Creating a Movement (Manufacturing)

Creating and sustaining a movement around Sustainability and Carbon Productivity

The Client

A global team within a leading multi-national materials science company.

The Engagement

From its inception in 2015, this client had taken a unique approach to Sustainability, with thetriple bottom line of “People, Planet, Profit” seen by leadership as core to its strategy and success. The client was determined to embed Sustainability amongst its extensive global workforce as a regular, value-adding element of day-to-day work. Innovation Arts’ Collaboration Consulting team supported the Chief Sustainability Officer’s transformation programme with a series of DesignSessions over the next two years.

The Complexity

Early on in our relationship with this client they acknowledged that addressing system-level change could not be delivered solely within the client but required the client to be a leader of that change and bring the industry, their customers, critics and other industries along with them. Working with key partners—from thought leaders to metrics experts—as part of a cross-industry consortium meant creating a transformation programme without a formal structure, and being agile in the face of rapid change. Internally, the global legacy matrix organisation would require significant cultural change.

Design and Delivery

We were engaged specifically to help the core team align on how to embed the client’s sustainability agenda into every element of strategy and objectives, mobilise a wider global team of internal stakeholders and create an extended operating model and ways of working pertinent to all business units and functions globally.

The four phases of work that ran in parallel with consortium development projects were:

Kick off the Sustainability leadership team and set goals for the next year, align on how to operationalize the Sustainability Agenda to help deliver the overall company strategy.
After a series of key stakeholder interviews, we set out the ‘burning platform’ with the extended leadership team:
A Carbon Productivity DesignSession, held concurrently with the above, to define, together with key Consortium stakeholders, a clear and aligned way forward in terms of the carbon Productivity Initiative's overall 2030 vision, mission, objectives and resulting operational programme plan, including barriers and enablers.
Internal Engagement: the expansion of the global vision to a wider stakeholder group was seen as an exciting catalyst for the team to embrace its Sustainability agenda, empower its internal stakeholders, and place Sustainability at the heart of its culture and ways of working. Kick-start this movement with a group of ‘Champions’ who would then play a key role globally in engaging the Functions, Business Units and Regions.

Results

As part of the Carbon Productivity Consortium, we were instrumental in creating a Sustainability community for the client in line with UN compact on sustainable development goals with corporations.
Created and iterated a global Sustainability operating model.
Developed a pilot detailing how a Sustainability strategy could be implemented withins a specific part of the business.
Our DesignSessions were the catalyst for broader engagement and cultural change within the client whereby the strategic pillars of Innovation and Sustainability became a part of the everyday ‘triple bottom line’ value culture.

Deliverables

Scribes, graphics collateral and executive summaries.
Detailed Info Murals that became key parts of the teams’ internal communication of their work.
A toolkit for the Sustainability Champions.
Communications strategy, stakeholder map, and communications package.