I have the pleasure of teaching professionals around the world on issues related to sustainability, and benefit greatly from hearing their conversations, questions, and reflections.  One observation is that sustainability, if you view it as a knowledge domain, is lower in maturity than many other areas of business that have been the subject of discovery, innovation, and refinement for more than a century.  Not only are new challenges and opportunities emerging, but the practices, regulatory boundaries and competitive landscapes are rapidly evolving.

A client recently asked me to teach a strong, foundational sustainability program for all their staff. They want to accelerate their sustainability strategy and asked me to include key international agreements on sustainability and climate change. I pointed out that there have been more than 250 multilateral environmental agreements since 1970 that are still in force, so we needed to discuss how to prioritize the topics relative to their business operations. At a basic level, there are four key agreements related to the UN Global Compact and others such as the 1992 Framework Conventions on climate and biodiversity as well as the Paris Accords and the more recent 2023 Kunming-Montreal biodiversity agreement, that could all be relevant. Beyond that, there are many industry-specific requirements as well as those driven by the geographies where a business operates.  Is it better to spend time on the Paris Accords or the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and the related Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) that draw inspiration from it, but that cover a full range of detailed requirements, including climate change, biodiversity, and human rights. When presenting sustainability information, the question often becomes, how will this knowledge lead to changes in on-the-job behavior?  Will this accelerate change? Does everyone need to know this information?  So even at the level of “awareness,” we need to consider how that knowledge will tie into both strategy and action.

Now it’s worth noting …I would enjoy preparing and teaching a program on all multilateral environmental agreements since the first Earth Day in 1970.  I think that would be fun! However, I acknowledge that only a true sustainability geek may want to attend, and I have yet to find a client who wants that type of depth.  It is generally more important to ask key questions about how a business operates and then link key knowledge to staff roles. For example, you may be a company based in Asia, but if you sell your products in Europe and are going to make product claims about sustainability, then understanding the newer EU Climate Law provisions on greenwashing and labeling may be a high(er) priority. In some instances, companies are required to establish a clear tie-in with a host country’s NDC reporting and commitments. In general, I suggest that clients focus on what I call “working knowledge.” What information does a person need to make better decisions?  Who needs generalized working knowledge and who needs specialized working knowledge?  How does a change in your sustainability strategy affect what people do on the job? How do we expect or need behavior to change?

There are many parallels in recent history where individuals are asked to make decisions about issues where they have limited experience or training.  Since the 1960’s the pace of innovation has been such that senior leaders, often with backgrounds in finance, marketing, or operations, were asked to make investment decisions related to complex technologies that involve commitments of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.  When working in a low maturity knowledge domain, few people will have formal training in these issues, yet they are still tasked with making decisions. The key is to create a working knowledge model that prioritizes information that improves performance, that emphasizes collaborative skills that leverage a diversity of perspective, and that commits to shared learning practices that build heuristics to evolve the knowledge base. I call this model a “C” profile.

Everyone still has a functional role and the need for those skills doesn’t disappear. However, the context within which we apply functional skills changes because climate and sustainability issues change the boundaries of our accountability.  Collaborative credibility becomes more important because of the need for better integration with partners and ecosystems and because leveraging a diversity of perspectives is a key best practice in low maturity knowledge domains. To optimize business capability, it’s necessary to balance all three when developing talent.

If we go back to a simple request, “how do I provide my staff with educational programs that help accelerate our transition to a sustainable business,” we need to walk through a series of questions to establish our new climate and sustainability boundaries.  As we respond to each question, we can describe both the generalized knowledge that constitutes awareness and the specialized knowledge that accrues to certain functional roles or groups. Typical questions include the following.

• • What is your legal status?  Your legal status may obligate you to certain reporting requirements?  Benefit Company status or a commitment to its framework, even if it is not a formal legal status in your country, would be an example.
  • Company size?  Small companies are often subject to different obligations than larger companies.  Are you on the “sell side” or the “buy side” of a global supply chain?  It changes what you need to worry about.
  • Are you publicly listed?  Your listing exchange may have both mandatory and voluntary ESG requirements.  Although there are efforts to harmonize requirements around the world, differences remain.

These initial questions about legal status, listing or company size are often most relevant to general managers and those functional roles tasked with compliance reporting.  However, all staff benefit from an understanding of industry or regional challenges, your voluntary memberships, or partnerships, as well as your product and services, and competitive positioning.

• • Where are your key locations and markets?  Your geographic positioning can establish requirements for your business as detailed in national plans or may require you to meet a range of business practices from labeling transparency to waste management to plastic usage.  You may be required, for example, to analyze and report on emissions streams under the GHG Protocol, to be verified and certified under ISO14064.  Understanding that you have a GHG commitment is generalized knowledge, understanding how to provide verification documentation is highly specialized.
  • What industry do you operate in?  Difficult to decarbonize industries are subject to many requirements in different markets and may obligate you to a carbon allocation scheme and mandatory CO2 quotas. For example, if you are in the airline industry, you may need to know the recent expansion of Sustainability Certification Schemes recently approved by the International Civil Aviation Association (ICAO) or new standards on CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation) eligible fuels or verification issues with those fuels.

Many of the items described above may suggest new compliance requirements.  However, compliance requirements are by their very nature, the same for everyone.  Business strategy requires competitive differentiation.  Helping your team understand how these new requirements expand "boundary conditions" that create new business opportunities is a key part of their education.  How do we operate in this new space?

• • What are your sustainable products and services?  Each product or service may require you to assess the full value chain for carbon emissions or other sustainability issues.  Different products may also be subject to specialized knowledge because of emerging certification schemes or other requirements. Product design may also be tied to your sustainability branding strategy.  It is also likely that your product portfolio is in transition, so it becomes important to communicate your company strategy to migrate from legacy to more sustainable products.
  • What membership organizations does your company belong to?  There are a variety of membership organizations from industry specific to role based that require members to adhere to certain goals or standards.  In some cases, a company may belong to a half-dozen such membership organizations and each may be done for different reasons.  If your company belongs to the World Benchmarking Alliance, the Global Living Wage Alliance, or the Global Sustainable Finance Network, it is helpful to explain to staff “why?” Helping staff understand how such partnerships or memberships add value to the organization becomes important in connecting your “purpose” to what each person does on the job.
  • How does your sustainability strategy or purpose create competitive advantages and unique selling propositions?   This final question is often the most important, even if you have not created clear pathways in terms of how it affects each job.  The tie-in to business purpose is often one of the key opportunities in managing a transition from a legacy to a sustainable business strategy.

Developing a working knowledge model for a publicly listed multinational corporation with multiple business lines operating in dozens of countries will be much different than one for a small or medium enterprise.  However, regardless of organizational design, each person can examine how working knowledge affects their role.

• • What is the necessary foundational knowledge needed to participate as an individual in a sustainable business or a sustainable economy?  How does sustainability change your job or create new career opportunities? Even if your job doesn’t change tomorrow, it’s important for everyone to feel connected to the broader purpose and opportunity.
  • What collaborative processes allow you to maintain and upgrade your knowledge and skills consistent with the rate of knowledge change in your market, industry, or job function?  This is also an important question since the rate of change in a knowledge domain will vary widely across individual functions, markets, and industries. Differential investments in training become a necessary part of building expertise.
  • How does each job participate in broader workflows and organizational capabilities tied to your sustainability strategy?  This connects an individual back to the organizational purpose, competitive advantage and is key to performance improvements.

Over time, standards emerge, and certain aspects of a knowledge domain become more enduring.  When the “knowledge of enduring value” increases, it is a sign of changing knowledge maturity.  Training, at least in terms of generalized working knowledge, becomes easier and less expensive. Companies can become more secure investing in the social rituals and collaborative practices that communicate their purpose, business successes and competitive advantages.  Energy can shift to the competitive value of developing new learning heuristics which distinguish your business.  Sustainability becomes less about experimentation and transition and more about anchoring new mental models that enable ongoing sustainable innovation.