Directors of Sustainability Must Bring VALUE

I haven’t written in a little while because I have been checking out the recent increase in number of senior Sustainability positions in several respectable, large, international companies. I now want to share my perspective on what these positions should be all about.

In my prior interviewing experience, when the jobs I sought had standard titles and a long history, I met many people who had similar, dare I say narrow views on what would make a candidate successful in the job. But what I have observed and heard when I began to explore these newly created leadership positions with “sustainability” in their titles, was a realm where many interviewers were not so clear about what the job would actually entail. To make things more complex, some classically-trained business leaders involved in the interviews appear to treat Sustainability like anathema; they never say it directly, but they talk as if the bottom line and quarterly numbers were the only actionable criteria upon which you can manage a business, and they need you to convince them that you are not just a do-gooder and that you are at least cognizant of how your activities can create short-term threats to their business. Hint: Focusing on Balanced Scorecards and Strategy Maps where the natural conflict between short and long term benefits can be visualized and resolved is helpful for these leaders.

Now this does not mean that interviews for Sustainability positions need always be painful and antagonistic. Suffice it to say that if there is approval to post a Sustainability job, you will always meet at least a few battle-scarred believers who are looking for people to complement their nascent teams. But you also need to prepare for the cynics, those who fear that “Sustainability” is another flavor-of-the-month management strategy that may eventually go the way of “Total Quality Management” and other MBA ploys designed to create stronger and more efficient work processes.

I have developed what I think is an optimum approach for the Sustainability Leader job seeker. It is to demonstrate how you provide business VALUE, defined as follows:

• Vision – the ability to identify and sell in simple terms how sustainability can create positive market differentiation for the company in which you are interested
• Aptitude – the ability to learn what makes all important business processes and business relationships prosper so that you can become trustworthy partners to business leaders, NGO’s, engineers, regulators, and other stakeholders when promoting your Vision
• Leadership – because you will never have dictatorial power in this position, you will need to highlight your ability to lead through influence, inspiration, patience and example, thus converting vision to reality
• Understanding – because so many people will need to be influenced to take the first step when travelling from vision to reality, you will also need to demonstrate an ability to meet people where they are and validate their needs, recognizing that this “understanding” can be the only basis for a sustainable relationship, that is one where all parties agree to grow together
• Econ-Ecol-smarts – finally you will need to be comfortable and convincing when speaking the language of:
  • the awakening consumer who is developing the wherewithal to want to do business with companies that “do the right thing”
  • the NGO’s who can help you develop insightful environmental and community perspectives and strengthen those relationships, as well as
  • the business person whose job is to maintain a platform of customer loyalty and economic growth
  • [By Econ-Ecol smarts, I mean that you have to have a diverse background... just environment or just business is never going to be enough]

I would love to hear from both employers and those being interviewed for these jobs about what they seek and what they find. After all, this is not just about getting the job, but about increasing the number of opportunities for those of us who know that a focus on Sustainability is the best way to do well while doing good.