On this weblog collection, Tandem World CEO Margaret O’Gorman shares insights from her many years of expertise working with companies to advance nature-positive methods. She’ll discover key developments, spotlight progressive options, and provide views on how firms can transfer from intention to motion.
February 2025
Tandem World is a brand new group centered on combining enterprise and nature for good. Rooted within the legacy of WHC and WEC, two international NGOs that performed pivotal roles within the early days of company sustainability. Collectively they’ve witnessed sustainability evolve from initiative to strategic crucial, transitioning from sporadic efforts to grow to be a elementary facet of company operations.
Throughout a season of a lot disruption on this realm, it’s vital to have perspective on the previous and a transparent worth for the long run iteration of company environmental sustainability. The well timed arrival of Tandem World affords each.
As firms recalibrate their efforts and pivot in response to headwinds, tailwinds and tornadoes, the route for biodiversity loss, local weather change, water high quality and different planetary challenges stay stubbornly unchanged. For a lot of within the occupation, the pushback on company sustainability is demoralizing and miserable. For these with perspective it’s simply additional proof that we’re not a lot following a sublime arc of progress, however a switchback highway up a steep and rugged mountain.
At GreenBiz25 this 12 months, many newly minted sustainability professionals gathered to study, community and search group throughout robust instances. (Seasoned professionals gathered for a similar motive.) A mirrored image repeated in the direction of the tip of the assembly was on how useful this act of collegial assortment was. This repeated sentiment highlighted that for a lot of people, sustainability is not solely a profession path, but additionally a calling.
GreenBiz25 additionally supplied the chance for perspective in one of many inspiring primary stage panels when long-time sustainability skilled, Jill Dumain, a companion at Fractal CSOs, and Patagonia’s former Director of Environmental Technique sat with Kathleen Talbot, Reformation’s CSO, a colleague comparatively newer to the trouble. Jill reminded us of how far we’ve come as she described the trouble to supply natural cotton in a time when faxes have been the principle mode of communication and telephone calls have been prohibitively costly. She advised tales of bodily tracing the provision chain and making a product that we now know as natural cotton which was all however nonexistent again when Patagonia was embarking on its sustainability journey. She advised how Walmart’s embrace of the identical materials was a tipping level in her understanding that sustainability might transfer the needle past a distinct segment attire firm to a behemoth retailer. The space between the primary fax and Walmart’s conversion was a few years. This story, one in all views linking previous and current was pitch excellent for the event and reminds us how far we’ve come.
As Tandem World launches it’s going to carry many years of studying, persevering with its predecessors’ concentrate on influence. Listed below are a few of the issues we’re fascinated about as we deal with the current, replicate on the previous, and kit up for the long run:
Normalize the evolution of commitments.
An organization that makes a sustainability dedication in 2020 in the direction of a 2025 aim may have 5 years extra knowledge and data on the finish of the aim interval than it had in the beginning. If this extra data doesn’t trigger a change in commitments, the aim was flawed to start with. We have to normalize the evolution of company local weather and nature commitments and be at peace with the truth that circumstances, knowledge, science and coverage are all forces that act on company objectives. There’s an embedded reflex in our group to sentence an organization for altering its commitments
Settle for storytelling.
Information doesn’t inform the entire story. Over-weaponization of greenwashing has resulted in a dismissal of storytelling as an impact sustainability communication instrument for stakeholders. If the finance folks need excel spreadsheets and complex formulae, present them. Nonetheless, if stakeholders need tales of remarkable efforts and inspirational outcomes, firms ought to present these as properly. We who search to evaluate ought to be brilliant sufficient to know the distinction between a sum and a narrative.
Perceive firm tradition.
The company world is just not constructed of beige coloured blocks of brutalist concrete that may be considered as a single entity from afar. It’s extra like a pointillist portray the place every dot contributes to the entire image, while being distinctive. Lots of the instruments and roadmaps being marketed to firms in the present day to serve their sustainability wants appear to be providing a ‘one measurement suits all’ method. A legacy flowing by means of Tandem World’s DNA is knowing company tradition and assembly firms the place they’re.
Design implementation into methods.
The space between the C-suite and the positioning of operation is huge in each actual and metaphorical phrases, but many methods are developed seemingly with out this understanding. What we affectionately name the ‘Clay Layer’ – nothing will get by means of it – is the interior strata of features, departments, and tasks that, if not acknowledged, can derail probably the most superbly crafted sustainability methods for nature, water, local weather or social influence. Constructing implementation approaches by understanding folks, insurance policies, processes and operations is the one means methods grow to be actions. A latest problem of Amplify that I visitor edited alongside my colleague, Frank Werner, addressed this problem with some highly effective examples of pushing by means of the clay layer.
Combine for influence.
One of many greatest legacy gadgets coming from WHC and WEC to Tandem World is the significance of integrating methods for higher influence by way of surroundings and society. The S of ESG generally appears to be an afterthought however integrating a human dimension into nature, water and local weather methods can reap advantages for a corporation’s worker engagement, group relations, social license to function and threat discount methods. Since its launch in 2016, WHC’s singular certification program has weighted scoring for societal efforts alongside environmental ones. It has developed and delivered methodologies to offer influence assessments by means of biodiversity and societal lenses and, it has convened firms throughout their fence strains for significant group engagement. A lot of WEC’s focus has been geared in the direction of the start of the provision chain, offering capability constructing for SMSEs in central and south America to develop resilience in small holder agriculture and women-owned companies. These social efforts combine seamlessly with environmental work to double influence and leverage sources. As sustainability budgets tighten, integrating for influence will now not be an distinctive method however an anticipated method.
At the moment, when the confirmed rules of company sustainability are being challenged, when regulatory advances are being weakened, when the environmental and societal issues we search to unravel persist and develop, many could fall into despair. However reasonably than lose hope, we should use our perspective to study from the place we’ve been, and our ardour to leverage that studying to construct the long run we need to attain. The switchback highway we’re on appears to have taken a 180 diploma flip however it’s nonetheless, ever so barely, shifting us up the hill.
