“ESG and sustainability are at the top of my to-do list” are not words I usually hear from my executive and main board clients. Not that they don’t care or don’t understand the issues. They do. It’s just that they’re not top of mind.
I have identified seven points of inflexion which cause stress on the relationships between members of main and executive boards, which can negatively impact decision-making and, therefore, outcomes: new leadership, behaviour matters arising following a board review, rapid growth – especially following funding rounds, change in ownership structure, silo behaviour, and crises.
Pressure to reflect ESG and sustainability developments in decision-making is deemed essential but is down their list of immediate behaviour change items. The language of ESG and sustainability is distancing. Its use needs to deliver an immediate payoff in boardroom relationships. It doesn’t. It’s not user-friendly language. What can boards, GCs and chief sustainability officers do about this impasse? I propose a counter-intuitive remedy: more intimacy – an odd word I know – amongst those involved.
I’m currently facilitating an executive board through a period of significant change. I have completed several cycles of one-to-ones with the board members, followed by plenary sessions. I’m now doing follow-up work with the chief executive, helping them ensure the progress made during those cycles endures. I’m pleased that the chief executive and the board members are happy with my work. They feel they have changed as a group – how they relate with each other, their main board, and other stakeholders.
I’m relieved because it’s my first piece of board work since my remission from lymphoma and a year out for chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. My confidence was low. This success was a personal boost. In addition, my experiences over a year in and out of hospital have changed my values entirely and how I approach my work. I now focus much more than before on facilitating a more profound understanding by board members of each other’s purpose, feelings and personal history as a foundation for behaviour change. It works and worked for them.
Historian, philosopher, and the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Hariri says: “In order to flourish, we still need to ground ourselves in intimate communities”. He’s right. And boards are potentially deeply intimate communities, not that intimacy and community are words that leap to mind in the context of boardroom behaviour. But that doesn’t mean every board meeting needs to be like a scene from Succession nor that fierce cut and thrust be the common denominator of boardroom behaviour. Indeed, the incentives for board members to deepen their understanding and knowledge of their colleagues are manifold.
The incentive for your board to create a sustainable organisation by taking care of the environment and protecting society through good governance (ESG) should be strong. What’s not to like about the word sustainable? Surely, board members care about their decisions’ impact on their children and future generations? In theory, yes. But apart from having to respond to the growing body of ESG regulations, appointing chief sustainability officers – the fastest growing title at work – and thrusting the ESG mandate into the laps of in-house lawyers, boards appear to want to be like St. Augustine – good, but not yet.
When I facilitated an interactive session with over 100 Chief Sustainability Officers at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) earlier this year, their need was clear: a roadmap to influence their boards. When I speak with GCs whose boards and bosses land them with the ESG “mandate”, I find they struggle to engage their board members on the issues.
What if GCs, chief sustainability officers and boards got into the same room to talk, not primarily about ESG and sustainability but their hopes and fears for their jobs, families and lives? About their purpose and how that links with the purpose of the organisation? Surely, these purposes are interdependent?
At a personal level, who but the most narcissistic board member – and I acknowledge they exist – would put their hand up to say that they don’t care about creating a sustainable organisation, about having a healthy environment and a safe society for themselves and future generations and that the route to that is better decision-making, i.e. governance?
If the route to dignity, fulfilment and – even – joy at work for those in the boardroom were to be a declaration of their hopes and fears for themselves and their loved ones, might not ESG and sustainability take care of themselves?
I have launched a programme to facilitate those conversations. Please email me if you want to know more.
Ciaran Fenton 