THE S-FACTOR

Anastasia A. Kellermann

The S-Factor

A personal guide to sustainable leadership

Uitgeverij Business Contact
Amsterdam/Antwerpen

Be the change you want to see in the world

– Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi

© Anastasia A. Kellermann
Uitgeverij Business Contact, Amsterdam 2006
Omslagontwerp/cover design Het Vlakke Land, Rotterdam
Boekverzorging/production LINE UP tekstprodukties bv, Groningen
Foto auteur/author photograph Michiel Poodt
isbn 9789047001447
D/2005/0108/337
nur 801

www.boekenwereld.com

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and
fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

– Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love, 1992.
Quoted by Nelson Mandela in his inauguration speech, 1994.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1    Sustainability as a moving target

Chapter 2    Sustainability as a necessity or personal choice

Chapter 3    Sustainability reality check

Chapter 4    Sustainable leadership competences

Chapter 5    Sustainable leadership styles

Chapter 6    Becoming a sustainable leader

Chapter 7    Sustainable culture

Chapter 8    Lasting sustainability

Chapter 9    Personal and creative entrepreneurship

Chapter 10  Sustainability challenges

Chapter 11  Implementing sustainability

Chapter 12  Sustainability joint adventures

Conclusion

Interviews

Literature

Notes

Overview

The Introduction gives a (personal) story on sustainability.

Chapter 1, Sustainability as a moving target,
attempts to define (without confining) sustainability, CSR and sustainable leadership and explores the roots and development of sustainability as a concept.

Chapter 2, Sustainability as a necessity or personal choice,
asks why to choose sustainability. It looks also at current trends, such as magnitude and diversity, the existing economic paradigm, responsibility, drivers, spirituality, core business and opportunities, which can influence the choice for sustainability. This choice can be for business, society and/or personal reasons.

Chapter 3, Sustainability reality check,
invites you to look at where organisations stand, focuses on pioneers in mainstream versus niche markets and on the way to ‘walk the talk’. In addition, it looks at the significance and benefits of a ‘reality check’, explaining how to apply a sustainability audit and ‘dynamic inquiry’ to perform the reality check.

Chapter 4, Sustainable leadership competences,
is about the role of leadership and the various competences which foster sustainable leadership. It starts with personal competences: self-awareness and motivation, self-management, and creativity. Then focuses on social competences: social awareness, and building and managing relationships.

Chapter 5, Sustainable leadership styles,
shows various styles which in certain combinations lead to sustainable leadership. Depending on where an organisation stands, sustainable leadership is a creative combination of visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, servant, and spiritual leadership styles. The chapter discusses each one separately to show which aspects of those styles are particularly relevant for sustainability.

Chapter 6, Becoming a sustainable leader,
invites you to lead by example and shows which learning instruments and methods can be applied in order to become a sustainable leader. These instruments fall within five areas of learning: by acquiring knowledge, by creating, by developing competences, by doing and by collaborating. Use (executive) coaching to learn how to achieve goals which foster sustainability.

Chapter 7, Sustainable culture,
raises the significance of organisational culture, discussing what type of culture fosters sustainability and how to embed sustainable leadership in the culture. It’s about inspiring others and dealing with (internal) resistance, denial, the boiling frog dilemma, making sustainability a shared adventure, looking at the benefits through self-development. It’s also about organisational instruments for incentives and addresses how a leader enrols others in the organisation’s move to sustainability.

Chapter 8, Lasting sustainability,
shows how to make sustainability ‘stick and last’ in organisations. It focuses on how to anchor sustainability in organisations by creating incentives, making sustainability personal, creating momentum and connecting formal and informal networks as well as integrating sustainability into processes, quality structures, hiring, career paths and line-management responsibility and authority. It also focuses on contributing to sustainability from core business of organisations and ‘the core’ of individuals.

Chapter 9, Personal and creative entrepreneurship,
demonstrates how to develop the talent and passion of individuals (core) so that their full potential can be applied to create and develop sustainability ‘bottom-up’, from within and throughout an organisation.

Chapter 10, Sustainability challenges,
sets forth the biggest challenges for integrating sustainability in organisations. A list of the top-10 challenges is given, including making sustainability fun, developing yourself and your talents, learning to ‘walk the talk’, making sustainability mainstream.

Chapter 11, Implementing sustainability,
is about bringing sustainability into practice by integrating it in the processes and structures of an organisation. It shows a checklist of items to address in an organisation where sustainability needs to play a role in order to become a part of everyday practice rather than remaining abstract, a separate unit or discipline.

Chapter 12, Sustainability joint adventures,
shows best practices with leading examples of initiatives set up by a variety of players around the world from companies, NGOs, government and academics, sometimes acting as individuals, other times on behalf of organisations, playing, adventuring and pioneering with sustainability. Some are just beginning, others leading by example.

Foreword

It’s hard to know where this book started. Was I initially inspired by my grandfather, Dr. Henry J. Kellermann, who wrote a book on the environment in his days as executive director of the Committee for International Environmental Programs of the National Academy of Sciences?¹ Or was it first conceived in my dream to write a book one day? Or did it actually start with my studies at the Business School of the University of Nijmegen, ‘Sustainable Business, Managing the Future’? Maybe it started when I decided to interview today’s leaders in the Netherlands about how they thought sustainability truly could be achieved. Originally my intention was to write a paper about the implementation of sustainability for the university; this fit in perfectly with my job at the time as a project manager Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), responsible for the implementation of sustainability within the bank I worked for. In this endeavour, my focus shifted to the role of leadership in integrating sustainability, realising that neither the bank nor I could move forward without it.

I thought perhaps other organisations had the answer. Thus I embarked on a personal journey interviewing claimed leaders in sustainability.² I was curious about their personal stories, asking about their motivation, why they chose the path of sustainability, about how they were getting the rest of the organisation to ‘buy in’. I asked about what kinds of leadership styles and competences they thought were needed to integrate sustainability, about the type of organisational culture needed to foster and create sustainability, about which opportunities and challenges they saw for the nearby future. And finally, what intrigued me the most, how were they making sustainability part of the DNA of the organisation; how would they ensure that it would outlast their own leadership.

I began my interviews with Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of large Dutch companies, mostly of them listed on the stock exchange. My journey continued to in-house and outside specialists in sustainability. In addition, I found innovative answers at smaller and medium-sized companies. I travelled beyond the corporate sector and interviewed some leaders in the non-profit world of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). I also researched the views of academics known for bringing sustainability into practice.

It was through interaction with these pioneering leaders that my ideas for integrating sustainability were tested and gained more body and significance. I would like to thank them especially for their cooperation and openness about their purpose, doubts and motivations. They inspired me on my way to sustainable leadership. They all agreed that sustainability is necessary for our long-term survival. Many view sustainability as the biggest leadership challenge of the 21st century.

Many references in this book are made to CEOs and other senior positions in organisations. However, this book is written for all levels. It is written for heads of organisations, big or small, in private, public and non-profit sectors, as well as for managers or heads of departments or teams within such organisations, but also for entrepreneurs with their own businesses and for all those who work in organisations. Most of all, this book is written for anyone who truly wants to develop his or her potential to become a sustainable leader in whatever field of work or walk of life. Actually, it is written for anyone who is interested in tomorrow as well as today, and who chooses their own path in life to follow.

Why did I call this book The S-Factor? The S stands for sustainability and sustainable leadership. The S-Factor is like a black box; achieving the goal of sustainability requires a ‘thinking out of the box’ approach. Sustainability cannot stand alone, it’s a factor, an integral part, to be taken into account in every decision you make, whether on a personal or an organisational level. Like a mystery, the S-Factor is waiting to be discovered by you.

I want to thank Anna Hinze, Maria Pinxter and Kirstin Kuipers, and my special friend Hans Ludo van Mierlo for their valuable input and believing in me. Also, I would like to thank Annemie Michels for having the courage and vision to publish the first book in English for Business Contact.

Last but not least I would like to thank Sue Gillie for her superb and swift English editing and critical questions, and Monique Mathon for the Sustainability Unlimited logo used on the cover of this book.

With this book, I hope to inspire many new and potential leaders on their own paths to sustainable leadership and their own ways to discover the S-Factor.

Introduction

Towards the dawn of the millennium, it seemed the sky was the limit. Especially in the Netherlands. There was virtually no unemployment; the stock market kept rising, the information technology (IT) market was growing exponentially, creating plenty of work and high salaries for anyone who had a degree. The ex-pat market was booming, raising rents and wages. Companies were bought for often 15 times the forecasted profits. Prices of real estate rose dramatically. Real estate was bought on credit by a new generation of Dinkies (double income, no kids), with mortgages often 125% of the value, whereby half of the interest was tax-deductible. Financial advisors and banks advised everyone to buy shares (‘You’re robbing your own purse if you don’t’) and even to borrow money to lease (not buy and own) shares, and pension funds were investing huge amounts of money in shares. Many companies were run on hot air and hype, while mergers and acquisitions were getting bigger and bigger and increasingly frequent. Lawyers and consultants were hired at rising hourly rates to work almost full time for companies, employees being already overloaded.

Well, it turned out the sky was not the limit. Not for all those who were dismissed, became ill, were exhausted, got divorced, lost their luxurious homes, went bankrupt and/or went through all sorts of other personal and financial crises. I was no exception.

The impact of our unsustainable way of life and doing business is becoming more and more apparent and each individual sooner or later notices it. ‘9/11’, when Al-Qaida terrorists flew into the World Trade Center in New York,¹ was not just about a conflict between religions as some people argue, but also an attack on our culture and economic model, where shareholder profits reign over all other interests.

The problems with our model are not just about the Enron scandal,² concerning directors misleading stakeholders with false financial figures hiding millions, which they put on bank accounts of their own companies. It’s also about the directors taking high salaries even though they brought down the company, taking all its employees and one of the top-5 accountancy firms, Arthur Andersen, down with them.

It’s not just about the Ahold scandal,³ where fraudulent bookkeeping in the USA and secret agreements referred to as ‘side letters’ brought the company and its directors to international shame, court proceedings and almost to bankruptcy. It’s also about old and new directors of Ahold demanding huge salaries even if they failed, while many staff were laid off. To restore their financial position and client base, Ahold later launched a full-scale supermarket price war.⁴

It’s not just about Africa, which today in the eyes of the West is considered the ‘lost continent’, whereas prior to colonisation by Europe, Africa was rich in resources. It’s also about the fact that today almost an entire generation is suffering from AIDS and little or no economic progress is being made.

Nor is it just about global warming, where the Earth’s temperature and sea level are rising at an unprecedented rate, with the probability of coastal areas flooding so that even in the ‘rich’ West millions of people will be homeless and possibly jobless, not able to pay back their mortgages.

However, it’s also not just about these signs of what’s happening in the world, but it’s also about what’s happening to each of us personally. Are we leaders of our own lives or are we being led by the ‘way things work’ or by the systems we have built? Are the short-term gains worth the long-term costs? How can you be yourself in the rat race or stop trying to be a rat and yet stay in the race? I began to question myself.

Having looked for sustainability outside myself since I was sixteen years old, after ten years of experience in professional life I started to focus on my inner journey. I found out the hard way that if you don’t get in touch with who you are and what you really want to get from and give in life, you will be eaten by the other rats, unless you become or act like a rat yourself. Even then you can’t always win, because the going gets tougher on the way to the top of the work pyramid.

Recently a fellow lawyer (40 years of age) with a senior position in a large utility company (which claims to be committed to sustainability) said to me, ‘If I was offered 80% of my salary to leave the company (common practice in Holland for people over a certain age), I would quit my job tomorrow and start an antiques shop.’ Only minutes before he had said, ‘I am one of the lucky guys because loads of people were fired, I was promoted and have a great job.’ He’s not a proponent of growing talent in his organisation (we’re not ready for managing the company on competence); he talks up new systems like ‘shared profit centre’ and ‘cutting down FTEs’ (full time equivalents, business term for forty hours of work per week⁵) by rationalising (another buzzword) the staff from the many companies they had taken over.

So, how did I get on with sustainability and the rat race? How did I remain myself and avoid becoming a rat, and where did that take me?

With a background in international law and sustainable development, I joined the corporate world with the ambition to achieve sustainability from the inside. Having written on Joint Implementation under the Climate Change Convention (before the Kyoto Protocol), I learned that environmental objectives could best be achieved by use of economic incentives. Use people’s own interest to achieve higher objectives.

I decided I could make a bigger impact by going with the flow and trying to change the system from the inside rather than fighting against it like those who manned the barricades for Greenpeace or Amnesty.

In 1995 I started a promising career as a lawyer for a big corporate law firm. I did my utmost to learn the tricks in the masculine ego-driven world of mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, cross border leasing, project finance, restructuring. Most of my clients were in the growing international telecommunications business. The numbers just got bigger all the time; all the zeroes meant less and less. To give an idea, an average cross border lease transaction cost 10 million dollars on fees for lawyers and investment bankers. These were contracts of hundreds of pages negotiated for sometimes a year by twenty or more people, where lawyers, at times, were sent to New York from Amsterdam by Concorde to attend the negotiations and come back the same day.

The absurdity of these transactions and culture in which there was no room for authenticity (showing your true self) or feminine qualities, brought me to leave the law firm and to rediscover my dreams for sustainability by travelling through South America. Re-energised, I picked up my career at a large multinational bank (over 100,000 employees worldwide) in Amsterdam, whose annual environmental report showed promising signs of believing in sustainability. Again I tried to change the world from the inside, but found myself in a downward vortex rather than swimming with the current.

What I came across in this bank that had grown so quickly through all the mergers and acquisitions over the past almost two decades, was a culture of fear, greed and lies. I am not saying that everyone was like this (I actually had a lot of wonderful colleagues), but, put it this way, many who rose in the pyramid left dead bodies behind. I saw no leadership, but lots of management; many trying to keep their heads above the water; managers busy proving themselves at the expense of others.

I was confronted with strict hierarchy ruling over attempts to show initiative and creativity. Managers warned us to play the ‘game’ as expected. ‘You have to learn to bluff,’ my boss said. I saw colleagues being promoted in spite of lack of honesty and integrity, and saw others punished for practicing those virtues. The ‘game,’ I found out, was mostly about how to get credit for what went right and blaming others for what went wrong.

It is not surprising that in a culture like this, business principles were mocked. ‘Sustainability,’ they said, ‘oh, isn’t that the toy of our CEO?’ After all, how could cynicism not arise when at every media opportunity, our CEO kept emphasising the importance of sustainability for the bank?

My friends said to me, ‘What did you expect from a bank or big company? Money and status are their most important values.’ Originally, however, banks were institutions of trustworthiness. They helped build society and develop business. They were safe havens to protect peoples’ assets. So what happened?

Each story is personal yet is so similar to what I hear from so many talented people who leave big companies, not just banks. Is it the size that makes people feel so insecure that they can only survive by acting like rats? Is it the egos, the ‘chip on the shoulder’, or the organisational structure and system that makes people seek short-term gains at the expense of others? Or is it survival of the fittest in the ‘race to the bottom’?

My leading question to the CEOs, former CEOs and other sustainability experts I interviewed was: ‘What is necessary for sustainability to be integrated, a crisis or a fundamental mind shift?’ I was interested in sustainability long before my life at the bank brought about the crisis, which served as a catalyst on my personal journey to sustainable leadership. But what do you need to make that choice?

With this book, I invite you to find out for yourself.

Chapter 1 Sustainability as a moving target

In companies where a masculine approach is predominant, and this applies to about 95% of all companies and most organisations, people often try to treat sustainability as a problem. ‘We need to solve it, clean it up or ignore it.’ In this book, I will promote following a positive, learning and integrated approach to sustainability. Let’s face it, it will take a lot of work and time so it may as well be fun and rewarding. Make sustainability a joint adventure rather than a joint problem. Sustainability can be about creating new market opportunities, more quality of experience-driven processes, competitive advantage, leadership beyond management, organic transformation, personal and creative entrepreneurship within organisations, and other positive spin-offs.

Before I continue, we need a common understanding of the underlying meaning behind ‘sustainable leadership’. You may be surprised how often sustainability and leadership are discussed in various forums, but with different interpretations of what each term means. When I started interviewing Cor Herkströter (former CEO of Shell), he immediately turned the tables on me: ‘What do you mean by sustainability?’ When I recently joined the board of the CSR Chicks Netherlands network,¹ whose members claim to be specialists in sustainability, we spent all evening discussing what sustainability and CSR mean to each of us.

‘We need to invest now for later.’ Bart Jan Krouwel

Therefore, I do not claim that the definitions used here are absolute; they help to show us a general direction. However abstract, the challenge lies in making sustainability something concrete. In doing so, it’s a question of exploring which aspects you find important or relevant within sustainability and leadership. Ultimately this is based on a personal choice. They evolved for me over time, through my own experiences. In my view, sustainable leadership is about pioneering, about creating a new mindset, lifestyle and way of doing business. Sustainability can only start and be sustained with leadership, on both the personal and business level. Sustainability changes with time, location and personal choices.

Sustainability is a word that most people have never heard of; others have but don’t know what it means (and often don’t dare to ask!), and there are many who confuse it with something different, or only part of sustainability. Sometimes I hear, ‘Sustainability. Isn’t that about recycling cups?’ Many speak of sustainability as a synonym for problems with the environment. A fellow researcher, Liliane van Lier of SARV International, explained to me that even children act with cynicism towards the word ‘sustainability’. ‘A word with so many syllables must be something grown-ups invented.’

Consulting the dictionary helps a little, but only uncovers part of the meaning. Sustainability is defined as ‘the use of natural products and energy in a way that does not harm the environment.’²

What is important, of course, is not the word but that we understand each other and can agree on the underlying meaning or notion. When I dig deeper in my questioning, I find that we are all talking about the same thing. In spite of endless discussions among specialists of what exactly sustainability is, there is a growing consensus among all ages on the underlying principles of sustainability. For many it’s about how we live today and where we are going. This changes every day, so how can one word capture a moving target?

The roots of sustainability

As long as we cannot clearly define or contain sustainability and it changes with time, let’s first look at its roots to get an idea of where it came from.

As early as 1798,Thomas Malthus (a British demographer and economist) warned us in his Essays on the principles of population about the so-called ‘Malthusian ceiling’, where he predicted that economic growth would lag behind population growth, leading to societal misery. In Germany around the same time, the necessity of sustainable forestry was already discussed in the context of avoiding the consequences of uncurbed harvesting.

1950s

In 1952, four thousand people died as a result of breathing in sulfur dioxide from the thick layers of black fog in London. Incidents like this began to occur in heavy industrial areas.

1960s

In the late sixties of the last century, the world was confronted not only with the first man on the moon, but also with the first satellite photos of itself. We began to see the world as a small, fragile, finite entity.

1970s

Our vulnerability became especially apparent in the 1972 Club of Rome report Limits to Growth.³ Dennis Meadows from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed what the world would look like in 2050 if were we to continue the current rate of depletion of natural resources and pollution. The forecasts of Meadows are still topical. (In his newest book, Limits to Growth, The 30-year Update, he foresees a collapse between 2030 and 2050.⁴)

At this time, we were also confronted locally with the numerous signs of environmental degradation due to unbridled economic growth, such as dead fish in rivers like the Rhine, black skies over cities like Birmingham and ‘dead’ lakes in Scandinavia. In 1972, the first international United Nations (UN) Conference on the Environment and Development was held in Stockholm. Leaders from governments from all over the world discussed this growing concern, and an international law was drafted confirming that states may not use their land in such a way as to pollute the environment of other states. Governments then started to take responsibility to draft and enforce national legislation on protection and pollution of the environment.

1980s

We started to look for ways to combine ecology and economy. In 1987, Gro Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway, led the Commission on the Environment and Development, and issued the Brundtland Report Our Common Future. ‘Sustainable development’ was first introduced as a concept and was defined as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

1990s

In the nineties, important sustainability issues such as global warming and the loss of species of flora and fauna were given special attention. At the international UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, conventions on climate change, biodiversity and forestry were negotiated and signed by government representatives. Also Agenda 21, an action programme for the 21st century, was agreed upon whereby sustainable development was to be applied locally, involving different groups such as companies, employees and trade unions, farmers, women and young people, in the implementation of sustainability issues.

In response to the leadership of Maurice Strong (Secretary General of the Rio Summit), the corporate world gradually became involved with sustainability. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which was set up in 1991, was the first platform for business leaders.⁵ Visionary leaders such as Stephan Schmidheiny⁶ took a leading role in engaging other world business leaders to deal with sustainability.

In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was signed as an economic instrument to address climate change by allowing for the compensation of carbon dioxide (CO2) through the trade of emission rights. As a consequence of this protocol (which finally was ratified by enough member states to be enforced in 2004), signatory governments are required to force companies and industry to adapt their production processes to reduce their CO2 emissions or pay heavy fines.

Although the social or human element was already evident in Brundtland’s definition, in 1999, John Elkington, author of Cannibals with Forks, was the first to really link economic, environmental and social interests in sustainability thinking.⁷ He brought these three elements into a business type model called ‘People, Planet, Profit’, otherwise referred to as ‘Triple P’ approach and the ‘Triple Bottom Line’. In corporate practice, this concept is used to show how companies go beyond merely measuring profits.⁸

2000

In 2000 the UN Millennium Development Goals were adopted, whereby states committed themselves to meet goals such as environmental sustainability, global partnership for development, and the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. NGOs and networks adopted the Earth Charter, which includes extensive recommendations regarding sustainability issues.

At the same time, the business world became more actively involved in sustainability. The OECD Guidelines for multinational corporations, adopted in cooperation with companies, trade unions and NGOs, created an extension of responsibility not only for governments but also for companies.⁹ Leading companies initially produced internal social reports. Later they also came out with environmental reports, and later combined them in sustainability reports including all three P’s.¹⁰ It is often termed social audit. Many large companies voluntarily use the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to measure and report their sustainability efforts.

In 2002, the involvement and responsibility of companies was further developed at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Johannesburg, which was meant as a follow up on Rio. There public private partnerships (PPPs) were agreed as a key instrument for dealing with all aspects of sustainable development. Awareness grew that governments cannot do everything; they can learn a lot from companies about effectiveness and innovation, and from NGOs about drive and knowledge to take sustainability forward.

Since June 2004, hundreds of corporations have joined the UN initiative Global Compact, thereby assuming their responsibility towards sustainability.

2005

Recently C.K. Prahalad, Stuart L. Hart¹¹ and others further developed the new thinking on sustainability, adding a fourth P for poverty. Prahalad further shows how poverty can be eradicated via the profit motive by creating commercial opportunities with and by local people.¹² Although the fourth P is not yet generally recognised, with a retreating government and the meagre results of traditional aid, a leading role for multinationals in the Netherlands is starting to grow.

International organisations also expect a more active and leading role by the business community. Governments and business have committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals,¹³ but many companies are just starting to look at ways to achieve these goals. The UN is taking it further and is currently (2005) researching the responsibility of companies regarding human rights.¹⁴

The fact is that Our World Is Getting Smaller and more vulnerable in many ways. Not only do we travel all over the world for business and pleasure more often and cheaply than ever before, people everywhere, including developing countries, are becoming better informed and expect a larger part of the cake. While world leaders talk about reducing poverty and global warming, the rich are still getting richer and the poor poorer. What will the G8¹⁵ cancellation of the debts of developing countries so indebted they can be considered bankrupt,¹⁶ effectively contribute to reducing poverty?

The economic boom in Asia and parts of South America, particularly China, India and Brazil, together with explosive growth of the world population (predicted to be over 9 billion in 2050¹⁷), will certainly shift the balance of economic power and throw things out of balance. Growing interdependence and the pace of change make ‘here is there’ and ‘today is tomorrow’ a reality. A million engineers graduate from universities in China every year.¹⁸ Just think about how tenable and how sustainable our way of life can be once the giant China really awakens and overtakes us.

Although sustainability was initially more about finding a balance between the environment and the economy, the social and human aspect of ‘People, Planet, Profit’ has become more prominent over time. On the one hand, there is a tendency to develop the people aspect further to include the P for poverty, which addresses those who are less fortunate, not only in the Netherlands but the extremely poor in developing countries. On the other hand, sustainability is just beginning to address talent, entrepreneurship and passion of people as a potential source to come up with sustainable opportunities and solutions. Professor Karel Samsom from the University of Nyenrode also supports this thinking; he argues for adding ‘personal passion’¹⁹ to the Triple P definition.

‘Ask yourself: what is the impact of my choices on the world around me.’ Herman Wijffels

From whichever angle you look at sustainability, it’s mostly about consciously weighing the three P’s in every decision we make, personally and in business. This ‘weighing’ entails taking the long-term perspective into account. It does not mean ignoring the short term, because if we don’t survive that, we don’t reach the long term.

Although sustainability is the precondition for further development of our existence over time, nowadays almost everyone is talking about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR is the most recent interpretation of sustainability to be practised by the corporate world. Although it originated in the NGO sector, which mostly uses CSR as an instrument to try to force companies to act responsibly towards people in-and outside their environments, it is now used by corporations as well. Most big companies now have at least a CSR manager. Although the term CSR may be overused – or abused –, its basis lies within sustainability, without which we cannot survive in the long term.

Before I go into explaining what sustainable leadership is, it can be useful to look at what leadership means. Leadership is the art of leading and being followed as defined in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, which sounds as simple as pi, but it actually has a lot more meaning when you look at it more deeply. ‘It is the ability to be a leader or have the qualities a good leader should have. It is a group of leaders who lead an organisation.’ ‘To lead’ has many meanings: ‘To show the way, to connect two things, to go in a particular direction, to cause to believe, to live your life, to be the first or the best, to be in control, to be ahead in a game.’

Sustainable leadership goes far beyond who is a good president or prime minister, a CEO, a manager or a boss. Even though most of the people I interviewed were CEOs and or other sustainability experts in the Netherlands, the focus was much more on the individual behind the job. You don’t have to be a CEO or have a senior position to be a ‘sustainable leader.’²⁰ Anyone can become a sustainable leader; although it’s not always easy to learn, everyone can learn it.

Sustainable leadership is approached in this book as an art, which each individual can develop and apply in many areas of his or her life, at work, in social life and personally. It has to do with taking responsibility over one’s own life and setting an example for others to follow, not to wait for others to lead or to follow. It’s not about ‘what’, but about ‘how to’. Sustainable leadership is an art but can be learned by everyone.

I am aware that sustainability requires a transformation process, which depends on several players each influencing the outcome one way or another. This book does, however, provide a mindset and practical equipment to take along on the journey, to help us to lead in the right direction and to transform obstacles on the way into opportunities. It’s not about following a traditional career path, since it requires a personal journey. At the end of the day, it’s about the leader in each of us.

Chapter 2 Sustainability as a necessity or personal choice

There are countless objective reasons to choose sustainability as a leading or guiding principle, such as strengthening a company’s reputation, while possibly also avoiding a scandal with serious personal and financial consequences, maintaining enough natural resources to continue production, minimising financial and health risk, especially in the long term, and safeguarding some kind of future for our children. But at the end of the day each reason is personal. Why did I choose to see the world from a sustainability perspective? In other words: why is sustainability important to me? I can think of several answers but I am not sure which one is, or was, prevailing.