Continuing the theme of threats to CSOs and sustainability staff jobs I blogged about recently, let’s take a look at this data from the PwC Pulse Survey:
Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Pulse Survey
Sustainability leaders, staff and advisors: look to these business model reinvention initiatives to help identify where executive attention (and funding) is – then find where sustainability elements integrate into or leverage them. In other words, make sustainability key components of reinvention opportunities underway or being considered. Here are a few ideas:
- Making products smart: save customers money by improving the energy efficiency of your product; develop products that help customers improve their own sustainability metrics.
- Getting into new or adjacent markets: develop products or services for underserved/underrepresented groups; leverage specific and focused sustainability attributes that are key to customers not typically considered primary to your business.
- Building collaborative networks of organizations: provide real incentives for suppliers to meaningfully improve their own sustainability profile in ways aligned with your primary sustainability goals (this is the flip-side of the second part of the first bullet above).
To be successful, you will need to do your homework and gain a deep understanding of matters like how your company generates sales/revenue, who the customers are and why they buy, major suppliers and their constraints, operating costs, and of course a very honest assessment of how executives view sustainability.
Our members can learn more about the role of the CSO and ESG staffing matters here.
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