The next thrilling installment of my life in corporate sustainability

I’m sure you all remember the cliff hanger I left you with last time? OK, well just in case you forgot my last installment was titled “Is this the death of a career?”

Well, it turns out it was the death of my career in this company. The company is now forging ahead with a nice shiny sustainability report and I’ve been adding a lot of time and effort to produce compelling data and narratives to help make it flow and have some meaning, validity and hopefully some impact. I have to say, the drafts look great, but I would hope so, given the amount of money being thrown at this project. Everyone is very excited to see the release next month.

So, how is this the death of my career you may ask? It turns out I will no longer be part of the sustainability team going forward after the release.

How did this happen? That is a question I cannot answer with any certainty, but I have some ideas. I suspect I’ve fallen victim to the politics of sustainability I talked about in an earlier post. A subject that was taboo and dismissed out of hand 18 months ago became the most urgent agenda point at the board level at the end of last year and since then it’s been a frenetic race to get the company ESG rating off the floor of “Severe Risk” and the board doesn’t like to have someone on calls who can say “I told you”. And it’s quite amazing how keen some very senior people are now clamoring to get their name attached to this hot off the press report.

So, my advice to anyone reading. Watch out for those board room ego’s. They are quite fragile it seems and never underestimate their ability to turn 180 degree’s at the drop of a hat. Perhaps I should have called this installment “jumping on the bandwagon”?