Episode 39: Operationalizing Sustainability Efforts

Transcript

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00;00;09;22 – 00;00;33;11

Hello and welcome back to Change@Work. I’m your host Chris Thornton senior principal here at Daggerwing Group. Joining us today is Tiana Ritchell, principal at Daggerwing Group and sustainability expert. Tiana partners with organizations to operationalize their ESG and sustainability strategies and achieve their ambitious goals they’ve set. Well, we’ll explain what all that means, what all those words mean in a little bit.

00;00;33;14 – 00;01;02;26

She is very passionate about helping companies lead change that sticks, delivering results while speaking to employees and meeting them where they are. And she’s partnered with General Mills and Mondelez to do just that. Tiana, welcome. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. I am so glad you’re here. I’ve been able to see you in front of audiences, working with clients, and so I’m so happy that you’re on the podcast to talk about some of the things you are the best at, just absolutely the best.

00;01;02;27 – 00;01;28;25

Let’s start with getting to know you as a person first. Now, I know that you just got back from Italy, but I didn’t know that you love cooking traditional Italian dishes. Tell me all about it. Yes, I love cooking anything. It is just such a great way to unwind from the day. But Italian food in particular just has such a special part of my heart.

00;01;28;26 – 00;01;57;29

I come from an Italian family, and Italian dishes are just cozy and nostalgic and so meaningful to cook. If I had to choose one, it would be just choose one. Just one. Spaghetti with clam sauce. It is a special occasion dish. You have it on Christmas Eve. You maybe have it on your birthday. And so it is not only delicious, but it’s a significant dish for a special moment in time.

00;01;58;01 – 00;02;30;06

So one of the things that I know about cooking Italian and yeah, Italian, I was going to say Italian American, but Italian dishes is that technique matters for sure. But ingredients absolutely like it the best you can afford. Do you agree with that? Totally agree. Some of my favorite restaurants in Chicago actually focus on sourcing ingredients only from Italy, because they came to the US and were shocked by the ingredients that they had.

00;02;30;12 – 00;02;57;21

Yeah. And so absolutely, 100% agree. Important. All right. What what do you do about clams, though? You’re in Chicago. How are you feeling about the clams in Chicago? You know, we do the best we can. I mean, from the Midwest. I know you do. You do what you can do. Do what you can do. But when I was in Italy, I think I eat this dish every day because they just have access to the best seafood that you can get.

00;02;57;23 – 00;03;18;24

I love it. All right. Next question. What is an essential part of your daily routine. Coffee. Every day I wake up and I have a cup of coffee. I just need it to be a human. Do you want to talk about your coffee or is it just any coffee. Is it a specific cup. What are we doing.

00;03;18;27 – 00;03;48;01

I am so boring. It’s just black coffee. Just like coffee. Lucky we have such good coffee places around us. Do you just go? Do you have a bamboo grinder? That fraction I need. That’s a pretty nice treat. It is sustains me throughout the day. You got to have it. You’re an avid travelers. We discussed. Yes. What’s the next place on your list to visit?

00;03;48;03 – 00;04;10;20

To the travel bucket list or anything? There are so many places. There are places that I’ve been that I want to go back to. Places I’ve never been. A one that’s been top of mind has been bam. Lately I’ve had friends who’ve done that there. It’s just so beautiful and living in the city. You cut it outdoor time and that is what it’s all about.

00;04;10;20 – 00;04;38;21

So I’d say that one’s next up. All right. So I totally know where that is and can absolutely picture in my head I can’t. Tell me about this place. Where is it? Why is it what’s going on there? Canada. It’s in Canada. Yeah. I think you fly into Calgary and then you drive from there. It’s just beautiful lake outdoors, hot springs, hiking, all the outdoor things you can’t do in Chicago.

00;04;38;24 – 00;04;57;23

That sounds nice. All right, if you’ve been to Banff, let us know right in. Let us know what to do in Banff. Is it PMF. Is that is that it? That’s Banff. Get on it, folks. I know listeners are like, how do you not know Banff? I can’t know every place in the world. It’s not possible, I just can’t.

00;04;57;29 – 00;05;29;04

Your task after this. Oh, Google. Bam. I gotta be the biggest expert on Banff after we finish this series. Soon as we hang up. I’m so on Banff. You can ask me anything tomorrow on Banff. New expert. Thank you. All right, let’s get into the work. Let’s talk about sustainability. Let’s talk about all of your work there. Why don’t you describe, first of all, what it is that you’ve been doing with with clients just at the most basic level.

00;05;29;04 – 00;05;58;12

And we’ll try to refrain from all the jargon if possible, but I bet some will slip in. Yes, I will do my best. So do your best. Most organizations have set, like you mentioned earlier, some ambitious sustainability goals or ESG goals, depending on the industry they sit in. And like a lot of the work that we do, growing it requires change across the organization, and it’s changed that many businesses haven’t faced before.

00;05;58;12 – 00;06;25;27

And so the work that I do is going into organizations meeting with their sustainability leaders, understanding the goals they’ve set and partnering them with them to figure out how do you bring that to life across the business? How do you get everyone sitting within the organization to understand what the goals are, the role they play in achieving them and starting to take action against it?

00;06;25;27 – 00;06;52;06

Because ultimately, it can’t just be a sustainability leader who can accomplish these big goals. They need the support of the organization to do so. So what the way you describe it sounds like it’s mostly you probably just write a communication or write a PowerPoint for everybody and then that’s it. You leave after that. Sure. Now you sure know communication is important, right?

00;06;52;08 – 00;07;23;13

This is such a complex topic. There is so much jargon. I do think breaking down the complexity and putting this in terms that people understand what it is, why it is, why it’s important to the business and not just the planet is important. But so much of this work is actually the deep process work, the structure work, the learning work so people can meet the new expectations that are being asked of them.

00;07;23;16 – 00;07;54;04

Just knowing what sustainability is and how it maybe fits into your role isn’t enough. It requires such massive change into how a business operates. Can you give me an example of the type of really big problem or challenge or opportunity however you want to, Fraser, that a company might be facing right now? I think one of the biggest ones is that it influences each company so differently.

00;07;54;05 – 00;08;19;09

So depending on the industry you set in, your goals are going to be different. And then even once you set your goals, how it influences each part of the business is so different. And so unlike some programs or initiatives, you’re trying to achieve some change and everyone needs to behave a certain way, take on a certain mindset. With sustainability efforts.

00;08;19;11 – 00;08;52;18

It is more micro what the changes are that need to happen. So if you’re sitting in sales versus sourcing or supply chain or even in Charter Communications, the changes that you have to make are going to be so specific to you and yet all ladder up to these same goals. So there’s this general knowledge that needs to happen, but that is very tailored learning and education and efforts that need to happen within the business that is just so unique to sustainability.

00;08;52;21 – 00;09;20;14

So an example might be we’re going to eliminate as we’re a food company. Yeah. You and I, you and I started a food company. Congrats to us. You’re CEO. Exciting. Yep. Congrats. We have microwave meals. That’s one of our lines. The amount of plastic, the amount of packaging, the amount of single use plastic versus I can actually recycle it.

00;09;20;20 – 00;09;44;24

How do I get that material back? What do I do with that? How do I make sure that it is both food safe and environmentally sound going forward? If I shape it into something new because I’ve recycled it, how I sourced that, where do I get that? How do I make sure that I can get it? Not just today, but also two years from now at a price that makes sense for consumers?

00;09;44;24 – 00;10;09;15

Like that’s just an easy example in our fake company that I just came up with. Can you think of any other examples of the messiness that people are solving? Packaging is certainly the one that people go to, right? That is what you think of easy will just change our packaging that we chose. But then there are also things like water is a big one for many food companies.

00;10;09;15 – 00;10;37;15

Is how much water are you using to create your products? You know, another one, regenerative agriculture, which such big terminology. But that’s a huge one for food companies of where you’re sourcing the food products that you need to then create these other products before they get on the shelf. And so there’s a lot of these upstream and downstream parts of the puzzle that you’re figuring out for whatever your commitments are.

00;10;37;15 – 00;11;09;01

For a lot of companies, it’s greenhouse gas, it’s regenerative agriculture, it’s packaging, it is water. It’s food waste. And then you also have the people side of it. So you have these human rights, parts as well, and animal welfare on top of it. So there’s all these pieces that you need to think about. And that’s where it gets sometimes very overwhelming of where do you actually focus your time and move the needle?

00;11;09;03 – 00;11;33;00

Well, you know, one of the things that came up recently in a conversation internally was the impact of AI on sustainability efforts because of the increased computing power, energy, all of the costs associated with that, the impact on the environment as well. Cool to increase your AI usage, but there’s an impact of of doing that. So it’s it’s very, very complex.

00;11;33;00 – 00;11;59;06

The issues that you are helping companies solve. What are the biggest shifts that you’ve seen over the last couple of years that you’ve been doing this work? Yeah, I think the understanding of its connection to the business you asked five years ago, ten years ago, sustainable ability felt like a nice to have. Maybe it was headed up by people who are really passionate about this work.

00;11;59;06 – 00;12;31;12

Maybe it was a small group thinking about how do we celebrate Earth Month? What’s our report going to be annually? But it wasn’t deeply integrated into the business. And that’s where I’ve seen the shift, the understanding of the connection between purpose and profit, between sustainability efforts and the longevity of a business, and bringing in more stakeholders to that conversation, both internally, those who need to do the work, but then externally as well.

00;12;31;12 – 00;13;05;19

You have customers, you have investors who want to learn more. And that’s just increase the scale to which organizations are thinking about this. And with impending regulations. Yeah, I see that only increasing going forward. And for those within the U.S., you may not be familiar with everything that’s happening within Europe, in particular, where the regulation and the demands are significant, disclosure significant, doing the right thing and making sure that you can prove that you’ve done the right thing.

00;13;05;22 – 00;13;36;22

There are, I don’t know what to say other than insignificant. It’s much bigger than it is today. It’s only going to be more more disclosure, more transparency, more being able to defend what you’ve done in providing people, products and services. So the pressure is on to do it right and be able to prove it. Absolutely. So if that’s the biggest shift that you’ve seen, what are some of the headwinds now that you’re seeing facing companies.

00;13;36;25 – 00;14;07;09

And then what’s your advice on making sure companies and the people within those companies don’t feel completely overwhelmed? Yeah, I think overwhelmed is such, a word that will resonate with those within this field because, and scale on which it’s grown within organizations. And so some of the headwinds or things that anyone facing any sort of change are going to be experiencing prioritization.

00;14;07;12 – 00;14;40;17

How do I prioritize what I’m doing? There are clients we’ve partnered with who started with 50 goals that they wanted to accomplish, and then had to narrow down to ten an hour, narrowing down to five. And so being really intentional around where you’re focusing your efforts so that you can make traction. The other one is time, as we’ve talked about regulations and preparing for what that might look like, it’s taking a lot more time from people’s already very heavy place and workloads.

00;14;40;17 – 00;15;11;21

And so finding the time to keep doing what you need to do to achieve your goals. And the last one would be probably balancing the long term versus short term investments. Capital. We’re seeing a lot as a challenge for organizations who are prioritizing sustainability and sustainability efforts, not just because they need to, but it’s also part of their strategy.

00;15;11;25 – 00;15;33;27

Yeah, but there’s this need to show your return on your investment and the value that can be unlocked, or even the risks that you can avoid by doing this work. But sometimes that takes a while to show up. And so how do you balance that with the need to meet your bottom line month after month and quarter after quarter?

00;15;33;29 – 00;16;10;10

Well, especially since recently you and I have both seen, these goals being tied into executive comp as well, that it’s going to be easy to prioritize now, and making sure that you meet those those goals. Now, I should say easy. It’s not. But you can at least intellectually prioritize. It may be hard to actually deliver on it, but then making sure that it’s done every year and that you’re able to, that your goals are completed every year, that you’re able to continue to make progress because it is it’s like beyond a marathon.

00;16;10;10 – 00;16;42;07

It’s like the it is the race. Like that is what you have to do now. And it doesn’t even fall within the business as usual bucket because it’s going to change every single year. Yeah, it is such a dynamic topic and environment and things are constantly shifting, but I do believe that tying it to leader compensation and working with them to prioritize this effort will hopefully help organizations make traction that they need.

00;16;42;07 – 00;17;07;25

Because it is so easy or this work, we’ve seen it be very easy for this work to be deprioritized. Yeah, because it might not be a profit driver that quarter that year. And so making sure leaders are bought and making sure they’re committed and understand the connection between this work and the business, and having them explain that to their people and continue to prioritize.

00;17;07;25 – 00;17;37;08

It is so important, and compensation certainly helps do that. What drives this passion for you to help operationalize sustainability efforts? It is just such meaningful work, like in talking with clients and talking with leaders and going to conferences and talking with others in that space, you can just see a passion and the excitement and the optimism in this work.

00;17;37;08 – 00;18;04;29

Change can be very difficult no matter what kind of change you’re doing. But this is change work that people are taking on with this hope of helping those around them, of helping the planet, and also helping to sustain their business and so it’s one of those types of work and initiatives that are so personal to people, but then also connected to growing and strengthening the business.

00;18;04;29 – 00;18;33;02

And so it’s just such an exciting thing to be a part of. Well, given that excitement and passion, you see a lot of what companies are doing. We’re not saying they’re doing the wrong things, but what do you wish they should be doing? Like what? What do you wish they like? If they were able to move some of that energy and focus over to some things that you think might have a bigger impact than just what they’re doing today, what would it be?

00;18;33;05 – 00;19;02;21

Yeah, there are a couple things that those who I would say are leading the pack are doing differentially. And I think the first is just being very clear around what role everyone plays in this work and setting up those clear accountabilities for these efforts, because if you don’t do that, it’s really easy to default to. That’s the job of a chief sustainability officer or the director of sustainability.

00;19;02;21 – 00;19;34;05

So creating those accountability is but then backing it up. I think that’s sometimes where it ends. You say this group is responsible for this. This group is responsible for that, but you don’t necessarily provide that structure or the data. And technology or the education to help people meet those expectations, to go and say, Fritz, you’re responsible for achieving this part of our goal that can be really overwhelming and you might not know where to start.

00;19;34;05 – 00;19;58;18

And so it’s not just setting those clarity and expectations, but backing it up and helping those who need to do something get there and feel confident in doing so. Yeah. On top of everything they’re doing today. Right. This is an exactly this is additional work that has to be done. Yeah. It is often woven into someone’s already existing job.

00;19;58;18 – 00;20;23;15

And yeah, for those who maybe didn’t have a passion around it before, you have to find ways to help them understand why it matters for them, why it’s important for them as individuals in their role, but then also where they sit within the business. Well, I think you’re leading me to my next question, which is who should own this kind of work?

00;20;23;15 – 00;20;51;23

Who needs to own this work? Okay, we’ve talked a little bit about the shift, right where it’s it’s been going. Most organizations now have a CSO, a chief sustainability officer, or someone in a senior level who sort of says, well, I think they should be ultimately accountable for driving it. It can’t end there. There can’t be a single team that is responsible for everything.

00;20;51;23 – 00;21;31;18

And so what I think works and what I would recommend to organizations is having, yes, that group that are guiding you, that are directing you, that are the needs or subject matter experts of this work, and not having them accountable for achieving everything, really extending that into functions like finance and legal, into the sales and sourcing teams, into the brands that you can all take elements of these efforts and work together to achieve it with maybe someone again guiding and directing, but not them doing all the work.

00;21;31;20 – 00;21;56;19

Tiana, I’ve seen you in action both with clients and then on stages leading conversations around this. You’re just one of the best and people would be so lucky to work with you. How do you want them to get in touch with you? Yes, I would love to continue the conversation with anyone interested. This is such a passion area, so reach out on the staggering website and happy to get in touch.

00;21;56;22 – 00;22;08;09

That’s daggerwinggroup.com folks, if you’re looking for it. Thanks so much Tiana. Have loved this chat. Thank you.