00:12:07.460] - Mark Lancelott
Then the other bit really then is back to what we talked about before about the changing role and how do you architect sustainability and circularity into the enterprise, into the business. What does it mean about decision rights around roles, around ways of working?
[00:12:24.420] - Mark Lancelott
I'm thinking about the tempo and speed and the time horizon piece. How can we recognise the challenge of dealing with a five or ten year perspective with a one year or a quarterly one? What's the right way of having those debates in the right way, as opposed to just the short-term always forcing out the long-term view?
[00:12:48.440] - Lou Waldegrave
That's great. It's about repackaging. Unpacking and trying to repackage the whole deal that meets the needs of the geopolitical tensions. The world is changing at a huge rate of knots, obviously. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:13:08.780] - Mark Lancelott
Thank you.
[00:13:08.780] - Lou Waldegrave
I really appreciate it, and I hope to see you again very soon.
[00:13:15.000] - Lou Waldegrave
It turns out that navigating the triple threat of media, politics, and boardroom backlash means we need to change the playbook. If we want circularity and sustainability to land in global boardrooms today, both the role and the language must evolve.
[00:13:32.870] - Lou Waldegrave
A huge thank you to Mark Lancelot from Better Business Design for mapping out what the new era of the CSO actually looks like. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a comment. Give us a like. Tell your work colleagues and friends, and don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to or watch your podcasts. We'll see you again soon.