Help Your CEO Become a Corporate Sustainability Rock Star, and Everyone Wins! by Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum, Presented at Annual Sharing Day of the NJ Organization Development Network, May 7, 2010.

1. Help Your CEO Become a
Corporate Sustainability
Rock Star
And Everyone Wins!
Victoria Zelin
NJ ODN Sharing Day 2010
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

2. Sustainability
Meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.
- Brundtland Commission, 1987
Triple Bottom Line: People, Profits, Planet
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

3. Sustainability: It’s Legitimate
 Prahalad, Sustainability+Innovation, 9/09, HBR
 DJ Sustainability Index, NASDAQ, RiskMetrics
 2010 Accenture on Sustainability + Performance
 2009 AT Kearney, 15% profits, $650MM mkt cap
 Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PWC consulting practices
SEC requires Climate Risk disclosure
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

4. Business Case / ROI
 Save $$: Avoid, reduce, recycle, replace, reuse
 New Revenues: New products and services
 Risks: Energy in carbon-constrained world
 Competitiveness: Supply chain, e.g., Wal-Mart
 Reputation: Employee / Customer / Investor
 Leverage: NGO partnerships
Lead or keep up—don’t lag
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

5. Current Rock Stars
 Yvon Chouinard, Founder, Patagonia
 Gary Hirshberg, CE-Yo, Stonyfield Farms
 Jeffrey Hollender, Co-founder, Executive Chairman,
Chief Inspired Protagonist, 7th Generation
 Ray Anderson, CEO, Interface, Inc.
Read their books!
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

6. Ray Anderson - Interface
 $800M in 1994: customer ?s and task force
 ―Spear to chest‖ Paul Hawken, Ecology of Commerce
 Mission Zero: by 2020 be restorative, lead industry
 Mt. Sustainability: engaged stakeholders
 InterfaceRAISE: transform / consult to businesses
 Ecometrics, 60% there, $400MM savings
 Cut fossil fuels 60%, emissions 82%, water 75%, waste 66%
 Increased sales by 66%, doubled earnings
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

7. Corporate Transformations
 Nike
 IBM
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

8. Nike – Mark Parker, CEO
 $19B mission: inspiration and innovation for athletes
 Since 1990s: labor activist target to global leader
 Hannah Jones: strategy, innovation—not PR
 Considered Index: public, competitive design scores
 Air Jordan XX3: results speak, authentically
 GreenXchange: industry collaboration, e.g. water
 North Star: sustainable, closed loop consensus
Example from Jeffrey Hollender, The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win, 2010
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

9. IBM – Sam Palmisano, CEO
 CEO: after Enron scandals, David Yuan, Corp Comm
 Values Jam: conversation for purpose, values
 ―Innovation that benefits the world‖
 Small team: collaborate with best brains in world
 GIO: 75 Global Innovation Outlooks, open sourced
 Top 5 ideas resourced: water, smart grids, traffic
 Innovation meets business opportunities
Example from Jeffrey Hollender, The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win, 2010
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

10. Marks & Spencer
 Top UK retailer: £9B, 1.7 M employee supply chain
 NGOs attacked: Mike Barry, CSR, engaged them
 16 env/soc challenges: strategic priorities, rivals
 CEO: ―complacency kills;‖ tell our story
 Look Behind Label: blindsided-then led-competition
 Systemic: 100 holistic challenges by 2012
 Ticker: not financials, but sustainability metrics
Example from Jeffrey Hollender, The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win, 2010
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

11. Rock Stardom
 Personal, authentic communications from CEO
 Long-term, risk management, good governance
 Cross-silo innovation / process / metrics
 Systemic purpose, values, culture change
 Transparency, Engagement, NGO partnership
****Lead / challenge business / industry****
Sustainability’s Steve Jobs / Bill Gates will win!
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

12. OD’s Role
 Revisit: vision, mission, purpose, values, culture
 Build allies: in / across functions, silos, levels
 Go top down, bottom up: C-suite, Green Teams
 Engage: employees, customers, NGOs, suppliers
 Improve processes: innovate using green principles
 Think big but don’t bet farm: start small, set goals
Meaning + Strategy + Business Case
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

13. Your World?
 Your stake in sustainability
 Your organization’s experience
 Key issues, obstacles
 What OD brings to corporate sustainability
 What will YOU do?
There’s no right answers … a work in progress
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum

14. Thanks!
Victoria Zelin
Co-Founder, Sustainable Leadership Forum
vzelin@slforum.org
(908) 306 -0272
Slideshare.com
has many of my and others’ presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/victoriazelin
©2010 Victoria Zelin, Sustainable Leadership Forum