The Lagos Business School Sustainability Centre recently organised its annual CEO Forum to review corporate Nigeria’s implementation of sustainability practices. The question was: can we still be talking sustainability at a time when the planet is in chaos, people seem dispensable and profits are dwindling?
Present at the well attended online forum themed ‘Sustainable Business Action for Recovery and Growth: People, Planet and Profit’, were CEOS, Suite Executives and top managers of multinationals, as well as companies in the FMCG, banking, telecoms, oil, agriculture, insurance, pharmaceuticals, public and other sectors of the economy.
Kenneth Amaeshi, a professor, chair in Business and Sustainable Development, University of Edinburgh Business School who delivered the keynote address, opined that the term sustainability was neither positive nor negative despite our penchant for thinking of it only in the positive.
He said what makes the term workable is when it is defined as sustainable development in which case it leaves no room for ambiguity. It is the application of sustainability practices, he said, and that would enable organisations to thrive even under the pandemic and other conditions.
While encouraging CEOS to be supportive of the process in their organisations, he said that sustainability would be better appreciated and easier to implement if organisations stopped merely mouthing the term and instead put it to practice by seeing it as “a business mind-set that captures a sense of connectedness, justice and fairness, innovation, and transparency and accountability”.
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Amaeshi encouraged participants to treat sustainability as a “business philosophy, a mind-set, a culture, and therefore fundamental to your very survival; not an afterthought occasioned by the achievement of other milestones”.
In his contribution tagged ‘ My Sustainability Journey’, Carl Cruz, the CEO of Unilever Nigeria and Ghana was clear that “you cannot decouple business from sustainability”. Expatiating, he said, “you need to have an impact on the communities that you operate in so that you can continue to have a planet to serve while at the same time serving your shareholders”.
Citing his company as an example, he declared that “sustainability is now at the heart of everything that Unilever does”. Revealing that “our mission is to make sustainable living commonplace”, he underlined the importance of purpose in a sustainability driven enterprise, averring that “brands with purpose grow; people with purpose thrive, and companies with purpose last”. In underlining his company’s push in this direction, he informed that “we have brand purpose sessions for our staff and for new joiners to discover what gives them passion and energy”.
However, because sustainability can hardly be done in isolation, the company partners with others like the UNGC as well as other like-minded organisations such as Wecyclers and Growing Business Foundation to enable their pursuits which complement the purpose of Unilever.
Pearl Uzokwe, director, Governance and Sustainability at Sahara Group Limited, who espoused on ‘ Harnessing Partnerships for Sustainable Impact’ was categorical that if we must achieve the SDGS in 2030, partnerships across organisations and sectors must be the norm. She quoted repeatedly that “businesses cannot truly be said to be succeeding in societies that have failed or are failing,” making the point that no one company, no matter how well its bottom line, should consider itself successful until it can link up with others to ensure a scale-up of efforts that leave no one behind.
Pearl, who is on the Board of the Private Sector Advisory Group, urged companies to get rid of competitive self-interest in the pursuit of common bigger goals like the SDGS which transcend the organisation.
The LBS 2020 CEO Forum was moderated by Franklin Ngwu, director, LBS Sustainability Centre, with Enase Okonedo, former dean, Lagos Business School and vice chancellor, Pan Atlantic University, giving the welcome address.
