Is Professional Sustainability Too Tame To Work?

Have you seen Jo Confino's fine and thoughtful piece in The Guardian Sustainable Business Blog, commenting on the launch of the Institute for Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility? You can get to Jo's article here

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/institute-corporate-responsibility-icrs-sustainability-professionals

Jo wonders ...When sustainability becomes a professional body accepted into the boardroom, have all the teeth dropped out? It's a good question.

I have a bias here. I co-direct the Ashridge MSc in Sustainability and Responsibility and potentially many of our graduates are involved in exactly the kind of roles Jo is concerned about, and might well be members of ICRS  https://icrs.info/ ...

One of the reasons I keep working is that I hope it is possible to change the nature of conversations with the largest organisations, so that genuine and more deeply framed explorations of what it means to be a sustainable and responsible organisation really do reach the top table. For this to happen we need skilled practitioners who can work inside organisations to change the very framing of business. It's a big ask, but its an even bigger ask to wait for the glorious revolution to put corporations against the proverbial wall. By the time that day comes, well .....

I spend a lot of my life inside massive organisations trying to change the nature of conversation, and it is always hard. We are a long way from anything that might be called sustainable business. Much of what passes for corporate sustainability is nothing like up to the job. Often you're banging your head against the very wall you once planned to put the bastards up against ... All of this is true ...

And yet there is a shift, over the past ten years I have see some strategy conversations beginning to address real-earth issues such as peak resource, earth justice and so on. And many more at least moving to bring consideration of sustainability into strategy and leadership conversations slightly further along the curve from mere compliance towards something deeper ....

There's a long long way to go and the work is hardly begun. And we need radical thinking inside organisations, skilled in challenging the frame and in sparking innovation AND skilled in doing so in language and approaches that can be heard and can help move and shape the organisational agenda ....