Is this the new direction for corporate board rooms?

We have all heard the term, the new norm, enough times to give us the shakes. We understand that things are different and that we need to adapt. But adapt how? If the landscape has changed so much how do we best navigate it?

Corporate board rooms around the world will be ringing with such questions. Managers have been playing defense most of this year. Now that their employees are back to work, whether they are working from home or at the office, managers will need to paint a new direction.

Your colleagues need inspiring leadership like never before. They seek clear direction with a concise, data driven analysis of how things have changed on the ground for the industry and for their company. They will hope for a new path forward.

So what’s new?

Well, of course, there is that elephant in the room which changes everything. Coronavirus has affected all our lives. The data, analysis and trends from this year are fundamentally different to anything seen in modern times. The world has altered course.

The pandemic has made us feel insecure and vulnerable. We realise for the first time in a long time that we are truly at risk. Our future might not seem as assured as it felt before. And if the elephant in the room is Covid-19 then the dinosaur in the room is climate change. Fix climate change and we might see fewer pandemics. Fix climate change and we might still be here in a hundred years time.

Climate change is the issue of our time. It will likely affect consumer behaviour more than any other issue. It might prove to be the constant backdrop to our future. The ultimate macro event. And as the Internet has changed society and business over the last 30 years, global warming will do the same over the next 30 years. This time though, there is so much more at stake.

Progressive businesses will want to steal a march and drive change in their business toward this new reality. To an eco change management programme.

This, was the challenge that the Surviving think tank set the Letts Group more than a decade ago. Over the years we have helped them to journey from awareness to analysis to action. Action has ultimately proven quite profound and far reaching. So much so that they developed a third area of business for the group focused on environmental solutions.

Looking back, it is clear that together we have undergone an informal, experimental eco change management process. We started with a simple desire to understand the implications of climate change on the business. Somewhere along the road we collectively decided to become eco-leaders in our sectors and through our products and services. We believed that our customers, employees and partners would share the same concern for societal wellbeing and the protection of the planet.

At the outset we read and watched as much as we could to learn about the climate crisis and to attempt to understand the science. We talked to those steeped in developing the early environmental solutions from a wide spectrum of sources including technology, energy, media, fashion, the arts, agriculture, wildlife, foods, transport, travel and more. It was amazing how much was going on at the grass roots level.

We started to map out a plan for how the business could follow some of the higher impact disciplines we researched so that they could get some early wins and become more eco friendly. Today it has developed into a 10 point plan that a wide range of businesses and eco warriors are in various stages of absorbing and adopting.

The Letts Group has ended up putting ‘eco’ into all of its offerings and business lines. The digital media products are skewed towards environmental issues and trends. The group is on a path to become a leader in environmental arts and has set up a whole new division focused on natural solutions to the climate crisis. We worked together to open a centre of excellence for the business and its partners which practices what we preach. It is an eco-learning centre for the Letts Group, partner companies and other worthwhile organisations.

It has been an amazing journey for the experts at Surviving’s think tank and it has been a pleasure watching the Letts Group and its partners embrace this grand safari into the new world. One that we feel we have traveled just far enough to be able to share.

More recently we have nudged the group to a next point of arrival with its all new, eco-friendly group positioning, website and a strap line ‘a brighter future’ that we think says it all.

In the mean time and in response to our partner companies questions about how to begin an organisational eco journey we have a simple answer – get in touch.

We would be happy to nudge you in the right direction. It has and continues to be the ride of our lives.

It might not be very long before your most valuable customers decide that they only want to buy from an environmentally responsible and environmentally active business. Don’t get left behind.

This article first appeared at the Letts Media publication Surviving.