Brendan May offers some personal thoughts on principles that consultancy firms can deploy when deciding whether or not to take the corporate shilling

I’m sometimes asked what criteria to use when deciding whether or not to work for a particular company. All environmentalists have to strike a delicate balance when deploying what might be termed the “smell test”.

Ironically, a really good smell means there’s often little point in working with a company because its green agenda is second nature – it doesn’t need the help as much as others, and consequently both the intellectual challenge and the sustainability impact of advising it are reduced.

That’s not to say even the most forward-looking companies don’t benefit from fresh eyes and perspectives on the next trends. The most progressive companies are successful precisely because they are always thinking about the next set of improvements they can make to their business model.
 

A bad smell with pleasant overtones is the one I most relish. The business of sustainability advice is most effective and powerful when there is real systemic and value-driven change on the table. I have no difficulty in working with companies that are miles behind where they should be, albeit with some important caveats that I list below.

Go or no-go?

Of course, we all have personal moral reasons for avoiding some companies or sectors. Some people, for instance, refuse to work with tobacco companies. Others, myself included, won’t touch defence firms. For some (not me), energy companies with investments in nuclear, or food companies with GMO divisions are out of the question. Others may have religious (or anti-religious) views that prevent them from engaging with particular clients. All of that must be down to the individual.

And then there is the truly appalling stench. Here are four key principles that guide me when I weigh up these issues:
 

• I will not work for any company whose starting position is to see sustainability simply as a “hygiene factor” with which compliance is commercially expedient but in practice means doing as little as it can get away with. There are simply better things to do with one’s short time on this earth, and even the best advice won’t change a firm or brand such as this.
   
• I will not work for any company that engages in the darker side of public relations, using a range of tactics to undermine the environmental agenda. Such tactics include commissioning bogus science to create confusion around or reduce the potency of environmental concerns where the overwhelming body of research clearly shows there is a problem. The climate deniers’ “thinktanks” are a good example of this. Such groups nearly always have their roots in public relations motives, not scientific ones. A lot of nonsense is currently being spouted by pseudo-academic institutions about the “development benefits” of destroying Indonesian rainforests for palm oil and paper. I won’t play that game and I don’t want to be paid for it.
   
• I am not interested in companies whose public relations and advertising on sustainability issues dramatically overclaim their true performance. Businesses that proactively purport to be green when they are precisely the opposite aren’t ones that would derive any value from anything I would want to say to them. A variant is found in the businesses that “showcase” what may well be sound initiatives to create the impression that they are wholly engaged when in fact it’s a smokescreen. If there is appetite for broad change, fair enough. But if all it does is fill website pages with Our Values or CSR, go somewhere else.
   
• Lastly, it is near impossible to work for companies where the client is a well intentioned small team of people who are really committed to change but are obstructed either in policy or budgetary terms at every turn by their peers in other departments or their superiors. It just never works, and therefore time (and money if there is any) could be better spent doing other things.

Many consultancy firms have yet to define these issues adequately for themselves. Few go beyond bribery and corruption metrics, regulatory compliance or very basic due diligence (if they’re lucky). I think that will change.

The exciting opportunity lies in helping companies go on a very long and often halting journey towards more sustainable business practices. If the journey is carefully navigated, there are huge commercial, communications and marketing opportunities as the values and performance start to radically change.

Brendan May is a contributing editor to Ethical Corporation and founder of the Robertsbridge Group.