RepMan Reputation Research Center’s theme for 2024 was determined as “Are Sustainability Strategies Consistent with Practices?”. Another event under this theme was held on Monday, May 6, 2024, between 10:00 and 16:00 in the halls of the Delta Marriott Kanyon Levent Hotel.
The meeting, moderated by RepMan Advisory Board Member Dr. Sertaç Doğanay, proceeded as follows:
10:00 Introduction and program schedule information
10:15 General discussion
What are the key problem areas in sustainability strategies?
11:15 General discussion
What could be the “sub-headings” in the problem-solution areas?
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Roundtable discussions
Discussions on problem-solution areas “individually” at seven randomly distributed tables
15:00 Presentation of roundtable outcomes
Three key problem areas – Three key solution proposals
15:45 Final statement
16:00 Closing
We extend our sincere thanks to our 2024 corporate supporters: Allianz Turkey, Kale Group, Panasonic EWT, Türk Traktör, Unilever, Yapı Kredi and Zorlu Holding.
REPMAN BENCHMARK MEETING REPORT
May 6, 2024, Delta Marriott Levent
Istanbul
What sub-topics should be discussed under the question, “What needs to be done to ensure sustainability strategies are consistent with practices?”
Ideas generated under 5 sub-topics
What should the performance criteria be that will convince everyone? How can sustainability be made a part of business goals?
- Organizing a Summit similar to “Change Now” in Turkey, spearheaded by REPMAN and undertaken by the TÜSİAD sub-working group. Sharing success stories at the Summit. Ensuring the active participation of NGOs and structures such as SKD, GC, TGİD, UN, TKYD, TKSD, World Bank, Capital Markets Association, EBRD, professional organizations and chambers of industry in this organization. Conveying the main message that sustainability is a necessity, not a trend, at the event.
- Creating sustainability awareness in local governments, whose importance is increasing day by day with the rising understanding of “social municipalism”. Ensuring that metropolitan municipalities take initiative in this regard. Raising awareness and empowering stakeholders in perception management activities to be carried out in this direction. An organization formed by communication professional organizations in Turkey (such as İDA, TÜHİD, RVD, RD) leading this movement.
- Establishing an index to synchronize performance criteria and standardize them on a sector basis.
How should sustainability be embraced and internalized by a brand? Who should own sustainability within the company? What should be the role of leaders in implementing sustainability?
3 concrete solution proposals:
- The issue should be addressed within the framework of change management
- McKinsey’s 7S model should be adopted as a methodology
- A guide on how to become a traceable and accountable brand should be created
1) What kind of change are we aiming for? The issue should be addressed from a change management perspective within the framework of McKinsey’s 7S model;
- Structure
- Systems
- Strategy
- Skills
- Staff
- Style
- Shared Value: What kind of value proposition?
Impact-focused, accountable and transparent for society, employees and suppliers
2) All employees and stakeholders must come together in a common vision and purpose
1) The organization’s priorities should be determined together with all stakeholders
2) Goals and commitments should be defined
3) An action plan should be created
4) It should be shared with the public and reported transparently
Here, the vision and commitment of top management are essential for leadership
3) Sustainability committees should be established within organizations.
They should report to the CEO, and key function leaders should work together (a matrix structure working with an integrated perspective should be established).
KPIs should be defined.
The organization should be adaptable, learning, and flexible.
4) The brand should take responsibility for how to dispose of the product when its lifespan ends and share this information with its consumers.
How should the public and political sides be more involved in the processes? How should activist companies and their organizations be structured? How should collaborations with NGOs be?
- Existing NGOs should conduct awareness-raising activities in the field of sustainability, independent of political conflicts, within their own sectors and areas of interest. They should also inform stakeholders about existing national and international funds and incentives.
- Efforts should be made to ensure positive discrimination for stakeholders in light of privileges such as carbon exchanges and fund coordination.
- Training experts and conducting awareness campaigns through training and certification programs, primarily online.
How can priority be given to issues within Turkey’s local and current conditions?
- Legislation should be developed in Turkey regarding public green transformation and in the social and governance fields
- Sector and professional associations should move away from lobbying and self-interest and engage in activism for the public good to gain credibility
- The private sector should establish radical collaborations, especially in projects targeting Anatolia
- Good practices should serve as a guide and inspiration; those who implement them should both share them and help others to gain credibility
- A benchmark sharing summit for good and successful measured practices should be organized by teyid.org, TÜHİD
How should the issue of sustainability be instilled in young people?
- Developing a special “Sustainability Literacy” program for young people (in partnership with UN Youth and the public sector, with support from the private sector, academia, NGOs, and the media, and in cooperation with local governments)
- Determining a customized curriculum in addition to the 101 trainings within this scope
- Creating sustainability and ecological living guides
- Implementing scholarship and certificate programs related to sustainability and ecological living
- Training leaders within these programs
Good is the new cool
ADDITIONAL VIEWS
Furthermore, the following question was addressed after the meeting
“The business world is forced to operate with profit-oriented business models. In an environment where the last line of the balance sheet ultimately speaks, sustainability and the discourses under this umbrella can remain very romantic. In light of this reality, what concrete actions related to sustainability can lead us to a paradigm shift in a short time?
Accumulating capital by destroying nature and turning what is produced in the process into waste cannot be a reality.
When we accept this as a reality, flexibility and renewal become impossible. The current profit model is an invalid model because when we look at resource use, we see that countries are not experiencing GDP growth but rather a significant decline. Everything extracted from nature today is transformed into materials that will be useless to us tomorrow because we are implementing the take-make-use-discard model. Accumulating capital by destroying nature and turning what is produced in the process into waste cannot be a reality. Nature doesn’t work this way, and when we set aside the rules we’ve invented ourselves on Planet Earth and look at the rules of the true owner, we see the following as fundamental principles:
- Functionality,
- “Zero” waste,
- The output of every process is the “nourishment” of another process (not garbage or waste),
- As a superior inventor of physics and chemistry, nature does not produce materials that it cannot use or that will harm it – there are 350,000 novel entities created by the human species, chemical or organic materials, and these cannot be transformed,
- Nature makes room for every individual and species, there is no privilege, there is symbiotic and collective life,
- It works through systems, and systems create cycles of abundance, which in turn bring forth life as air, water, and soil.
This equation is incorrect!
The world is not meant for humans to profit. Every living thing has a purpose in life. The purpose of life for bees, insects, ants, and all living and non-living things on Earth as a living organism is to possess and prosper vital resources in a state of vital enthusiasm and movement.
So what is the purpose of life for us humans? To profit and make money? Because this equation is incorrect, its conclusions do not lead us to the correct conclusion.
A paradigm shift is required to enable the transition to sustainability.
Understanding the conditions that create and perpetuate sustainability challenges requires adapting systems thinking to move away from the reductionist and anthropocentric thinking that created them in the first place. Creating favorable conditions for the emergence of sustainability requires a shift to holistic, integrated, and interdisciplinary thinking that challenges assumptions and worldviews heavily reliant on public participation. Systems transformations—interconnected changes in technologies, social practices, business models, regulations, and societal norms—are a planned process designed to fundamentally alter the components and structures that cause the system to behave in its current unsustainable ways. A paradigm shift is required to enable the transition to sustainability.
When we buy shares in a company that produces shoes using environmentally friendly methods, this paradigm changes
I am not comfortable with this statement. Here’s why…
It’s not “Sustainability strategies should be concretized because the business world is profit-oriented,” but rather “Sustainability strategies should be concretized because the business world is profit-oriented.”
When we position the company’s raison d’être and productivity against sustainability, we limit our own boundless horizons and further reinforce the status quo. I am in favor of not downplaying the fact that sustainability is an existential problem, and of shaping our language accordingly.
Sustainability is an inclusive concept. Therefore, one or a few concrete steps won’t change the paradigm; the strongest factor that will trigger and support the paradigm shift we desire is a paradigm shift in investor expectations. In other words, this paradigm changes not by buying shoes produced using environmentally friendly methods, but by buying shares in a company that produces shoes using environmentally friendly methods.
Sustainability is not a part of business goals, it is the goals themselves. It doesn’t need to be concretized. ESG criteria provide us with a framework that ensures this concretization.
For sustainability to be the right and only valid way of doing business, it’s not enough for a brand to simply embrace it. There needs to be a global administration, states that follow global trends, laws that encourage sustainable production, increased support from corporate investors, pressure from individual investors, and demands from customers and employees. When any of these is missing, the water finds its own path, and the company tends to exploit the advantages arising from that gap.
Making it a Performance Metric for CEOs
Points I personally consider important:
Directing resources towards digital and sustainability transformation initiatives.
Highlighting how the eco-digital age will simplify processes, save money, and increase efficiency, ensuring the integration of short-term gains with long-term sustainability.
Clearly explaining to founders, owners, boards of directors, CEOs, and other senior executives that sustainability is the most important and inseparable element of the services and products produced by businesses and institutions.
Making this a very important performance metric for CEOs.
Ensuring that CEOs pass this on to their successors, like a relay race.
Making sustainability a part of the lives and a life philosophy for all employees, from CEOs to staff, of institutions that produce products and services, and for all people and customers who buy the products and services produced by institutions and individuals.
Concrete action for a paradigm shift: Communication. Addressing the “fear of extinction” as a counterpoint to the final line of the balance sheet. Organizing realistic, high-quality, and high-frequency communication campaigns to explain the potential scale of a possible catastrophe to institutions and the public through short documentaries – prepared in collaboration with the state, private sector, and NGOs – focusing on problems still in their early stages.
17 Ambitious Goals Also Offer a Global Roadmap for All Sectors and Companies
I believe that when it comes to concrete action, a problem management approach can be implemented to highlight the fact that companies are now obliged to address this issue in every way. Here, awareness campaigns can be conducted in cooperation with public institutions, thus making companies compelled to implement these goals through public awareness.
In the business world, sustainable economic growth is certainly important for companies. However, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to solve the main problems we face for the future of our planet, are binding on almost all sectors. The 17 interconnected ambitious goals also offer a global roadmap for all sectors and companies.
For the sustainability perspective to go beyond romantic rhetoric, the adoption of the economic, environmental, and social components, which are the fundamental principles of sustainable development, is of great importance. The continuity of resources is also necessary for the continuity of development. The transition to a low-carbon economy requires reporting of environmental and social indicators, and a unified effort around the goal of sustainable development at all levels of society, including governments and civil society organizations. Only a short-term and urgent action plan can bring about this paradigm shift.
2. How should sustainability be embraced and internalized by a brand? Who should own sustainability within the company? What should be the role of leaders in the implementation of sustainability?A leader is needed to coordinate the issue within the company. However, committees should be established with the participation of employees from different departments. And this committee should meet regularly to set goals and update each other.
4. How can priority be given to issues within Turkey’s local and current conditions?Sustainability is romanticized by the business world. I define this as “emotional sustainability“. Being sensitive to the environment, reducing inequalities, etc. are included under this concept. This is already a very important characteristic that sustainability experts should possess. In the new era, we need to talk about “technical sustainability” on the corporate sustainability side. We need leaders who present the problem with data and talk about the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of the impact that will be created when a solution is found. For example, simply saying that the climate crisis is important and that we, as a company, should do something about it is outdated. Instead, we can say that if we optimize our vehicles in our operational processes, we can take 3,000 vehicles out of the field. By doing this, we will achieve a %X reduction in greenhouse gases and a %Y operational saving. Since the financial language is always at the forefront in the business world, this side can be strengthened. And that’s why business model transformation is important.
Sustainability is not contradictory to being profit-oriented
