Manuel Sevillano: “Sustainability needs metrics and must be linked to a company’s purpose”

Dirigentesdigital.com published an article by Manuel Sevillano, global director of Reputation and Sustainability at ATREVIA, titled Gestionar la sostenibilidad es hacer las cosas de otra manera, in which he explains how to find a balance between what should be done and what you want to do in terms of managing sustainability in companies.

“The Peruvian music group Ves Tal Vez has a song, Hoy Te Vi Feliz, where a girlfriend criticizes her ex, saying that, while she was looking for a dream, he was looking for a goal. Sustainability is made up of this, of dreams and goals. If we turn sustainability into a mere managerial tool, a means to fulfill objectives; we risk turning it into a bureaucratic instrument, an accountant’s dream. On the other hand, if we only dedicate ourselves to chasing dreams, we run the risk that when we wake up, the dinosaur will still be there, as Monterroso would say, perhaps the mythical dream of storytellers.

Sustainability management involves metrics, objectives, KPIs, compliance, etc., and tales, stories, narratives, and dreams to make alternative approaches possible. I don’t think it’s convenient to dwell on the gap between companies that are dreamers and want to save the world and those that seek to merely make money and fulfill objectives. Eventually, the former ends up taking advantage of our dreams to achieve their goals, and the latter doesn’t survive their boredom.

The law of business is to pursue profit, but not just any old way; companies seek to obtain profit by satisfying human needs. Sustainability gives us the possibility of managing in a distinct way in order to continue meeting present needs without endangering the future generations’ needs, something that has a lot to do with dreams and objectives, of course. Therefore, I do not understand the controversy nor the statements saying facts such as the green taxonomy putting an end to the sustainability fairy tale. Tales and stories, dreams, and objectives must be aligned if we genuinely want to turn sustainability into a new management model, an entirely new way of doing things, and not a green catastrophe. To this end, we should begin to close some gaps.

First, there is a gap between the areas of the company that do things and those that communicate things. Reducing this gap would avoid the temptation to fall into greenwashing practices by those who communicate certain facts. Still, it would also prevent falling into the Velvet Underground effect, a cult musical group that only achieved recognition when it broke up, from those who do things. Placing value on environmental or social impact behaviors to get stakeholder recognition should be equally important to implementing behaviors that reduce emissions or the pay gap. It has to be done, and it has to be told and, if possible, with some grace.

The second gap is the one mentioned earlier between accountants and poets. Auditing accounts has brought undeniable advantages to business management yet turning sustainability into a matter exclusively for auditors and/or certifiers has left verifies, to say the least, dangerous. I think it was Marcel Proust who said that if you do not measure what you want, you will end up wanting what you measure. Sustainability needs metrics, but not only metrics but it must also be linked to a company’s purpose and reason for existence, which goes beyond the recommended calculation of eligibility or the external verification of NFIs. Victoria Camps says that we should not bet on emotions or pure rationality because neither feelings are irrational nor rationality is consolidated without the support of feelings. For the RAE, counting means numbering or computing things, considering them as homogeneous units; but also referring to a true or fabled event.

The third and last point was made years ago by Professor John Elkinton when he spoke of the triple bottom line: the “planet” cannot be understood without people, and neither of these two can be left out of profit. Sustainability must bring a return. ESG investment and financing are welcome at this party, a sustained profit in the balance of the different stakeholders.

A party in which we need dreams and objectives because, although the clock never changes direction, when one pursues dreams and the other chases objectives, things don’t end well at all.”

You can read the full article originally published at DirigensDigital.com.

 

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