|
June 10, 2005
Book Review--The Next Sustainability Wave: Building Boardroom Buy-In
by William Baue
Longtime IBM Canada executive authors a sequel book, adding new sustainability drivers and
providing a comprehensive tool for convincing management to consider sustainability.
SocialFunds.com --
In The Next Sustainability Wave, the sequel to The Sustainability Advantage, Bob Willard continues his mission of evangelizing
sustainability to the skeptics who inhabit seats of corporate power. While he acknowledges the
validity of the ethical, environmentalist, and humanitarian arguments for sustainability, he
believes these tactics will not convince capitalists as effectively as the business case, so he
deliberately chooses to speak in business vernacular.
 He also speaks in accessible language, and
employs a user-friendly structure. Open the book to any page, and you will find a blend of humor,
statistics, pithiness, even-handedness, pragmatism, and objectivity. Each page-spread is intended
to be self-contained, arguing one specific point. The left-hand pages contain quotes from the 43
sustainability experts he interviewed and article reprints. They even contain "Dilbert" cartoons!
The right-hand pages contain Mr. Willard's own commentary, which runs the gamut from
well-documented facts to colorful metaphors (for example, the business case is a "Trojan horse" for
getting sustainability into the boardroom). The two facing pages create a conversation of sorts,
with the left-hand side providing copious anecdotal evidence and the right side presenting concise
arguments supporting the section's point. Taken together, each page-spread advances the book's
ultimate goal: to convince corporate decision-makers of the validity of integrating sustainability
into their business model.
The overall structure of the book reinforces this goal as well.
Each argument is not only self-contained, it also acts as an incremental step in the overall case
for corporate sustainability. To facilitate navigation along his line of reasoning, Mr. Willard
breaks it up into subsets that readers can easily visualize.
For example, he posits five
stages of development for companies on the path to sustainability: pre-compliance (Stage 1),
compliance (Stage 2), beyond compliance (Stage 3), integrated strategy (Stage 4), and purpose and
passion (stage five). Stage 5 companies are typically small firms founded on sustainable
principles, while Stage 4 companies tend to be large firms that adopt sustainability and are
significant due to their visibility.
"The distinction is not meant to be a value
judgment," writes Mr. Willard. "Frankly, if we got to the tipping point of companies using
sustainability as a management discipline at Stage 4, I would be delighted."
"I am less
concerned with the righteousness of motivations than I am with results," he adds, exhibiting his
pragmatism.
Later, Mr. Willard frames five signs that sustainability's tipping point is
close, borrowing the theoretical framework popularized by New Yorker writer Malcolm
Gladwell. Among these signs are the fact that "financial markets are poking with sharper sticks"
and "sustainability reporting is becoming business as usual."
"If the critical mass
required to reach the tipping point is 20 percent, I estimate about one percent to five percent of
corporations buy into the concept now," he writes.
The middle of the book is filled with
a recapitulation of the three primary drivers of the first sustainability wave presented in his
first book, as well as two emerging drivers of the next sustainability wave. The emerging drivers
include a "perfect storm" of risks, such as climate change, and compelling business value and
opportunities presented by sustainability.
The body of the book next contains a long list
of specific objections corporate executives might pose to resist integrating sustainability
considerations, each followed on a separate page by specific responses that map out strong
arguments that answer the objection.
The book ends with a long exposition on small and
medium enterprises (SMEs), which are often overlooked when the sustainability spotlight focuses on
big companies, but are very significant in their cumulative social and environmental impact.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Top
| 
