One of the emerging roles at the senior executive table has been that of the Chief Sustainability Officer (the CSO). It is a phenomenon we are starting to see, initially out of the US, and is increasingly something which Boards and Chief Executives alike are putting on their agenda for discussion. But in Australia, these individuals have become somewhat rare; are they in fact the “Yeti” of the Australian corporate landscape? What is emerging though, is a focus that encompasses three interrelated forms of sustainability – economic, environmental and social. Economic sustainability is defined as the ability of an organisation to ensure that its long run economic behaviour is not undermining its own, or the broader natural environment. Environmental sustainability is more about the ability of an organisation to recognize that natural resources have a finite capacity either for exploitation or as sinks for pollutants; and social sustainability is the recognition that an organisation operates within a broader social context and relies on it to survive and prosper. The common element across this working definition is long run economic behaviour and an organisation’s impact upon the environment which, if it’s compromised may pose a substantial risk to future economic prosperity.
So why is it, that with the emergence of a CSO in the US and much talk about sustainability initiatives within this country, that the role of the CSO has not emerged more strongly? The reality is that in fact it has; we simply haven’t applied the label just yet; and Australians always need a label to truly own it. What is happening, is that corporations are acknowledging the need for a focus on sustainable development and are identifying key elements within their own businesses which will drive this. It simply hasn’t become mature enough to draw all of these elements into a single functional role. The early phase of adoption is when a corporation begins to understand and develop a compelling case for change. This early phase is usually something driven by its most senior executive who has the ability to not only initiate change, but to force individuals to work across his or her organisation to allow a powerful mandate to actually be created and utilised. In many cases, we are already seeing this in the Australian corporate landscape.
The next phase is when this mandate becomes an organisational imperative, becoming linked to specific metrics across an entire business planning cycle. Once again, we are starting to see the hallmarks of this in some of Australia’s larger corporations who have an eye to the global market, and a realisation that their social and economic impact on the economy reaches beyond the corporation’s balance sheet and perimeter fence.
The advanced phase is where the Yeti finally appears and becomes the champion of core values of an organisation. Once again, it can be embodied in an individual, or be disseminated through an organisation via a mandate or set of key metrics which bubble to the surface on a routine basis, and become part of the corporate vocabulary.
The upshot of the emergence of the CSO in the Australian landscape is that we might not have too many verified sightings to this point, but it is something we are likely to see going forward, as corporations finally realise the need. Eventually the CSO will change the corporate DNA of an organisation but that is something we are yet to see. The challenge ahead will be to not only identify the need to focus on sustainability and create the call to action, it will be locating, bagging and finally tagging the elusive prey.
