Why mess with success? (1) The North West Sustainable Business Quarterly events have settled into a very slick groove.(2) Last Thursday its biggest ever group of attendees (mostly suits, with only one long-haired guy in a t-shirt) met high above Manchester to hear about “The sustainability professional: The conscience of the company?”

The speakers were Verity Lawson of British American Tobacco (yes, the purveyors of cancer sticks. For a very partial list of their “activities”, see here, here and here) and Eileen Donnelly, formerly of Virgin group, now at John Lewis.

Ms Lawson made a good fist of defending the indefensible, given that – used as the manufacturers indeed – her company’s products will kill you. Often slowly, painfully and expensively. She laid out how, from the late 90s, with its reputation “under siege”, BAT had “without much to lose” begun to seek out external standard setters, and now has a system of iterative engagement with “stakeholders” that involves scanning for future challenges (around water, for instance – smoking your tobacco leaves is a water-hungry process, after all).

Eileen Donnelly was perhaps more what an audience at a “sustainability/conscience” event was expecting.

She’d clearly come prepared to engage on a deeper level with the audience, and had developed a bespoke presentation for the event. Hands up, she asked, if your job involves “sustainability” – many hands. “Keep your hand up if you consider yourself the conscience of your company.” Very few hands stayed up.

She then cited the movie The Purge, where “everything is legal one night a year”(3) She’d asked friends beforehand what they’d do, and, ah the middle-classness of it, one had said she’d break into her kid’s school, steal exam questions so the cherub could get a good university place.

While Ms Donnelly’s view of corporate culture – essentially just an aggregation of the values and beliefs that employees traipse in from their own homes – was a bit a-sociological, she made a series of interesting points about how corporations are having to look a bit more lively in their actions. (e.g. various multinationals and their tax “minimisation” efforts. She pointed to Waitrose having actively supported a shortened supply chain so that, when the horse-meat crisis hit, Waitrose were confidently able to say they had not been horse-trading.

She finished with the suggestion that sustainability professionals are the compass rather than the conscience of their organisations, with the complicating factor that the “right” versus “wrong” direction shifted over time.

In the Q and A there were a whole lot of interesting and quotable statements, but we shall have to respect the Chatham House rule. under which the meeting was held (and the quotes are too clearly linked to the individuals’ CVs for them to be “anonymous.”

[The NWSBQ folks have taken to, very-handily, blogging about their events, complete with the slides of the presenters.  See here.]

I asked them both if, given that many companies were not necessarily customer-facing (i.e. “business-to-business”) and so largely immune to consumer boycotts and moral suasion, did they support regulation.

I was interested to note that neither pooh-poohed it, (no swivel-eyed “free” “marketeer” here, thank you), and in fact one said “waiting for regulation feels wrong, it’s too slow.”

In response to a question about how to drive behaviour change in sub-contractors in the supply chain, one of the speakers invoked Anglian Water, who had a very big capital contract (for a waste treatment plant) that they dished out on the basis of who could come up with ways to radically reduce the embedded carbon.

The final question alluded to work by Professor Lynda Gratton of London Business School, who looked at how sixty CEOs/MDs had had “epiphanies” around sustainability.

Eileen Donnelly responded by saying this was the “dream scenario for sustainability professionals”, and gave a shameless plug for the Global Association of Corporate Sustainability Officers “GASRO.”

After a very interesting discussion on our roundtable (these are themed – you choose when you book which one best fits) it was time to schmooze, swap business cards and tuck into some very tasty food, etc etc. Vegans take note – it wasn’t just a few carrots and cucumbers – the Good Mood Food people are quite a bit more advanced than that…

What was missing? Perhaps a panelist from Ethical Consumer?

The next event is on Thursday 5th September – “How doing good is good business”, with Hazel Blears (Labour MP for Salford) and Norman Pickavance, non-executive Director at HMRC. Rumour has that the first speaker’s performance will be captured for Youtube.

Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com

(1) As the party organiser surveying all the different ornate and rococo furniture that needed repairing before a big Louis XIV fancy dress masque said – “If it’s not baroque, don’t fix it.”

(2) Spectacular views from the 24th floor of the City Tower, check.
Unobtrusive but highly efficient logistics, check.
Top notch food (from “Good Mood Food, a social enterprise in support of Manchester Mind), check.
Two short presentations with plenty of time for a Q and A (no speeches), check.
Round table discussions with a range of interesting people, facilitated with a light but firm touch, check.
More food and wine. Double check.
It’s unsurprising in the extreme that these events are growing. The only surprise, perhaps, is that they aren’t more over-subscribed.

(3) Of course, the 2003 documentary “The Corporation”, with its message that corporations are, clinically speaking, psychopaths, might have been a bit outre…

Doubtless the organisers would want me to mention that the refreshments were provided by Origin Creative, and the host of the venue was Bruntwood but that would be an advert, so we won’t mention them. No, wait…