Welcome to Sustainability Reimagined. And welcome to our new office, the former girls' school of the Danish Navy located in the old part of Copenhagen. We are excited to have you with us and explore what reimagining sustainability really means. And look at how we as organizations can impact the future. My name is Sheva Rostan. And my name is Christian Omer-Winktoft. And throughout these 75 minutes, I hope that we can bring you some new perspective to make you reflect, provoke you maybe, make you laugh. I take that one back, that would be too much of a promise, but we really hope to inspire you. Inspire you enough to explore new ways of addressing the sustainability challenges that we are facing and reimagine the role of business in society. And we need to reimagine that. Few experts now believe that we are actually within reach of the Paris target of keeping the global warming below 1.5 degrees. So what is it going to be? Looking at the dramatic impact on climate right now, imagine what that is like with a rise of 2, 3 or even 4 degrees. And business as usual is therefore not an option. And just putting a sustainability strategy on top of business as usual is not an option. It's really crucial that we rethink our approach to sustainability. This includes how we create value, how we lead, how we collaborate, and who we decide to serve in the future. It's important to take a step back and address the main challenges that is hindering businesses from operating within the planetary boundaries. So what you're going to meet today is a company that fundamentally is looking and changing on how sustainability is meaningful for them. You will meet a company which is well ahead in the sustainability agenda, and you'll meet someone who's actually born green. We hope that today. We hope that today will inspire you to think about how you reimagining sustainability in your organization. Even better, even more. To do that, we have with us some business and thought leaders. We have Professor Roger Martin, one of the world's leading strategy thinkers. Jacob Stausthal, the CEO of Rio Tinto, the CEO of Rio Tinto, Amy Burick, the Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business Transformation at Nova Zines, and Mette Lykke, the CEO of Too Good To Go. So take a sip of your coffee, lean in, put your reflections and ideas in the chat, and we will make sure, maybe not who we, but the brilliant people that we have with us today, we'll make sure to post papers and articles for you to download throughout the event. So, Kristen. Welcome. Welcome. And let's get started. So, Kristen. So, last time we had a major financial crisis in 2009. Sustainability dropped down in importance in most companies' agenda. So, we were curious, here in 2023, with polycrisis, with all sorts of other problems, what's the take, what's the importance of sustainability on the company's agenda? The good news is 87% of the companies that we ask either strongly agree or agree that even in times of crisis, sustainability is on the top of their agenda. However, we do see a lag between industry leaders and non-leaders. For example, 85% of industry leaders say that they have a clear roadmap in place to achieve their sustainability targets, while only 31% of the non-leaders. While only 31% of the non-leaders say that they have it. 87% of the leaders say that they take sustainability into consideration when making major strategic decisions, while only 38% of the laggers do that. Now, this difference is just widening the general gap in performance even more. So, companies are on the move. Strategies are on the make. But any one of you who has been subject to a strategic change, a redirection, new setting of the course of the ship, you all know it's much easier to write the strategy than to actually implement the strategy. In fact, there's only one third of the strategy. In fact, there's only one third of a chance that a business strategy actually achieves what it says out to do. Poor statistics. But if there was ever an area where you really want to beat that number, that must be on the agenda of sustainable change. So, we asked ourselves, what if we are approaching this wrongly? What if we need to profoundly reimagine why our organizations exist and how we operate to truly become sustainable? And maybe it's not a sustainability strategy that we need. Maybe we are just trying to put a new hat on our old dog. Because we truly believe that instead of a sustainability strategy, we need to have a sustainable business strategy, we need to have a sustainable business strategy. So, let me take you back to the first semester in economics at university. My university. And yes, that was in a different millennium. My business economics professor at the first lecture said, the business of business is business. And business leaders, they are here to maximize profit and ensure shareholder value. But that perspective has destroyed a lot of value for other stakeholders and for community at last. Surely, shareholders deserve a return. After all, they make investments. But there are other stakeholders as well. Customers, suppliers, staff, investors, regulators are all equally important in securing value out of a company. And if we don't, we lose customers. And if we don't, we lose customers. We risk people on the streets and angry mobs. Or that regulators take out the big hammer. And so, what if we redefined strategic choice to be about securing long-term value for all stakeholders? My first summer job was at a candy and ice cream shop. And just behind the counter, there was this quote saying, Kunden har alltid rett. The customer is always right. And it was so many times where I was just thinking, is this really true? I mean, we have all heard this phrase. And it goes way back to the beginning of the 19th centuries. And in recent years, understanding the customer needs and customer centricity have become something of a science. Businesses have been putting more and more focus on understanding the customer needs. And unfortunately, maybe sometimes even manipulated. Asking themselves, I mean, if we just can figure out what the customer really wants without them even being able to articulate it, we might be able to sell more and grow. Now, this perspective has led to a narrow focus on satisfying customer needs and desires without really asking the questions, are the problems found really worthwhile solving? Or if there are bigger and more critical societal problems to be solved beyond just satisfying the customer needs of a segment. Now, for example, when Patagonia said, thank you, but no thank you, to producing their most popular cotton t-shirt line 2011, because of the environmental footprints that came with cotton production back then. So we believe that organizations need to reimagine their purpose by shifting their focus to solving deeply worthwhile problems and maybe refuse to produce whatever the customer wanted. So imagine if your main stakeholder was the planet. What choices would you make differently? And the answer to this question really starts with the core approach. What purpose of your business? What would the purpose of your business? What would the world miss if your company didn't exist tomorrow? And leaders are faced with a range of different decisions. Simple decisions, complex decisions. And the complex decisions typically require careful problem solving. And our go-to there is financial reasoning. How many of you have been exposed to, could you quickly give me a bag of the envelope calculation? Or maybe even asked to build up a sophisticated business case, securing an overview of profits, of cash flows. But what if we looked into a new age where shareholder value wasn't the only, but stakeholder value was what we were interested in? That would require that we started thinking about impact of our carbon footprint, that we calculated impact on biodiversity, that we calculated social impact. So we calculated social impact. Traditionally, we have not had a lot of tools, a lot of data to take these types of decisions to make sustainable choice making. But there is a pathway, there is a call for a new decision paradigm, but it does require three different things. It requires focus, it requires simplicity, and it requires standards. Focus in terms of understanding carefully what is actually material to a company. simplicity, simplicity in terms of simplicity, simplicity in terms of clear rules, and then standards to make sure that we are comparing apples with apples and not apples with oranges. So what if we asked finance never to produce simplistic financial business cases again? One of my favorite movies of all time is Gladiator. An iconic scene from that movie is when Maximus, he leads his army to battle. And before he does that, he says, at my signal, unleash hell. And sometimes that scene and that specific quote reminds me of how business is done today. Looking into today's business strategy, it often is framed as a battlefield. You have rivals among competitors, and you fear new entrants, and you fear new entrants, and when it comes to your value chain, you look one step down, one step up, and it's really just about your bargaining power. Businesses asking themselves the question, so where can we play, and how does this give us a competitive advantage? With the events of the last few years and the planetary crisis that we are in has taught us is that no business or country is an island. This means recognizing that we are in has taught us is an island. This means recognizing that we are all embedded in value networks and that the negative impact of an unsustainable value chain is much greater than the one of one single company. So to truly become sustainable, the whole value chain needs to be sustainable. So we believe that instead of aiming for sustainable competitive advantage, we should aim for sustainable collaborative value creation. And in the same scene in the movie Gladiator Maximus also says, what we do in life echoes in eternity. So we have the opportunity to rewrite the script now, and it must happen now. So let us reimagine sustainability. So this is an invitation to explore a different path to the future. Perhaps not as Gladiator's unleashing hell, but maybe more as Maximus in his older days as a collaborative farmer. After all, we only have one world. Roger Martin is not only a thought leader in the business world, but a true innovator and game changer. His unique approach to strategy has not only revolutionized the way companies operate, but also how leaders see their role in driving positive change. His books, including playing to win and a new way to think are considered classics in the field of strategy and provide valuable insight and practical tools for achieving success. Now I would be standing here the whole day. If I would go through all the positive things and great things that he's done, I just want to mention that he's not only a renowned author, but also a great speaker and advisor who has helped some of the most successful organizations and successful organizations and companies around the world. Throughout the years, we have had the pleasure of working with Roger and I've had some deep conversation about strategy and leadership. And this time about reimagining sustainability and strategy. I've always believed for sustainability that until customers started acting on it, we weren't going to make huge progress. But I think now customers are saying, that's a company I can buy from, that one I will not buy from. And that's going to force a lot of changes. We see many of our clients struggling with integrating sustainability into their strategy. So far, focuses almost entirely on operational issues. From your perspective, do you see the strategic challenge raising completely new strategy questions? I do. I do. I mean, I think when you've got a field that is still relatively new, right, which is sustainability in strategy. I mean, people will struggle at first because it's not something they've always done, right? They've always done a budget and they've always done capital planning. And typically, they've done strategy. And when they say, well, there's this additional thing called sustainability, I think there's often a struggle with, well, how do I do that? And I think what is often the first thing that happens is that they make it a separate thing. So they hire a sustainability person and that person kind of works away at sustainability stuff over on the side. And as long as they don't spend too much money, people just sort of say, okay, we're doing that. Ah, they're issuing a sustainability report and we've got a sustainability cause or something. And I think that's where many companies are. I think as it evolves, I think as it evolves, more companies sort of figure out, you know, just doing that on the side for a little bit of money doesn't really make a huge difference in the world. And if we really want to make a difference, if we want to be a leader, we've got to say, well, the main thing we do is produce this product or this service. How do we do that in a more sustainable way and fundamentally better way for the planet? So from your perspective and listening to you, you kind of almost get the feeling that companies are stuck in a kind of the classical CSR type of world where we do some good, but just business as usual. In your opinion, is there a need to re-imagining what sustainability really means for a strategy? I think it's going to happen where companies are going to tackle their strategy and have sustainability infused into that tackling of strategy. And a bunch of the same rules are going to apply, right? If you want to have a, you know, a big positive effect, you're going to have to make choices that are unique. What special thing are you doing, right? Are you going to be like Patagonia and you're going to take back the clothes and repair jackets and send them back to customers rather than throw that one away and use all the resources to make a new jacket. Now that's special, right? So that's what's going to happen. Fewer are going to be seen as doing something special while lots of folks, their strategy will be, you know, essentially will do the same as everybody else. Is sustainability really forcing us to completely reimagine the purpose of a business and some might not even have the license to play in the future? Yeah. I think it'll be partially how you do things will change more than what value you're trying to provide to customers. It's just how you go about doing that is going to have to change a whole lot. And the classic case would be like, you're right. If you're an energy company, you know, you might be stopping drilling for more hydrocarbons and building more kind of wind turbines. But still, it's not completely changing the nature of the business. You're still supplying energy to customers who need energy. Nike did this move, which was sharing their dirty secrets. I'd be interested in what you think about of that as a strategic move, but perhaps also about should we encourage more companies to come clean and show us our dirty secrets? I'm for transparency. The very first regulations in modern history were called sunshine laws, and they mandated transparency under the theory that the best disinfectant is sunshine. And so I think theoretically, conceptually, that makes a lot of sense to me. I think there's a relatively small downside to governments, that's mandating transparency. You mentioned Patagonia a bit before, which is kind of an icon in many ways. I think they went public very recently saying that their only stakeholder was the planet. Did you see that as the new thing? Or do you see it more as a kind of an outlier, an activist, kind of crazy? I think it's going to be the new thing. You just have to look at the stakeholder equation, not as a random set. There are these, oh, there's the planet, there's custom customers, there's employees, there's the shareholders, there's the shareholders, and there's just each of them are like a separate thing. You've got to ask the question, how do they work in a system? What influences what? And I think Patagonia is saying, oh, you know, our shareholder value is influenced by putting planet number one. And I think it's idiotic shareholders who say that CEO said shareholders, come first, come first, come first, come first, come first, come first, we're here to maximize shareholder value. That's what we're all about. It's an idiot investor who says, oh, I want to invest in that because they really care about me. Smart investors said, do you know their formula that says if we take care of those three elements really well, we'll do well. That's a formula I can bet on. So, Shiva, a lot of interesting points from our talk with Roger, but what stroke you particular? Firstly, one thing that resonates quite well with what we see among many of our clients is that sustainability is just seen as a strategic add-on. A small team working somewhere in the corner, having a leg in each department. And long-term, we are not really setting up the organization for success if we are not integrating it into the core. So, I think that part was really a key takeaway from the whole conversation. And do you see that as part of a legacy if you think about how CSR was kind of a separate entity besides everything else? And do you see that changing in terms of the sustainability agenda moving into the CEO office? How do you see those movements? Well, it is. I mean, now it's from many different perspectives. One of the biggest is that it's a hoaxing of regulations and then policies coming now that is really putting some sunshine on the whole, both environmental and social side of sustainability, which I think is great. But, I mean, you have yourself worked quite a lot with these topics. What is really the benefit of these? And how is companies today? Are they fit for all of their... I will say, I mean, because that point about sunshine laws, that was one of the things for me, at least, that really resonates with some of the conversations we have with companies, right? And I'm really thinking about all the requirements coming out of the Green Deal, the European Commission, CSRD for once, the demand of double-match reality assessments in companies. I think some people will think, I think some people will think, unleash hell, right? But I think it's actually a great help. It's about transparency. It's about helping companies to adjust to reorient their business. Yes. And connecting it to the other part, that the more you integrate it and not have it as a separate agenda, you can make it much, much easier for your people to actually in the operations and making decisions that are in line with the sustainable business strategy. And I think that's so important, right? To those who think that regulation is unleashing hell, I think the right answer is to say it's not. It's a help. It's a gift. It's just hiring the bar for everyone. That's one thing. But it's also about using that information to decision-making. Yes. Not reporting for the reporting's sake, but reporting for making a difference. Exactly. We have some more stuff with Roger. So I'm just going to finish our conversation here. And let's watch the next part of the interview with Roger. Roger. He's going to talk about customers. He's going to talk about the big hammer. And he's going to talk about what leadership actually means. If you look at the latest COP27, the UNEP emissions gap report, it clearly speaks of insufficient action, a lot of eagerness to talk, but perhaps less to do, so to speak. You know, should we require every company to have a net zero part of their business strategy? It might be necessary. It might be necessary. I'm generally not a huge fan of that, if you will, that hammer. I would love to see customers be the key driver, that customers just say, I'm not buying unless you do tax. I mean, obviously, there's going to be, there is for sure a role for government fiat. But I guess I've seen enough government fiat with massively unintended consequences that saying we're going to solve this problem by government fiat is to me the least best solution, typically. Would I rather have government saying to companies, you can't do that thing, or government saying to customers, we will provide you this subsidy for you to insist on this better thing. I'll typically take the second over the first. How can we future-fee corporations to apply new models to address sustainability and continued growth simultaneously? I think it's creating a context where they're rewarded for cleverness on that front, because companies will be clever, like necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. And I think if you create a situation in which it's necessary for companies to be clever, I think they'll get clever. If you don't have to be, right, if it's a lazy industry that doesn't have much competition, where you can make lots of money, by doing the same old, same old, same old, using the same models, nothing particularly good is going to happen. If we take it from a company's perspective and with its employees, how can the assistant model be, maybe first of all, if you can put a few words to it, what does it mean? Sure, sure. And how can it be applied to empower people to actually take decisions wherever they are and make choices in the organization? So what I argue in the book is that the most traditional way of thinking about a big corporation, let's say a corporation with a bunch of businesses and businesses having a bunch of products, is that the corporate level at the top tells the businesses what to do and controls and organizes them. And that goes on all down to the organization. The next level of business, it controls and organizes and audits and the businesses below. And I say it's that model that's gotten us so many breakups, private equity going in and taking a piece out of a company because that doesn't work. The people on top know less about what's happening at what I say, the coal phase, you know, where you're chipping coal at the coal phase. That's the people at the bottom of the company interfacing with customers. And so instead, I think it should be reversed to say, in order for you to win, you need to have the customer pick your product or service against the competitors. I think it's something that a lot of customers are today standing in front of. All customer problems, are they really worthwhile solving if it comes with a negative impact on people and the planet? I would love to hear your perspective on that because some of our customers are fully aware that some of their cash cows, they have negative impacts. So how do you really kill a cash cow? It's hard to kill cash cows. I mean, and it's like when BP way back 20 years ago said, we're going to be beyond petroleum. And then everybody just looked at their capital investment accounts and 95% was still drilling for hydrocarbons and 5% was on renewables. They weren't about to kill that cash cow. And of course, you know, it all ended up in the world. And of course, you know, it's not being mocked as greenwashing, etc. So I think there are going to be really fundamental choices. Regulation had a hard time forcing or just sort of having NGOs saying to companies, you need to be more green. When the customers say, I'm going to stop buying from you, then you've got to figure out a much better way of doing things. So Christian, we just heard Roger saying that he's not a big fan of what he called the hammer, arguing that regulations and policies should not forbid, but more incentivize. What's your reflections on that? As an economist, I sympathize with that idea. I think what we see right now is a lot of companies being on the move, committing to various different tools like the commitments like SPTI and other global commitments. So yes, there is a move. Looking at the results, looking at the results, of course, looking at our pathway to the Paris target, you kind of feel like maybe there's something more that is required here. And the whole incentive maybe works for the commodities that have ownership, but maybe not the ones that do not have ownership. For example, air, water, big land mats, which our whole existence actually depends on. Now, he presses also really the importance of having the customer demand or maybe that being the only thing pushing a company to really make big differences. What's your view on that? No, I think the customers play a key and pivotal role in pushing the agenda also for the companies, right? I think that's very true. At the same time, I think one has to realize that the signals that customers get from market are sometimes very hazy, you mentioned, you know, some of the challenges with pricing in water pollution and so forth, right? And very recently, the Commission put out a survey that basically said that 40% of all the products coming to the market are labeled green, eco, or sustainable, are unsubstantiated, right? So you kind of wonder, how would a company that would a customer actually understand what product he or she is actually buying? Maybe also something about putting all the, it in the hands of the customers, because all suppliers are also customers to another one. But what we were really curious about is how can you be part of the problem and the solution at the same time? And I think our next guest is coming from an industry that fits perfect to that description. You had a talk with the CEO, of Rio Tinto, Jacob Stasholm. What was your expectations for that conversation? Well, I think first of all, to try to understand how do you, in a credible manner, change direction of a super tanker like Rio Tinto? I think the second thing was, how do you make that work amongst all the employees in the organization? And with the legacy that they have as well. But let us have a look at the conversation. Thank you. My own assessment is that Rio Tinto can only be successful if we are aligned with society and rather try to be one step ahead than one step behind. Rio Tinto, we have a big carbon footprint. But on the other hand, we have set very ambitious target. And we are one of the companies who can actually make the biggest difference in terms of progressing on the climate. So Roger Martin speaks about sustainability as a new strategic challenge, much beyond CSR, much beyond reporting. We speak about sustainability being reimagined. How does that resonate with the journey of Rio Tinto? It resonates very well. I really believe that it's a cornerstone of the strategy for Rio Tinto, of the purpose of Rio Tinto. If we don't get that right, we don't have a business. If we get it right, we create competitive advantage and ultimately shareholder value. That's where it starts. And unfortunately, that's where it can end as well. You can go all the way from the invisible hand to heavy regulation, right? And anything in between. I really feel like getting the hammer out to make some change now. What's your view on how do we move from, you know, the goodwill to action? We are one of the companies on Earth that has the biggest impact with most indigenous populations around the world. The problem you have to think about Rio Tinto is very often it takes 10, 20 years from you find something till you start producing. And then you need to produce for the next 50, 60, 70 years. So you can't really afford that things doesn't work out in harmony with society after two years. We took the headlines around the world as part of expanding a mine, destroyed a cultural heritage site. We should never have done that. It was approved by the government. But it's one of the government. But it's one of the things that legally right but morally wrong. Absolutely horrible. My biggest learning was as soon as I was appointed, I went to the site and I met the traditional owners of the land. And my take was that it was a very simple one. Had we just had the right relationship, this would never have happened. And that comes back again to this about societal choices and about sustainability. Had we just had we just listened. Had we built in a win-win, we would never have done what we did. Very simple learning. So I think the trick is to try to hook into what creates the public opinion from different angles and its governments, its local communities and its civil society. And if you get that dialogue right, you're likely to make the right choice. And what are the components of making that dialogue work? We host civil society roundtables. Some are very interested in biodiversity. Some are very interested in transparency. Some are very interested in climate, etc. But you get them all around and you hear the things and you take the feedback and sometimes they're very critical. But that's actually where you really have an opportunity to learn and to correct. How is that sensed out in the office of making that change? When I go to sites and I meet the people who are operating our sites, they are surprisingly well informed. And I must admit, when we set our targets for reducing CO2 emission by 50% by 2030, which is massive for a company like us. And 2030 is like tomorrow because it takes a long time to implement the projects. That really created a lot of work. That really created a lot of engagement amongst the workforce saying, wow, we work for a company who's progressive, who's very serious about that. So the higher we have set the bar, the more engagement we have actually got. I was listening carefully to Roger Martin and he, of course, talks a lot about customers because most companies is only basically mainly driven by customers. But you have to think about ours. I keep on saying it's societal. So it's societal choices. So it's very often local communities, governments who are as much customers as our final customers. But what is happening nowadays, which is really interesting, is that we are selling what we used to call commodities. But in a way, the commodities are decommoditizing. And what do I mean by that? That aluminium is not just aluminium. People want to know how much CO2 was emitted in order to produce this aluminium. Very good example of that. We all like and feel good about buying an electrical vehicle rather than a combustion engine vehicle. But the reality is, you have to drive an EV for six to seven years, assuming that you're only using green electricity in order to just save the CO2 emissions from its manufacturing. Now, if we can deliver materials with less CO2 emissions from its manufacturing. Now, if we can deliver materials with less CO2, we can take those six to seven years to three years or two years or one year. That makes a difference. That's the role of Rio Tento. I do think that Rio Tento today is a different company. We have changed our values. We have changed our purpose statement. We have had the biggest management change in its history. And we are on a significant cultural journey. I don't want to claim success. We're only two years down the road. And we're heading in the right direction. But culture change takes a long time. That was an interesting conversation. I wish I would have been there. Now, Christian, what is the main things that you took away from the conversation with Jacob? I think there are many. One of them is this whole point about how do you change? I mean, this is a company with a history. And Jacob mentions a few of the misdoings they've had. And I'm sure that there are probably other things when you look long back. But that change, how do you credibly make that change? How do you really, really go to your core of the purpose of what you do and make the change? I think that the profoundness is what that challenge really is. That was one thing that really, really struck me. And also the thing about them being in a paradoxical situation with being part, kind of from a perspective, being part of the problem, but also really being part of the solution with the whole energy transformation and the components that is needed for that. I personally found the whole point about doing legally right but morally wrong in relationship to the whole heritage site destruction scandal very interesting. And Jacob did point out that it could have so easily been addressed if they just had taken a few more stakeholder perspectives into the whole equation. Now, what can you do to really make sure that you're not put in a situation like that? I think it's a question of culture. And the one thing that struck me also was this whole point about the higher targets you actually set, the more you actually engage your organization, which I found really, really interesting, right? Because a lot of decisions need to be taken down the organization. But that idea that you stretch it really hard and the organizations feel even more committed to that long drive, which cultural change is going to be. Our biggest design flaw as human beings is that we forget easily and we take things for granted. We forget to appreciate the simple moments. Moments that may seem mundane when they're happening. Moments that are not eventful enough to become memories. Like your first sip of coffee and sunlight in the morning. You know, the quiet sip before your house awakes before you check your agenda and read your emails. We take the truth for granted by forgetting to speak it, leaving it to collect dust along with our good intentions. And I'm not talking about half-truths. Like when we go to job interviews and we say, oh, my biggest weakness is that I'm a perfectionist. Our first date truths. I just think it's wonderful you're so close with your mother. I'm talking about your dirty secret. The hidden truth. The hidden truth. The one that normally doesn't leave the house. The one that walks behind your shadows so no one sees. I recently became a mother. So I worry. A lot. And at night, I lie awake worrying about the future. Last night, I took an online quiz to test my chances of surviving the apocalypse. And the results were great. Apparently, poetry is not a survival skill. Storytelling is not the solution to the crumble of civilized and rhymes and rhymes. And clever puns won't fix the ozone layer or fill hungry bellies. So I shake my husband awake to tell him that we need to learn how to survive in the future. Now, we need to learn how to start a fire with sticks and filter drinking water and basic medical aid. My husband, who doesn't share my sense of urgency, apparently has his most profound moment when he's half awake and half annoyed. Because he looks at me and says, or, we can just do better in the present, we can just do better in the present and goes back to sleep. My dirty truth is that I find it easier to worry about the future than to plant a seed for change. I am 37 years old and I'm just now starting to understand that to reimagine the future, we start by reimagining our values as individuals, as communities, as organizations. The organizations of the future will have to reimagine what success looks like because they will understand that a strategy that benefits you will understand that a strategy that benefits you but harms others is not a sustainable outcome. Your success is not successful if it's harmful. That is simply put, the beating heart of a sustainable future. Because let's be honest, most of us kombucha drinking, yoga loving, sourdough bread baking, late night Netflix binging tree huggers are not apocalypse hero material. Our time to shine is now. Our time to shine is now. And we owe it to each other to champion genuine change by treating our home with the dignity it deserves. One simple act of kindness at a time. So thank you, Sarah May, for that. You reminded me of what I as an economist would have to bring to apocalypse. I'm not sure that would be good. But you also reminded me of that coffee moment. Being a father of five, I know exactly what you mean. And then thanks for calling upon us. The time is now. Now, one of the things that we are deeply occupied with in Implement is impact. That's also a field where Roger Martin has done intense thinking and work. So I invite you to watch Roger for the last time. Do you think that this expanded view on what value creation is for the customer and the sustainability agenda, do you think that's going to deepen the execution trap, so to speak, i.e. make it more difficult? Or do you think it's actually a help to overcome the gap between strategy and execution? The minute you think it's actually a help to overcome the moment. The minute you think of it as execution, you are playing command and control, thinking about yourself before the people who work for you. That's flat out the problem. Here's my strategy. I would like you to execute it. Because you clearly don't have the brains to be a strategist like me and make all the important decisions. You'll do this drab execution and just get on with it. Right? Who wants to actually, if I'm that way, who wants to work for me? Crappy people who actually aren't interested in being thoughtful and making decisions. So I make sure I surround myself with people who aren't very good at anything. Instead, what I want to say is, hey, I think for the corporation, let's say I'm the CEO, I think for the corporation, we've got to accomplish the following sustainability goals. I have no idea, Christian, how are you going to do that in your business. How are you going to do that in your business? I don't. I literally don't. Why? Because you know your business better than I do. And so what you need to come up with is a clever strategy for doing that. And I need all the cleverness you have put at this. And you've got to come back to me and tell me if my strategy is crazy. Because there's nothing you can do to be consistent with my strategy. If you're really talented, you'll want to work for me. Right? Because I'm not treating you like crap by saying, I am the strategist, you execute. I'm treating you essentially as an equal. And I never, ever, ever, ever called it implementing or executing my strategy. Because I didn't feel like insulting my great people. And that's just an insult. And I don't know why. You know, the world seems to think that insulting your people is how you get an organization to work well. And what's that transmission loss that happens between the CEO setting the frame and then giving the freedom down the organization? And then what we often see is a lack of understanding. Once you get down in the organization, a lack of feeling of empowerment. And what's the secret sauce in the organization? You're making it work. Genuineness. Right? So, and thoroughness. Right? So, it's my job, in my view, if I'm the CEO and the two of you run the two businesses, it's my job to say, here's why I want to do the things I want to do. Here are the choices you need to make in your business. I don't know the answer. I just know that you need to make some choices that are consistent with mine. I'll help you if you want. Come talk to me anytime you want about your choice making. But you'll need to report back to me that you've made a set of choices. And you'll have to do the same thing. That's my job. That's my core job. And so there's not going to be transmission kind of error if I take that as my core job. Sometimes, on the other side of the companies that have just set their strategy but have a culture where it's quite hierarchical. We can see that they look up for permission. So, what are the steps, the few first steps that you need to take if you are the latter company to move a bit closer to create a culture where people can really take their own choices. Ban the word execution, ban the word implementation, and spend quality time on what I call choice chartering. It would be, you know, kind of, here's my strategy, right? Here's what I'm trying to accomplish for that to succeed. Here's what you need to accomplish. Here's the outputs you need to produce. And I am open to any way that you get that. And the cleverer you are, the happier I'm going to be. That will free up, empower in kind of magical ways very quickly. Roger stressed the importance of making the strategy everyone's business. And to do that is important to set the organization free. And unleash its potential by setting the direction and trusting that your people will make the right choices. Our next guests come from a company that is on a successful journey of making sustainability everyone's business and established not a sustainability strategy, but a sustainable business strategy. Amy Burek is the executive vice president of strategy and business strategy. business transformation at Novozymes. She's an accomplished leader with a strong background in driving business transformation. And we have the pleasure of her company to unfold how reimagining sustainability can live and breathe within our organization. Thank you. Welcome, Amy. It's really nice to have you here. My pleasure. We just heard both Roger and Jacob pressing the importance of having an ecosystem thinking when designing your business strategy. I would love to hear how you navigated the balance of taking into taking the different stakeholders consideration into perspective when you designed your business strategy at Novozymes. Absolutely. I think fundamentally it's about how do you build all of those stakeholders into the very definition of the purpose of the company, how you frame the strategic questions and choices you want to address, and also how you measure success. So if I take the Novozymes example, our company purpose is to find biological solutions to enable healthier planet and healthier people. By definition, we already start there to incorporate a broader stakeholder thinking. When we embarked on our our most recent strategy in 2021, we gave ourselves the ambition of doubling sales by 2030. But by doing so, we targeted the big, asking ourselves the question of what are the big fundamental challenges society is facing where we can bring biological solutions. And we focused on three. So reducing carbon dioxide emissions, transforming food systems, so helping food producers and farmers produce more with less, and fundamentally enabling healthier lives. So all of the strategic choices. So all of the strategic choices that we made in that strategy came back to those three. And then I come back to say how you measure success. It's deeply ingrained in Novozymes history for the past 20 years. We've evaluated success on the triple bottom line. So it's financial performance, contribution to society, and contribution to the environment and sustainability. All three of those with clear metrics. So it's not good enough to deliver great financial results at the without realizing the commitments and the commitments and the metrics that we've set for ourselves in terms of society and environment. So really baking in all of those different stakeholders into the very definition of what it is as a company we're aspiring to achieve. And how do you see that being influenced by the current Poli crisis? Is that rocking the boat or is it just making you even more determined? It's certainly changed where we invest, but it doesn't rock the fundamentals. I mean, I think businesses and humans, we're all human. When crisis hits, we go back to our core. And I think that's why it is so important that sustainability is fundamentally integrated into the purpose of the company. If it's a side thing, a few people in the organization do on the side, it will get left by the wayside. It's fundamental to our core purpose and strategy. I give you an example. In COVID, people stopped driving. The demand for bioethanol dropped by two-thirds overnight. But we retargeted. Those production facilities to target some of the areas that were growing. People were baking more, cooking more at home. Other parts of the business demand biological solutions. So having that ability to come back to the core and realizing that sustainability isn't an option. It's what we do. And I think that ties also really well to a point that Roger made in terms of making sure to really understand the customer and also something around having the customer demand there. But maybe that's not the full truth. I would love to hear your perspective on the customer demand and the role a company has to play in that whole setting. Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, customers need to pull. But our whole industry, our whole economy is built around fossil fuels. Regulations, subsidies, everything that governs how we do business is regulated in those spaces. So customers can pull, but it's not enough. It really has to be the full ecosystem thinking in terms of how do we actually challenge ourselves to do things in new ways. Customers don't have full visibility of how we manufacture. We try to increase that infrastructure. We try to increase that visibility. But sometimes I think that's where the companies have a responsibility. I think we look at it maybe as even an obligation to challenge ourselves to say we need to find better ways of providing the world with the products that they need that don't necessarily kill the planet at the same time. And that's really where I don't think it's enough just to wait for customer pull. Customers don't have enough visibility. So we have to make sure that regulators, we partner with governments, regulators, suppliers, and our customers to find those solutions. And what's the role that you see regulators playing here? Is it the big hammer? Is it the incentives part? I think it's really, to me, it's about enabling. If I take a very simple example here in Europe, biosolutions are regulated as chemicals. So there is no regulatory pathway that says we can accelerate implementation of greener solutions to replace fossil-based chemicals. That needs to change in order to enable new solutions to come to the world and come to the market. And that's really where, again, we see it's our role to engage, to make sure the world understands that those solutions exist. Customers can't pull what they don't see. So how do we actually make sure we can educate on where the possibilities lie? And then we do rely on regulators to make sure that there is a pathway to bring that to market. That resonates really well with the point that our next guest made, Mette Lykke, the CEO of Too Good To Go. The company aims to reduce food waste, being one of the major environmental challenges. Mette and her 1,100 waste warriors, as they call themselves, has changed the way that people think about and engage with food waste. And has become one of the most successful food waste reduction stories and solutions in Europe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. zero waste. But if we can just all kind of start out by cutting the waste in half, then we've already come a long way. So Amy, Mette Lykke talks a lot about the importance of measuring impact. How do you measure impact at NovoScience? Yeah, we believe very strongly in the need to have very clearly articulated and quantifiable targets to be able to track and measure. We follow SBTI targets and we have sustainability targets for 2025, for 2030 and for 2050. We need to set that vision in order to be able to put the actions in place that will help us to keep true to it. I give an example. We have the objective to have 100 percent renewable energy sources for our manufacturing by 2025. And we're well along the way to get there. But because we've been able to sit at the high level, set those targets and then enable the organization on the ground to find the projects of what that actually means in terms of how do we implement and how do we drive change. And how did you decide on what choices to casket down in the organizations? And can you also put a few words on the leadership capabilities that needs to be in place to make it a reality? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we launched our most recent strategy in 2021. So we're 18 months into the process. And I think what we realized as we rolled it out was that actually putting the strategic choices on paper was really the tip of the iceberg. That really to make it come to life and to drive change, we needed to embed it into the organization. So we actually defined six must win battles. And we said, these are the things that are non-negotiable that have to happen if we want to bring this strategy to life. And one of them was actually succeeding with the strategy. So it was actually defining how do we engage with the organization? How do we build capabilities? How do we train? And how do we communicate in a two-way dialogue with our employees to understand when things are working, when they're not working, so we can adjust course and we don't just continue to push if it's not resonating and if it's not gaining traction and impact. So it really is, I think you ask about leadership qualities. Yes, it's rolling out a strategy, but doing so with humility, with curiosity and with engagement with our employees, with our customers, with our suppliers to be able to adjust the course as we go and stay true to the vision. And we also watched Jakob before and that incredible journey that they're going to be on in Rio Tinto. What would be your best advice to Jakob? making that journey successful. I think to me, it's stay true to the vision. Don't let it waver. I mean, you have an ability to impact. And one thing that he said really resonated with me is he said, the higher you, he set the bar on sustainability. I think he said the more he saw the employee engagement at Rio Tinto. And I would just say, you know, working with Nova Zimes, we are a purpose-led organization. And you see the power that that can unlock when people bring true passion and their full selves into work that I think it pays off. And I think it pays off. And I do think having that larger purpose is a real motivator to be able to drive change. That's a really nice quote to end on. So thank you, Amy, for being here with us and for helping us unfold how a sustainable business strategy can live in an organization. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks. Thank you. I think I said that if you want to have impact, you need to have the scale. And the second thing was integrating sustainability into the core. And that just making the people in the organization's lives so much easier when making decisions in their everyday business. What stuck with you, Christian? I think two things stuck with me. One, just do it. So many of these things you're thinking, let's just get on with it. And the second thing I really liked was the idea of if you have must-win battles, make one of your must-win battles to succeed with your strategy. I loved it when Amy said that. I was just like, well, that is a really perfect must-win battle. With that said, we would really like to thank you for dialing in and unfolding sustainability reimagined. We would also like to thank Roger, Amy, Mette, Jacob, and Sarah for bringing in their different perspectives. And then we want to thank all our brilliant colleagues at Implement Consulting Group for making this possible. Have a fantastic day. Ciao. Have a great day.