Entries by Bob Willard

7 Ways to Get Credible and Stay Credible

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credibility in sustainability sector

In The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook, I explain seven leadership practices used by successful change agents. They are all important, but the one that tops them all is “Get Credible; Stay Credible.” Leadership gurus Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner agree. After writing their landmark book, The Leadership Challenge, they wrote Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, and Why People Demand It.

Without credibility, leaders are not trustworthy. Based on my years of leadership experience and hundreds of books and articles by sustainability leaders, here are 7 ways to become, and stay, a credible sustainable champion. Read More

7 Bold Strokes to Avoid Climate Destabilization

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united nations climate change summit

What would we expect governments to commit to at the 21st United Nations climate summit in Paris in December 2015 if they are serious about avoiding climate destabilization? In this blog post, we'll discuss 7 bold strokes they could and should consider.

Let’s suppose they take April’s last-chance-before-it’s-too-late IPCC report seriously. Let’s suppose they act on the Pentagon’s warning that climate change is a bigger threat to national security than terrorism. Read More

5 Fixes for Dangerous Wealth Inequality

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U.S. wealth gap

My last blog was about fixing risky and unsustainable income inequality. Its twin problem is a dangerous wealth chasm between the haves and have-nots. Wealth inequality is related to, but different from, income inequality. Income is what we earn every year; wealth is how much our estate would be worth if we were to die tonight. It’s our net worth, calculated by subtracting our liabilities and debts from our assets. Income inequity is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) issue; the wealth chasm is closely tied to CSR because the super-wealthy are corporate executives.

The ultra-rich are staggeringly wealthy. A recent Oxfam report revealed that the richest 85 people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest half of the world—that is, their $1.8 trillion is equal to the net worth of 3.5 billion people. Further, the wealthiest 1% own $110 trillion, or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world. Read More

4 Fixes for Risky Income Inequality

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inequality

A companion debate to how much employees should be paid (see my last blog) is what the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay should be. The debate usually centers on three questions: what is the ratio now, what should it be, and what steps can be taken to get us closer to what it should be? There may also be a fourth question: how large can the ratio become before the inequity damages economic growth and social cohesion? In this blog, I'll discuss 4 fixes for this risky income inequality.
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Pay Employees at Least a Fair Living Wage

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fair wage

Here is another breakthrough corporate CSR idea; How about paying employees at least a fair living wage? My last blog suggested A Wild and Crazy Corporate CSR Idea: Pay Your Taxes.

At the risk of being overly innovative by simply stating the obvious, I humbly suggest a second breakthrough corporate social responsibility (CSR) program: pay all employees at least a Living Wage. Otherwise, corporations may be setting themselves up for public embarrassment, like the report that went viral last October about how McDonald’s US pays its workers below-poverty-line wages while its “McResource” employee help line encourages them to use food stamps and government assistance to make ends meet. That is, McDonald’s wants the government (a.k.a. tax-paying citizens) to top up their paltry workers’ wages. Awkward. McDonald’s has since discontinued its McResource.

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A Wild and Crazy Corporate CSR Idea: Pay Your Taxes

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tax time

Ahhhh, April. Finally spring is arriving - the time when a young man’s fancy turns to love … and the rest of us think about taxes. Damn. Here's a wild and crazy corporate CSR idea, pay your taxes!

No one enjoys paying taxes. You don’t. I don’t. Companies don’t either. But it’s our civic duty. Without tax revenues, governments cannot provide us with the health, education, safety, security, and infrastructure services that are vital to our well-being in a flourishing society. Taxes are a necessary and a good thing. Corporate taxes are vital.

However, over the past 50 years, the share of tax revenue coming to the federal government from business has collapsed. According to the U.S. Tax Policy Center, corporate taxes represented 32% of U.S. federal government revenues in 1953; 23% in 1966; 12% in 1998; and 9% in 2010. There seems to be trend.

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Honored to Be a “Best for the World” B Corp

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MEDIA ADVISORY, March 19, 2014

B Corp Sustainability Advantage

Today, Sustainability Advantage is honoured to be recognized for creating the most positive overall social and environmental impact, with the release of the third annual ‘B Corp Best for the World’ list by the nonprofit B Lab. The ‘B Corp Best for the World’ list honors 92 businesses worldwide that earned an overall score in the top 10% of all Certified B Corporations on the B Impact Assessment, a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of a company's impact on its workers, community, and the environment.

Sustainability Advantage has received this honor every year since the award began. Bob Willard, sole proprietor of Sustainability Advantage, is a strong supporter a B Corps: “The most exiting aspect of the B Corp movement is it verifies that re-purposed companies can thrive. Our purpose is to create economic, environmental, and social value throughout our value chains, not only today but in a Capitalism 2.0 world. Our sustainable business models work today and are fit for the future.” Read More

3 Reasons to Screen Energy Companies from Rankings

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sustainability champion

Did you notice anything strange about the latest Global 100 rankings and the Climate Counts rankings? The January 2014 Global 100 ranking of the world’s 100 most sustainable large publically traded companies included ten oil and gas companies. The December 2013 Climate Counts rankings of corporations with the most sustainable carbon emissions included five oil and gas companies. What the ...?! There are 3 reasons that inclusion of oil and gas companies in these rankings doesn’t pass the gut check.
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3 Reasons I Love the WEF “Global Risks 2014” Report

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sword of damocles copy

In my last blog, I declared that it was time for sustainability champions to unleash three risk arguments for more proactive action on climate change. Last week, I discovered a goldmine of support for the company-level and society-level risk arguments in the debate about climate destabilization: a new report from the World Economic Forum (WEF), “Global Risks 2014.” There are three reasons that I am excited about this report.
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Unleashing 3 Risk Arguments in the Climate Debate

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environment and risk management

Any good business case for doing something new or different has two components: opportunity and risk. Governments, companies, communities, and people like you and me need to justify why we change: what’s the upside if we do (opportunity), and what’s the downside if we don’t (risk). When it comes to convincing companies to be more sustainable, we’ve done a good job on the opportunity side. We need to be smarter on the risk side. Below are 3 risk arguments in the climate debate.

For twelve years, my focus has been on helping companies to size the benefits (opportunity) of sustainability-oriented strategies. Any company can use the free dashboard and spreadsheets on my website to size its potential bottom-line benefits from aggressive sustainability-related strategies. They will find that if a typical company were to use best-practice sustainability approaches already being used by real companies, it could improve its profit by at least 51 to 81 percent within three to five years. The opportunity side of the business case is robust.
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