"For some people it's only when you get them talking about it pubicly that they really start making the links to how important it is and how it can add value." (Head of Strategy)
Several of our CEOs pointed to moments when they were asked to make public commitments or to speak publicly about sustainability as pivotal moments in shaping their own thinking, the depth of their understanding and in formalizing their commitment to sustainability.
"To take a public stance on the issue you have to believe 1) it's relevant and 2) you're qualified to take it and have some conviction that you're going to sustain it... Flip-flopping is never a great thing." (CEO)
Research in social psychology suggests that even small actions can put people on a path to further commitment in order to be perceived (both by themselves and others) as maintaining consistency with that position, especially if those commitments are long-term.3
"Our company was doing some work with an NGO to look at how different major economies were doing in terms of managing their commitment to lowering CO2 emissions. I was called upon to stand up and be able to talk about the report. That encouraged me to learn more about all of this. That was I guess how I came to it first. … I think if that opportunity presents itself, it's actually a good way to get a CEO engaged initially. I think the potential danger of that is they get engaged for a week or two weeks, give the speech, and then that is over or it's on to the next thing... I think most CEOs hate to look stupid in public. I think most of them will try and learn a bit more than is actually there in the speech because they will need to interact with people around the speech, and respond to questions, and at least appear knowledgeable. I think in order to have that interest maintained, you need to link this to how you can run your business more effectively and more successfully." (CEO)
CEOs also pointed to leveraging those moments to make real commitments, things that the organization could be measured against.
"I think the first thing is you must measure because there's no point making speeches, speeches help but following up from the speeches, you've got to measure. If your electricity saving is 2%, well, that's fine, you've made a big speech and you turned off three lights, but you haven't transformed the business. You have got to measure, you need to set targets and you got to measure, you got to have those targets in some form or another in the daily targets of the business." (Board Chairman / Former CEO)
Again, research supports the value of public commitments to motivate action.4 In addition, small initial comments generate more substantial future commitments.5 Here are things to keep in mind to help prepare your CEO for making public commitments:
"Our CEO got it. He was one of our biggest supporters… but until he stood up and actually presented it he hadn't engaged with the detail of our program. He knew we had the framework, he knew we were doing good stuff in it, he'd seen the reports we submitted to the board, all of that type of stuff, but until he had to stand up and talk about it, and be prepared to answer questions on it, he hadn't sat down and looked at - well what is the scale of what we invest in education and how much did we invest in renewable energy this year? Then we had to coach him on to make sure that he was comfortable standing up at that event.
It was a brilliant opportunity for us to get him up to speed, to get him to see the scale of what we were already doing, and to understand what the opportunities were for the future. That final slide of the presentation, the next step …what are we going to do, well now you're basically getting your CEO to commit in public to what you want to do in the next 3 years. It was really brilliant. He was the only CEO that presented at the event. It was the heads of responsible business or sustainability for everybody else. He gained great respect from people for standing up, and for knowing the level of detail he did. People saw that if our CEO knew that much, we were serious about it. It was a turning point for us because he then turned around and said, 'Okay, so we've now committed to these things. I see what were doing on all of this, what more do you need from me?'
I think picking which event and when is key. For us it was the perfect place the perfect time. We're known there. It was an event connected to a big sponsorship. It was a known entity. We'd been to the event the year before, so we knew who the audience were. We knew the types of questions they would ask so we could really prepare him. I think you need to pick your event very carefully. It was the right audience. We had investors, we had media, we had a real mixture of people there. They were broad enough in their knowledge. They had the basics, but they weren't experts, so it wasn't putting him in front of technical experts ready to shoot him down.
I think the fact that he was the only CEO was helpful for us because it was a chance for him to differentiate himself. We watched the agenda very closely. Nobody else did a high level talk like his, they all did specialist conversations about water management, or coms, or whatever it was, they did a theme-based presentation, so our CEO was the only one who talked about the strategic approach and the broad-based approach that we had, so he wasn't duplicating anybody else's stuff.
It took us 4 weeks or more to prepare him, and that was daily emails, daily conversations, him reading stuff, recrafting it. So it's about giving them the flexibility to make it their own. We created a slide deck and had written a script to go alongside it. But we had to say: here it is, it's yours now, put your voice to it. He actually sat in his hotel and we wrote the script, so that he would feel comfortable saying it and he basically gave it back to us and said have I changed anything that makes it incorrect, and it was that flexibility that was key." (Head of Responsible Business)