Brendan May reflects on the recent Ethical Corporation responsible business summit in London, and suggests an agenda change for next year

I’ve been attending Ethical Corporation events for several years now. This year’s Responsible Business Summit was the best yet.
 

There is now a bank of corporate excellence that provides case studies aplenty on why sustainability is good for business. Companies are able to move from unveiling bold plans to sharing some of the early success stories of their execution. There is more lively debate and dialogue – companies are no longer scared of challenging the environmental movement on why some of its more extreme positions are untenable if we are to create lasting change.
 

It feels as if the responsible business movement has at last matured – it is no longer the nervous new kid on the block, but a day-to-day must-have model for how business should be done if companies are to survive.
 

But there are major challenges ahead. There is still too little recognition of the narrative that will shape all future business behaviour. There are still the awkward elephants in the room: resource depletion, population growth, biosystem volatility and the need not just to manage supply chain issues but actually revolutionise purchasing to lock in stability and reduce risk.
 

Too many businesses are still focused on one dimensional impact reductions, for instance in water and energy use. They should, rather, focus on adopting a whole systems approach that embraces regional land and water management, calibrates the value of nature’s sustenance of commercial activities, and understands the social premium of more vibrant and energised communities, themselves practising best-in-class environmental sustainability.
 

And all the jargon I’ve just used raises another challenge.
 

It lies at the marketing end of the sustainability spectrum. It is still the case the marketing directors tend to go to marketing conferences, while sustainability or CR directors attend the responsible business summits. Except for awards dinners, when marketing directors appear out of nowhere in the hope of picking up a glass statue they can proudly display in a cabinet in the foyer of the corporate HQ.
 

Consumer change
 

This needs to change. Marketing directors are the people who will ultimately catalyse the consumer behaviour change that is needed to make good the technical innovations of the world’s biggest brands. There is little point in reducing the impact of product manufacturing if consumer use at home remains unsustainable.
 

Marketing directors hold the budgets that sustainability managers can only dream of. At present, sustainability teams have to beg, borrow and steal from the marketing budget. One day, the roles may well be reversed. We need to find a way of bringing marketing directors into the daytime discussions, not just the dinner.
 

If I were writing next year’s summit agenda, I would strip out the single-issue deep-dive sessions (such as responsibility reporting best practice, how to engage stakeholders and the like). I would theme the conference according to global challenges. These might include paying for nature’s services, food security, land efficiency, nutritious healthy living, rural community empowerment and the explosion of emerging market corporate giants.
 

I would ask all speakers to prepare their commercial narrative about just how they plan to address these systemic issues. In an environment where most serious businesses are now some way along the path to impact mitigation and sustainability governance, this new framing would quickly sort out new tiers of leaders and laggards.
 

There might even be some surprises about who is really thinking strategically and who is thinking more about PR than business model adaptation. I would disallow the flag waving of generic sustainability plans and insist that delegates think about their company’s intervention on these whole system issues.
 

I would engage marketing directors in this discussion. Yes, it moves them out of their comfort zone and exposes them to clusters of issues they either find boring or incomprehensible. But the job description for the communications industry is changing, whether they like it or not.
 

Conferences can play a valuable role in bridging the knowledge gaps. They can educate sustainability technicians in the hard realities of branding and consumer marketing, while showing a sector as yet unmoved by planetary survival the tools it needs to function effectively in the future.
 

The 2011 responsible business summit felt as if a mountain top had been reached. To ensure we don’t go downhill from here, we need to adapt our thinking and provide content that will give delegates not just a good profile, but access to the tools and insights that they will require for the future.
 

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