Insights from Leadership & Sustainability Readings
- Gathering from the input acquired through class discussions and the USLP case study, prioritizing sustainability is a key leadership strategy. Implementing sustainability initiatives among company objectives and goals leads to improving the company’s bottom line. For leaders to effectively roll out a sustainability initiative, they have to incorporate the sustainability strategy into the overall company and product strategy. One way they could do this is by restructuring the executive leadership structure to include new positions to oversee the sustainability strategy(Bartlett, 2016). Also, leaders need to be personally committed to the sustainability strategy. They have to be open in communicating the strategy’s goals and initiatives to all stakeholders concerned.
Analyzing the whole product value chain while developing a sustainability strategy improves the success of the initiatives that will be rolled out. In most cases, a higher percentage of the pollution and waste surrounding the product comes from external parties in its value chain, such as suppliers and consumers. An appropriate sustainability strategy needs to include initiatives that will also educate the suppliers, customers, employees and all involved in the value chain on values and behaviours of improving sustainability. Setting milestones across the entire product, value-chain assists in gauging the success of sustainability initiatives. Also, the milestones offer a clear picture to the employees on how the future could like. Employees become more active in pursuing the new sustainability milestones after achieving previous targets. It gives employees a feeling of a bigger mission as they become motivated, committed and feel a sense of purpose in the vision.
- Applying sustainability strategy in marketing the agency’s products could lead to increasing sales and improving consumer and employee satisfaction. Sustainability projects positively impact society, which would grow the agency’s reputation, serving as an advertising strategy. If the agency rolls out a sustainability strategy that aims to improve the health and livelihoods of those in its product’s value chain, the community becomes connected and recommends the firm’s operations.
As a marketing agency, increasing shareholders’ value is a key focus of the firm; however, implementing a stakeholder-oriented policy will lead to benefiting shareholders as well. An effective stakeholder policy prioritizes the consumers, and a sustainability strategy is one way of achieving the feat as it places consumers’ well-being first as members of the larger society. Through the sustainability projects which drive the agency’s stakeholder-oriented policy, the firm’s perspective of increasing shareholder value and profits broadens.
However, implementing a sustainability strategy comes with its risks to the agency. One of the major risks is surviving the transition. Additional costs in funding upfront investment for setting the sustainability plans rolling is required. The benefits of the sustainability projects could only be realized in the medium-term or long-term. Also, employees might have a negative attitude towards the new changes that come with the strategy. Such an attitude might lead to constraints in internal commitments in implementing the strategy and hence compromising its success. All in all, setting targets for the sustainability strategy will lead to effectively implementing its initiatives and achieving the agency’s objectives.
References
Bartlett, C. (2016, August 24). Unilever’s New Global Strategy: Competing through Sustainability. Harvard Business School, pp. 1-22.