Overcoming Challenges in Implementing Sustainability Goals: Critical Decision Points

Sustainability or Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is an active transformational agenda for many organisations. It has more recently become a priority in response to the increasing needs for strategies that mitigate risks and seek responsible ways to conduct profitable operations whilst benefiting current and future generations. However, despite this triage of organisational and global priorities, achieving ESG or sustainability goals is a particularly challenging task, if not seemingly inaccessible for numerous reasons.

Advancing any element of a comprehensive sustainability agenda has interdisciplinary implications. For example, the interconnectedness of people, broad physical components, and the differing perspectives of ESG system implications are infrequently congruent concerning  the causes of and potential solutions to a problem. Also, the scope of sustainability challenges remains unknown and consequently many solutions are vague.

A super wicked problem

Sustainability challenges can be defined as 'super wicked' problems. These problems possess a sense of urgency and lack a centralised authority. Also, policies generally don’t include a scope of the long-term implications of that particular policies actions, and those causing the problems are typically those who also want to solve them. An example of these super wicked ESG problems includes climate and environmental concerns, poverty, healthcare, and education reform. Sustainability solutions thus require a long-range focus which can contradict the available problem-solving perspective that is often based on the limited knowledge and feedback from the people in positions to make the decisions.

Much of the struggles that emerge after identifying an ESG problem, particularly to achieve long-term solutions, are found at the decision-making and implementation phases of the transformation process. Transitioning an old system to a new one, changing operational, leadership or social system processes is met with great opposition. Consequently, cementing these changes presents many challenges.

 Identifying the E,S,G, (and political) systems as complex and entangled systems help to augment the chosen approach. Considering complexity theory as a guiding principle of transformation expects incremental and unpredictable changes along the journey of implementation.

The multidisciplinary stakeholders involved in addressing sustainability agendas, and the ability of each person in the organisation to adapt and respond unpredictably creates a novel environment to activate strategic goals. So why is it frequently such a challenge to make progress in a strategic direction?

 Critical decision points in complex systems

Firstly, transformation within organisations is visible when individuals in the system or organisation decide what changes, new rules, policies, or novel systems are worth keeping and adapting to or what is not. The stress, inconvenience, and chaos experienced by individuals concerning deciding on pursuing the changes, unknowns, and the potential new outcomes can be called a critical decision point. At this point, moving into the unknown must outweigh the appeal of reverting back to the comfortable old ways of doing things. See Figure below.

Figure: Critical decision point for individuals and organisations to decide on adopting new changes or maintaining the old ways

Secondly, at this critical decision point, the workforce and stakeholders impacted by these proposed changes (ESG goals or any complex changes) will decide whether they are worth adopting and keeping. At this turbulent point, if enough people in the organisation decide to adopt the new changes or rules, the system will begin to manifest the changes and innovation emerges. Performance improves once the system works out the kinks and re-learns how to perform together under the new conditions [2]. No system or organisation can simply bound from one state of performance to the next without working through some forms of stress and uncertainty.

Transformation --> Innovation --> Sustainability Goals

However, if the changes are rejected during the critical decision point, the system will revert back to old behaviours and performance will remain for some time and then decline as the organisation's strategic goals are not met [3]. As many leaders know, forcing people to change their behaviours is a short-lived incentive for performance.

Adaptive leadership and sustainability

Finally, in contrast to historic observations of individual's responses to change implementation see [1] in the Figure, there is an expected state of resistance and despair that concludes with a commitment to change and then performance. Transformation and performance in complex systems, see [2] and [3] in the Figure, requires adaptive leadership during these critical decision points to reach strategic goals.

When new rules or changes are applied, the implications of dynamical system characteristics such as uncertainty, communication, and unpredictable behaviours are always active.  At these critical decision points, it is vital for leaders to foresee and embrace this resistance from the organisation so they can guide emergence in the direction of innovation and performance. Thus driving new strategies and agendas such as sustainability.

Particularly with super wicked problems such as sustainability, where the solutions are often vaguely defined and prone to changing, stakeholders need to trust the direction they are being steered in by leaders and the changes they are presented with. Adaptive leaders create safe spaces for organisations to go through the process of stress during times of uncertainty. This style of leadership helps the organisation resist those defensive reflexes to stick with what was known and move forward to embrace the unknown.

References

1.     Sewerin, S., Béland, D., & Cashore, B. (2020). Designing policy for the long term: Agency, policy feedback and policy change. Policy Sciences, 53(2), 243-252.

2. MacIntosh, R., & MacLean, D. (1999). Conditioned emergence: A dissipative structures approach to transformation. Strategic management journal, 20(4), 297-316