Towards Sustainability: A New Curriculum for Boards|INSEAD

Towards Sustainability: A New Curriculum for Boards|INSEAD

March 8-9, 2019 Fontainebleau.

About 70 interested Alumni’s such as regulators, NGO’s, investors, board of directors and business leaders gathered the main Amphitheatre at INSEAD, some to get fresh insights, some to learn the basics, some to walk away with real new directions on how to take their own Board to the next level, or the consultants in the room: how to instruct their clients: The Boards. Given that main roles of Boards are to challenge and support the Management of a Company, the overall challenge is how Sustainability Development becomes a totally integrated part of a Company’s strategy!

“Maximizing shareholder value alone is no longer acceptable in the modern world. Board of directors have to exercise fiduciary duty of care for the organization they govern, for its performance but also for the multiple relationships with economic, social, political actors and partners”       
                     Ludo Van Der Heyden PhD, INSEAD Chaired Professor of Corporate Governance.

Climate change is no longer a risk anymore, it’s already there in all corners of the world for instance it’s impacting animal health which is impacting food i.e. the bee population is dying real fast, in Switzerland over the last 40 years 14 ski days are being lost, the flooding of the Rhine river area in Germany only a few years ago impacted immediately the regions (people could not arrive at their work-ships couldn’t get through so no deliveries), the increasing wild fires in California are not only ruining lives, destructing nature but also impacting harvests and tourism, in-equality is not a future problem: today 22% of the 1,8BN young people are unemployed and we are already taking far too much from the earth than it can provide, many resources are being depleted and we see migrant challenges everywhere and plastic is by now a major frustration factor everywhere. That is our world today, so we cannot ignore the questions anymore.

Lise Kingo, CEO and Executive Director, United Nations Global Compact provided the context and talked about the foundation of UN Global Compact: Human Rights-Labor-Environment and Anti-Corruption for the 17 Global Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) which are getting more and more traction and are being deployed by some major companies.

Many of the eloquent speakers shared their own experiences, the academia provided various models and demonstrated that there is a lot of valuable material and benchmarks available on the web, the Board panelist clearly articulated their passion and motivation for the topic and what was their personal motivation: Andreas Jacobs the cacao business in Ivory Coast and low income for the farmers, these cacao growers must receive a decent pay to live, Andre Hoffmann, the influence of growing up partly in La Camargue and Barbara Cux her own upbringing with farmers.

Staying the same is not an option. Politicians and Governments are not really carrying the torch for change so who else can create the essential changes? 

We must look at this topic from my view with two lenses the develop countries and developing countries, in some parts of the world, in other parts SDG is a non-issue, for them survival, food, sanitation, schools etc are the essentials. Since many corporations operate in both and they should have SDG’ totally integrated in the strategy, that will not only be Business as a Force for Good but simply Good Business! CEO’s are major drivers for such change and adoption in reality today there are too few who are really driving. Recent research identified 5 CEO / Presidents archetypes: The Denier, The Superficial, The Hart-Headed, The Complacent and the True Believers, these types description don’t need further introductions! So the question is how must we mobilize them to lead their company in this journey. The Board is the most appropriate route to install this paradigm shift. This is the complexity as we must break the stigma that for companies the short-term focus is on economic performance and the longer-term view must be on achieving SDG targets, these needs and can be matched! Good examples are Firmenich a private company and Unilever a public company. There are examples that will influence faster integration for instance, simplification of tasks (reduce the 17 SDG’s), adopt sustainability as strategy, not part of it, identify a few good measurements (hard to find right now), there is a lack of clarity and definitions, to many standards, reduce to only a handful, lack of real data and a few more.

My own major takeaway is the urgency of acting now! There is so much evidence that we need a more holistic and inclusive approach to SDG’s, we cannot wait on the goodwill of the millennials who are more selective in the companies they want to join, the products they adopt and consume, the way they prefer to travel etc. Companies, small and large must be made rapidly made more conscious about the state of SDG’s and various routes on how this will impact their eco-system, their customers and the world! 

We see the world as we are…

Or as we wish it was…

Not as it really is!

Anais Nin