Future in Sound

Lisen Wirén & Pia Heidenmark Cook: Embedding Sustainability

• Re:Co • Season 1 • Episode 31

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In the latest episode of the Future in Sound podcast we speak to sustainability experts Lisen Wirén and Pia Heidenmark Cook, co-authors of "Embedding Sustainability." Pia is a senior sustainability leader with over 25 years of global industry experience including having served as Chief Sustainability Officer for IKEA. Today she's a non executive director, senior advisor, and a keynote speaker across multiple sectors. Lisen is a sustainable business leader with over 15 years of international industry experience. She's worked with sustainability and product development, supply chain compliance, and held the position of sustainability manager in the retail sector. 

Join us in conversation with these two leading sustainability influencers as we dive deep into the nuances of making sustainability core to how your business operates and drives market value.

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This podcast is brought to you by Re:Co, a tech-powered advisory company helping private market investors pursue sustainability objectives and value creation in tandem. 

Produced by Chris Attaway
Artwork by Harriet Richardson
Music by Cody Martin

[00:00:00] Pia: So I mean, now 2025 is around the corner, but a lot of organizations have 2025 goals or 2030 goals. So if you're doing those on a three year basis, or if you have a one year plan to make sure that you bring sustainability and the kind of top priorities that you have into that, because otherwise it's good to have that long term. But if it's only long term and in the day to day, you don't notice it, or you don't discuss it, then it just becomes slow. You know, it's just a piece of words on a paper rather than an action plan.

[00:00:41] Jenn: Welcome to the Future in Sound podcast. I'm your host, Jenn Wilson. This is a podcast where we discuss people, planet, and profit. In each episode, we'll learn from world leading experts who can help us see the future we want. And our role in it.

This is episode 31, Embedding Sustainability.

Pia Heidenmark Cook is a senior sustainability leader with over 25 years of global industry experience. She's a non executive director, senior advisor, and a keynote speaker across multiple sectors. After having served as Chief Sustainability Officer for many years, Heidenmark Cook has been recognized by multiple outlets as a sustainability leader and influencer.

Lisen Wirén is a senior sustainability leader with over 15 years of international industry experience. She's worked with sustainability and product development, supply chain compliance, and held the position of sustainability manager in the retail sector. Under her leadership, her employer won the 2017 Most Sustainable Retailer Award, and she was nominated for the Sustainability Manager of the Year Award.

Today, she works in social enterprise development. Lisen, Pia, welcome to the future and sound. 

[00:02:13] Lisen: Thank you so much. 

[00:02:14] Pia: Thank you, Jennifer. It's lovely to be here.

Jenn: Now I thought maybe what we could do is start with short introductions. Pia, why don't we start with you? 

Pia: Absolutely. Been in sustainability as, like you said, for a very long time, started out in consultancy, then went into corporate with travel and tourism, then retail. And then three years ago, stepped out of executive and now do boards. Four boards, two senior advisory roles, relatively a lot of speaking engagements, mentoring, and then now also I can say that I'm a co-writer together with Lisen. And then mother of two teenagers and married to a Canadian. 

[00:02:59] Jenn: Okay. Excellent choice on the nationality of your husband. Really good. Yeah. And remind us, what's the title of your new book?

[00:03:07] Pia: Embedding Sustainability. 

[00:03:09] Jenn: Okay, good. And we've got our co-author on the line as well, Lisen, and we'd love to hear a short introduction from you. 

[00:03:15] Lisen: Thank you. So I'm starting on the private side then. So I'm a mother of two as well, two small children. Living in Sweden together with my Dutch husband, who is from the Netherlands. So both Pia and I have international relationships. I have worked in this space for quite some time. And from my studies in global studies, I was probably the only one who went into the private sector while most of my classmates started to work for different NGOs or UN organizations. So I was a bit of a black sheep, but with the belief that it's very interesting and that I believe that you can truly create impact from within as well. So we need resistance from the outside, but there's also a very pragmatic approach to work from within organizations and create impact and change. So that's where I've been the past 15 years, working both with social enterprise development and more with bigger corporates. 

[00:04:14] Jenn: Thank you. And Pia and Lisen, you both met, if I understand correctly, at IKEA, Pia, when you were Chief Sustainability Officer, and Lisen, you were a Senior Manager at Sustainability there. And I just, I'd love to hear a little bit about what inspired you to write this book. 

[00:04:31] Lisen: I would say that there are two angles to this question, actually. So, one is more from an individual perspective, from an outside in, and the other one is more from an organizational perspective, outside in. And if we start with the individual side, both Pia and I had for many years, had people approaching us saying that they would like to work within the space of sustainability. ‘How do you become a CSO?’ or ‘How do you work with sustainability?’ And our answer was always the same. Start where you are and try to create impact from whatever role that you're having right now with the idea that every job should be a sustainability job, regardless of what your function is, what organization you're working in, or even what sector you're in.

So that was our true belief, and that was one of the starting points. The other aspect, which was more from an organizational perspective, was my experience from working in the Netherlands, where I started off in about 2013, working as a sustainability manager, very excited about my new role, and then basically every sustainability related topic ended up on my desk. And that could be, how do you create the right sticker for the waste sorting in the cafeteria to how can we write a good brief for the most sustainable store we're going to develop or a marketing campaign or a waste tender, anything that was slightly sustainability related was immediately directed to me, which was on the one hand, very exciting. I had a very steep learning curve. But I was also working 80 hours a week and trying to run on every ball, trying to solve everything. So of course, in the long run, that was not very sustainable. So at one point I realized that in my organization, there are 5,000 co-workers. where many of them really would like to contribute to this agenda, just not knowing how.

So with that in mind, and with some support from my great matrix manager at that time, Pia, I completely swapped my strategy. So from working 80 hours a week, I started to invest 80 percent of my time in embedding sustainability into the various organization or the various functions. So working closely with HR, with sales, with marketing, and so on, to make it clear for them how they could contribute and create prerequisites for them to do that. So those two aspects was very much weaved into the book. Yeah. 

[00:07:05] Pia: And just to add then two other reasons was also in terms of impact, Lisen and I both reflecting on how can we share our learnings and, and we do it in our day to day, but also through a book, we were hoping to be able to reach more people and share the learnings and insights that we have gathered during these years. And also for me a lot since leaving and working with a lot of different chief sustainability officers in different parts of the world and companies in different maturity levels, the whole kind of how to build resilience. And we actually dedicated a chapter to this in the book, how to kind of. Go through the learnings that Lisen went through and I had similar experience as Lisen, but how do you work with, with, with people and not trying to be an in house consultancy doing everything, but also how do you maintain energy and stamina over years when it really goes up and down because it's fundamentally about change management. So we also wanted to kind of share a bit of easy learning sometimes or sometimes trickier ones, but the kind of aha moments, hopefully giving people reading the book ideas on, ah, okay, I could go about it this way or I'm not alone feeling like this. And then just keep people working on sustainability in companies because we know everyone needs to change.

[00:08:26] Jenn: Got it. I'm really hearing, you know, resilience, increasing resilience, also being inspired to move from the internal consultant to really empowering others. I'm so looking forward to getting into the aha moments. One of the questions that I have before we get to sort of some of the solutions and how to work things out in a, in a positive way I just, I'd love to reflect on our field. Really? You know, we're all working in sustainability. It's a relatively nascent field. And I wonder. As we look across where we are in our industry at the moment, what are some of the mistakes that we're making as sustainability professionals when we look across different organizations?

[00:09:06] Pia: I think we do many like everyone does. I mean, no one is perfect, but I think one is that we often come from an engineering kind of sustainability background, understandably so, and sometimes don't speak the language of the business. So it becomes a bit of a me and them tension where, whereas we really need to work with the organization. So the language, maybe sometimes like many functions, you revert into your acronyms and your jargon. So people don't feel comfortable to lean in and understand. So I think that's one mistake. And then. I don't think it's a mistake. It's more a frustration that many of us sit with than when you, when you work with sustainability, you, you are always working on the outside in, you're kind of always tuned to what's going on in the world, understanding the global context, and also understanding that the clock is ticking and it's serious.

So at least I experienced with my team that people got quite frustrated with like, don't you see how, how big the problems are and we need to do things and we're not fast enough. And then you're sitting with an organization that have their usual top line and bottom line goals. And they're, they're working also 80 hours, but on other things and that tension.

So I think not reflecting enough on how do you bridge that tension. And, and I think Lisen's experience in the Netherlands was this, how do I work with people rather than kind of try to tell people what to do. 

[00:10:38] Lisen: And I think another thing is tying back to what we said before that you, because you have that desire to change and you have so much passion for the topic, you're running on every topic that is coming across.

And I don't know to what extent that is a mistake or not, but if you truly want to have change and avoid that type of work, then embedding it in the business model is really the way forward. And that's, of course, easier said than done, because you need commitment from different parts of the organization.

But once sustainability is truly embedded in the different functions in the business model and so on, you don't need to fight it anymore, because growth goes hand in hand with sustainability. 

[00:11:25] Pia: To build on that, one of the key aspects of the book is around materiality analysis and kind of really understanding, as an organization, but also as a sustainability team, ‘what are your material issues? What is it you really need to drive?’ And also the kind of rule of 80 20, put 80 percent of your effort on the, where the biggest issues are. And, and there is, like Lisen said, there's this tendency of kind of getting overwhelmed and seeing all the issues and wanting to change on everything, but then kind of going back to the framework of this is my organization where I work and where is it that we can make the biggest influence.

And change and focus on that and actually be able to say, you know what, that topic is really important, but we have focused on this because this is where we can do the most. 

[00:12:14] Jenn: It's really interesting listening to you both speak about how to overcome some of the common challenges of sort of, you know, telling rather than, you know, using language that's going to be more unifying. I'm struck by a reminder of actually a business book that I think applies really well to sustainability. We're all about cross pollinating on this podcast and that's what you two are so good at. This idea of if you want to get to 10 X growth, It's actually sometimes not necessarily more energy to get to 10 X growth in terms of revenue versus 2 X, because you actually have to stop and think about how do I can't multiply my time by 10. I could try to get to 1. 5 and burn myself out, but I can't do 10. So I have to do things differently in order to get to that much higher goal. And whether it's revenue increasing or sustainability outcomes, what I'm really hearing about this book and the approach is that it's really changing the game so that you can get to much bigger ambitions.

Pia: Yes, absolutely. 

[00:13:14] Lisen: Yes. So when you're recruiting your sustainability manager or CSO, what works best? Should it come from external having expertise on sustainability and experience around those topics? Or is it more important that you recruit someone who knows the business inside out and have a lot of experience around that? Well, we don't have an answer to that because they're really pros and cons. But when you ask the question, what are the challenges? Then of course, we can, of course, elaborate what are the challenges if you are coming, for example, from internal, what we have seen is when you recruit someone internally, there might be that these people are taking sustainability too lightly, thinking that it's only about the climate aspect.

But when they are really opening up and understanding the complexity and the challenges for sustainability, that's also an aha moment for them. Understanding that you need to incorporate biodiversity, circularity, inclusive employment, and compliance, and so on and so forth. On the other hand, if you recruit someone from externally, as Pia was on to before, they might come in being too eager about changing the system and coming in with all this knowledge, but not understanding what system they are operating in and how to speak the stakeholders language.

So there are challenges on both sides, but of course, there are also pros on both sides. 

[00:14:35] Jenn: And in terms of, you know, really speaking to what's going to resonate with stakeholders, I'm really interested, you know, often, you know, we ask questions around the business case. I'm wondering when you are, you know, presenting sustainability, it could be at IKEA or other organizations.

I know both of you have wide spanning experience. How did you frame the business case? 

[00:14:54] Pia: I think that the business case has evolved over time. Back when I started in 2025 years ago, the business case was much lighter than it is today. And I know people still think it's a light business case in some cases, but then it was very much around compliance risks and potentially cost reduction.

Especially on the energy side, and that has, of course, evolved over time with more and more legislation risk, both in terms of the legal world. But also in terms of people's expectation and with people, I mean, both employees and customers and society at large as a reputation, but then also in terms of on the financial side, it's not only about cost reduction. It's about cost avoidance with future changes and in customer behavior or legislation, but also in terms of getting access to markets that potentially you wouldn't get access to if you don't change or you adapt your product portfolio. So I think there's, there is a broader business case, my learning, and it's a tricky one because on one hand, if you don't talk the language of the business, which is the financial business case, then it's really difficult to make it through. But if you kind of box in sustainability and just having a kind of what's the payback conversation, then you miss a lot around sustainability, which is around building purpose, connecting with the culture and the values of the company and connecting to society, solving problems that are bigger than one single entity, which gives so much more than, yes, this project has this payback.

[00:16:43] Jenn: And I understand that, you know, at IKEA, for example, it was a top priority for employees, like sustainability was, you know, quite high up there in terms of the ranking. Is that right? Right. 

[00:16:53] Pia: Yes. When we did employee surveys, after we had launched a new strategy, the people in plan positive strategy and work with it for a while, so it wasn't, you know, day one, it became top three reasons that number one was always meeting the customer and helping the customer to the second one was working with your colleagues and, kind of, really enjoying working with with your colleagues. And number three was sustainability. So it really became this kind of employer. Or employee branding, but a better way to attract people, but also to retain people. 

[00:17:25] Jenn: And I can see that sort of a simple payback might miss some of these more intangible benefits. 

[00:17:30] Pia: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think awareness today is larger, especially when you need to attract like difficult talent to get like digital, for example, that having, having a company that deals with these issues and seen as part of society and caring about what's going on and not just kind of we're selling product X and we want to make a big profit attracts people in a way that you wouldn't if you're just kind of mainstream corporate. So I think that you start to see it much more today that people might make a choice that I might not get the best pay or maybe be the most exciting project in terms of the most advanced on IT, but I'll work for a company where I'll use my skills to actually create something bigger and better.

[00:18:18] Lisen: Yeah. There's a model that I really like called the level of integration. And here you can look at the different levels of how you integrate sustainability in the organization and look at what, is the approach and what is the mindset of how the organization is adapting this. And the first level is just to look at legal compliance. So that's really doing the minimum. And in Europe, for example, with CSRD, and there is a quite fast pace when it comes to increasing legislation, that's very much taking a risk perspective, just doing the minimum. Then the second level is stakeholder compliance. That's still taking a risk perspective, but taking other views into account.

The third level is more around cost saving, and Pia was onto that a bit before as well. So where can you save cost on materials, more efficient transport, for example that you find benefits. So that's more linked to a growth perspective. 

The fourth level is strategic. So that's when you start to integrate sustainability more into the business and see it as a business opportunity. And that could be, for example, that you see that, yeah, there's customers that are interested in this. You start to develop more sustainable products. You include it in marketing. You start to embed it more and more into the strategy of the business. And the fifth level, which is very interesting, that's, um, their true impact level.

And that's where those that's for businesses that have embedded it in the ‘why’, in the purpose of their organizations. Those businesses are here to really solve the societal challenge. And that's what we would really see a future where more business should really aim for. And where I work now, for example, with social enterprises, those are typically businesses that are founded to solve a challenge that could be on water scarcity or creating more inclusive employment opportunities for vulnerable groups, for example.

So those are the five levels and it's very important to assess the organization that you're in today to see where are we today and where do we want to head towards. 

[00:20:33] Jenn: As you're climbing that ladder, I'm just interested in getting into some examples because you two have lived this for years and years. And so when you're winning people over and trying to sort of on sort of a micro level, a decision where there might be some trade offs, you're assessing where they are on sort of this 5 step ladder. What are some examples where you met some resistance potentially initially, but then you worked with people to win them over to sort of meet joint aims and objectives.

[00:21:05] Lisen: So I think the first thing that is really fundamental is that we are taking a human centered approach to this. So this means that we have a true belief that people want to contribute. They may not have the awareness, the understanding, all the information at hand, but they want to support if they can. So with that, we think it's important to Listen in where they are, understand what they know today and what we could add to make them come on board.

So that's the first step. Yeah. Listening is crucial. Timing is as well crucial because it could be, I think both Pia and I've experienced many times that, you know, we're working really hard to get something going, but there's absolutely no response. Nothing is happening. Well, then maybe. You need to take a couple of steps back and wait, and then there might be a momentum just a few months down the line, and that's where you go all in.

So it's not to lose hope that nothing is happening because change management and stakeholder management bringing people on board takes time. And yeah, the resistance is not necessarily unwillingness to change. It's because people are part of the system and the reward mechanism are potentially not there. They're just operating in other structures. 

[00:22:24] Pia: And just to add on the listening, to really reflect on what are the KPIs and how are the people that you're kind of working with, how are they measured, uh, and seeing us doing their job and being successful and understanding how can sustainability help that.

Sometimes there is a conflict and you kind of add workload or you need to change routines, but often it's just a mindset that you need to just reflect on like energy efficiency. If you're in real estate, you want to save cost per square meter as well. So there are also quite a lot of examples where they go hand in hand, but sometimes it doesn't.

And then you, at least what I experienced was you really need to have the case by case examples, but you also need to have a direction as a company. So when it's been decided that this is how we will do things, this is what we want to achieve. So it's more a matter of how do we get there in the smartest way as a company or as an organization, rather than on a single by single case, you need to build your business case. That's much harder. You still have to build the business case, of course. But there's that kind of underlying understanding among the whole organization that we've decided that this is what we want to do. We are just finding out the how, how to do it in the smartest way.

[00:23:53] Jenn: Hey, it's Jenn. I just wanted to take a quick moment to let you know a bit about Re:Co and what we do. We're a tech enabled advisory firm that helps private market investors and companies measure sustainability metrics using our software platform. We also help you to set targets and focus your efforts on sustainability areas that really matter for your business. And finally, we help clients to translate all of this work into your core value creation strategy or your business model. Check us out at Re.co.com to get in touch. All right, now back to our conversation.

One of the things that I've heard both of you speak to is when it comes to some of the more long term goals as well, there's a specific way of communicating longer term goals that can inspire action. And I wondered if you could share with us, you know, your experience and in communicating the long term goals.

[00:24:50] Pia: The key with long term is that it gives that kind of guiding star and then it helps the organization to feel like this is where we're heading towards, but you need to break it down. So I think the key is the action to get people to feel like we are actually doing it and I'm noticing it in my day to day.

Jenn: Lisen, do you have any views on this? 

[00:25:09] Lisen: Yeah. And I think even, even breaking it down to team or unit goals or even individual goals. I know that we were working on food waste, for example. And there we broke it down to really where every individual could go and weigh the food waste from the restaurant. And I think making that visual every day to see during the hours that I worked, for example, you could see how much waste it was. And then day by day through new routines, new procedures that decreased over time. And I know that that was very, very motivating for the co-workers to see how they could contribute to lowering the food waste, meaning the climate footprint, but also saving costs at the same time.

[00:25:53] Jenn: It really strikes me that, you know, some of the examples here, speaking of translation, some of the examples being provided are very much business best practice. So I remember taking a course at Stanford where it was all about, it was for CFOs, and it was all about, you know, actually, for those of you who think that coming into an organization, it's really frustrating to meet resistance. Well, have you ever thought about the fact that if you've been working as a controller for 20 years. And it's always worked the way you've done it, that you actually, that the onus is on the person who's coming into the organization to provide compelling evidence that a different way is going to be better because it's always worked in the past and it struck strikes me that, you know, sort of this whole point around, let's make sure that we're speaking people's languages, let's understand some of the history, the backdrop, and then also breaking things down into long term goals and to sort of the, the smaller actions and having great KPIs. This is best practice for any strategic imperative, isn't it? 

[00:26:54] Pia: Yes, absolutely. I think that's where we're always trying to go back to that. Yes, sustainability is about science and you know, we have the planetary boundaries. There's a lot to reflect on and understand human rights. So of course, there's a science to it.

But it is fundamentally about change management, and it is fundamentally about understanding how to translate what you want to achieve into business procedures, business actions, like Lisen said, job descriptions, day to day tasks, and also in terms of incentive schemes. Is the change that you start to do being noticed by your managers so that you get that kind of feedback loop.

So it's a fundamentally yes about, you know, managing your business in a smart way because you've decided we want to get there. 

[00:27:43] Lisen: Exactly. As a leader, you need to make sustainability the easy choice, right? So we had a very, very simple, stupid example from the Netherlands where, where we wanted coworkers to sort the waste from the store. And there in the beginning, we had the residual waste, the general waste closest to the entry. And of course, if you're stressed and you're on schedule all the time, you run there and you drop whatever you have there and you get back to work. That's not what we wanted. So we wanted to sort out the cardboard, the glass, the plastic and so on.

So what we did was to put the residual waste furthest down the line, and then we put the other sorting fractions closest. Making it easy for the co-workers to take out the cardboard, the plastic and so on. And that was revolutionary, such a simple thing. Suddenly co-workers started to sort and the sorting rate went up and we could both improve the sustainability index as well as reducing the cost because residual waste is a cost stream for the business.

Very simple, but it really illustrates the fact that you need to make it simple. And when it's simple, of course they will, everyone would like to contribute. 

[00:28:53] Pia: Just to add two things, one is the nudging, what Lisen talked about now with the food waste, and the other one is storytelling and kind of interpreting.

So, I have a case from one of the stores where it was not a sustainability person, but just one of the store managers, and she was talking to the logistics team, the ones unpacking the goods in the morning, and they were like, I don't see how sustainability relates to me. And she was just like, but you're driving your forklift truck every morning. And if you choose to drive it in this way, you will emit a lot if you choose to drive it this way, you will reduce and that will actually impact our figures for fuel usage in the store. So it was just kind of taking something big and fluffy that they felt like, okay, that's for the corporate office. It has nothing to do with me. I drive a forklift truck to just translating what they did in a day to day into this is how you contribute to that big goal for the store. 

[00:29:52] Jenn: And speaking of, you know, communication and storytelling, if you're working toward a long term goal, and it's like decades in the making, how do you keep the energy up within the team, 

[00:30:02] Pia: Celebrate the successes, constantly reminding people of virtual breaking down that big goal, because it's impossible to kind of keep energy up for something that's 10, 15, 20 years away.

So breaking it down and then celebrating what you have achieved, making it visible what you have achieved. And it's, sometimes it's not even achieved in kind of deliverables, like you know, we got energy efficiency up, or we reduced the climate goal, climate emissions, or, you know, we had less cases of human rights, or we implemented the code of conduct for the supply chain and more suppliers are adhering to it.

So it can be concrete, actual things, but sometimes it's also just a matter of, you know, what's the conversation in the organization? Can we, can we talk about this topic today? Whereas two years ago it was a non topic. We were, you know, it was not a topic to be discussed. So it's just that kind of common knowledge in the team. Are we making progress in terms of the topics we can push and discuss and move forward? 

[00:31:13] Jenn: And Pia, on that, is there an example that you can share with the audience on, you know, looking back and being able to communicate effectively or here are some things that we can do now that we couldn't in the past.

Pia: Yeah. I mean, many examples. And of course, sometimes it's just the maturity of the organization that has led to it can be technical solutions outside of the company that makes it easier, or it's, you've kind of created a lot of internal proof points or something that felt impossible kind of through time has shown it's not impossible for one of our examples is when it comes to home delivery. Where originally, you know, if I take IKEA where I worked the longest, IKEA's model was very much big blue boxes on the potato field and people had to have their own car to get there. And that was extremely fitting with the time of the fifties and sixties when people started to have their car and kind of weekends off.

So kind of, you know, Completely fit with where people were at that time. And then today with e-commerce, especially after COVID, people buying online, they don't want to sit in, you know, going to big shopping centers to the same extent as they used to then discussing. And then we started to see home deliveries going up as people were buying online.

So then having a conversation on how do we make these home deliveries zero emission in five years. Earlier, that conversation was difficult because we were not doing so much home delivery because the idea of the business model was to go to the store. So then sustainability and the business model went more hand in hand because of changes in how products were sold.

And that was difficult to foresee. I mean, no one foresaw, I mean, scientists foresaw COVID and we knew there would be a pandemic, but to the extent and the change that meant to business models, I think it was difficult to foresee. So then, and again, like Lisen said, it's about timing. So the timing was right.

During COVID, after COVID, to start to push topics that were not easy before. And I think sometimes to just take a step back and reflect on that and remind people that you know what, we could not discuss this to the same extent before. And now we can and celebrate that things are moving in the right direction.

[00:33:41] Lisen: And I also think that one thing is the strategic plans. Right. That comes from management and so on. Another thing is culture. So how you build a culture for sustainability or that is serving sustainability. And that's, of course, also a long term work. But what I think is important to do while you work on these strategic plans, you start developing a culture that breeds sustainability. And when having that, teams and individuals within the organization will start to take initiatives on their own, so they will start to think, well, how can I contribute through my function, right? How can I engage with my co-workers? Can we do car sharing? Can we do things that stimulate as teams or can we build partnerships with others? Can we find different circular solutions and so on. And actually we are quite happy and proud to have Ryan Gellert, the CEO of Patagonia to write our forward. And he's talking very much about how the culture of Patagonia has shaped their sustainability ambitions. So that's another way of keeping moving, even when you have long term goals.

[00:34:53] Pia: I just want to say again, going back to that sustainability is not different than anything else when it comes to leadership and management and change management. It's that kind of what we saw with COVID that when things were closed down, when you have an organization where culture and values and employee empowerment is key, then people find their way, they find their way of solving problems and the same with sustainability that once you get to a point where it's embedded, people feel that personal responsibility. I'm not going to sit and wait for Lisen and Pia to tell me what to do. I kind of know where we want to get to, so I'm going to help to find my way. 

[00:35:34] Jenn: So a lot of listeners are going to be thinking about these different steps on the ladder of maturity towards embedding sustainability, and they're going to be wanting to say, say, they're a private equity investor, they're going to be thinking, well, are the portfolio companies in our portfolio at level 1 or level 5, or maybe if they're an executive for a company, they're going to be thinking about, okay, how do I start to think about this? So. I'm wondering Lisen or Pia, if you wouldn't mind just sharing a bit more of a description around the different levels and maybe how to diagnose, you know, where we stand in a particular organization.

[00:36:11] Pia: Yeah, I think the challenge with sustainability sometimes is that you need to be honest and open and self reflective. And sometimes that is difficult. I would say the starting point is, I'll take it from the strategic perspective and kind of the C suite, but you need to have the conversation on the board level and on the management team level, reflecting on these other, let's say here and now, if you haven't done a lot, these are the external pressures. There's a lot of legislation. There's a lot of, kind of stakeholders and Joe's asking us to do X, Y, and Z, where are we on that? Are we taking more risk management or are we taking more of a hide and seek? Like, let's hope no one notices what we're doing, or do we have. a genuine, this is what we want to do more of, but maybe we haven't because we didn't know.

So there is that kind of technical, more kind of scientific evaluation of what's our footprint, where are we as an organization? You know, are we, I mean, there's so many KPIs and benchmarks out there, but if you just look at some, let's say five KPIs, are we way out there, like using way more energy per square meter than anyone else in our sector?

Or are we actually quite okay? So it's those kind of hands on, ‘How are we doing?’ Uh, then there is the more subtle, ‘How are we doing?’ in terms of mindset, culture values? Who are we and how do we want to lead our organization? And sometimes that's trickier because you need to really self reflect as a management team.

Where do we, where are we? Are we more risk minimizing? Seeing this as a kind of thought that we hope will go away, or are we genuinely concerned and we want our company to be one of the leaders. So, I think you need to do both those 2 kind of assessments. And then if you are realizing that maybe. You maybe are at level four or five already, but you haven't created the structure and the systems to really get you to scale. Like you were talking about Jennifer with, you know, by X2 or 10X, have we put in the systems so we can actually take this to a new level. So it can be on so many different levels, but I would say doing an assessment and daring to be vulnerable and self reflective as a board and as a management team on where are you on this journey?

[00:38:47] Lisen: And I think if we look at this, you can see that it differs very much depending on what market that you're in. So if you're in Latin America or versus in Asia or Europe, like we talked about before in Europe, where we have now quite fast paced increasing legislation. Well, then we see that many organizations are opening up their eyes and seeing that they need to change quicker.

We also, of course, have different sectors. Where the customer demands have been maybe higher where customers are demanding sustainability or transparency, well then. You see that organizations are adapting to that. And then, of course, we have the pioneer social enterprises and others that are really purpose driven from the start.

So, I think what we have seen, and I think Pia as well, that there is definitely a movement towards embedding it, but we still see many, many organizations and sectors that are still on the minimum, really, risk taking legal compliance. 

[00:39:50] Jenn: It's interesting. You were speaking to Patagonia. Congratulations, by the way, for, you know, an executive from Patagonia speaking to your book.

That's massive. I guess one of the questions that I have on, I guess they would be level 5, um, if you are new to sustainability and you're trying to really assess, okay, well, what makes a Patagonia that different? From some of its competitors, all of these other competitors also have a purpose statement on their website. They have metrics, they release a sustainability report, you know, if you're really diagnosing a company like Patagonia and sort of saying, okay, this is why, you know, they're leading on embedding, you know, what are some of the areas that you look at? 

[00:40:37] Pia: There's, there's so many, I mean, there's so many analysis companies that are, you know, rating agencies, and I'm sure that they have fantastic AI methodology and the rest of it, but sometimes you need to be on the inside because you feel it in the walls and it's almost impossible to feel it from the outside.

So yeah, on the outside of it, it might look like you're ticking all the same boxes. And I mean, to be honest, a lot of companies are doing a lot of the same things, but it is that kind of, is it really in the culture? Is it in the values? Is it in how, how they talk about things? Even when no one is listening, when you don't have to, it's just kind of expected or it's part of.

So I think there is a lot of, as when you come into a company, kind of start to feel it in, in how you hold the conversation about it. So that's one part. And the other one would be if I take, I really don't want to analyze Patagonia because I don't know them that well, but what I see from, from the outside and why we reached out was they also dare to speak up and they dare to do things that are not just in, in the value chain of their company, because a lot of companies, especially in the, in the, in the day and age we're in right now, that are kind of hiding a little bit and detracting from And, and just kind of caring about their own four walls, and we know with sustainability that it's so much more about scope three, if we talk climate, but also kind of making, creating a change that's bigger than yourself and Patagonia with some others dare to do that, dare to make statements, dare to fight for what they believe is right. And you can get attacked because, you know, like, I have so many examples of companies maybe fighting for vulnerable groups, but then they would have a non vulnerable group saying you are discriminating against me. So then you kind of get a lawsuit depending on where you are in the world, because you're trying to do something good.

So you can never please everyone. I think that's the learning in such a polarized society we're in right now. You can't please everyone. And that's why it's so important to go back to your values, your purpose, and really reflect on what's right for us. And if it's right for us, Then we can also answer those who are against us, because we've done this, because You know, you are your company, you have the right if you are within the law, uh, and you're not abusing people, you have the right to kind of do what you think is right.

Uh, and I think there are companies that do that. You can't kind of just check tick box exercises. You need to really reflect and have a conversation with people and listen to who are they and what, why do they do it. 

[00:43:23] Jenn: It strikes me that in your answer, Pia, that there's an element of authenticity that we can all recognize maybe at an individual level when what we say matches our actions and what we choose to raise. That's a, that's a really interesting point. Lisen, I wonder if you had any additional comments on this particular topic? 

[00:43:45] Lisen: Yeah. So I think actually, you can definitely see it with more nuanced eyes, but I also think that ultimately it is about looking whether growth goes hand in hand with impact. So, for example, going back to social enterprises or impact enterprises that have impact as their main business model.

For example, we have a social enterprise in Mexico called Isla Urbana. And they are really there to offer clean, affordable drinking water to people with low income. Or we have another one I did in the Netherlands. They are there to solve and work with textile waste while they employ people with a distance to the labor market.

So these are just two examples of businesses that are there to solve a societal challenge. And while they grow, they create more impact. So that would be really the ultimate goal. 

[00:44:44] Jenn: That alignment between the commercial and the impact and the deeper purpose, one of the ways I've heard it sort of framed as you have the operational sustainability when we're creating our product, you know, what's the sustainability? Obviously, Pia, to your point on material factors, you know, what's the sustainability of your operations, but then for your core business model, there are sort of a host of different strategic questions to ask, and the more you can sort of steer the core strategy toward sustainability, then the operational and the impact or the business model start to really work together hand in hand.

[00:45:21] Pia: And that's why, you know, companies are in so many different levels because companies are so different. It's, one thing when you start with a white sheet of paper today or 10 years ago with the kind of social dimension in mind from the beginning. And then we sit with a lot of companies that started when very little of this understanding and reflections took place.

So they need to adjust and change. And, you could say, you know, they should just scrap the whole product portfolio and just start from scratch, but we know that people have invested so much into these companies. A lot of employees are dependent on their income, and I think that's kind of the tension of knowing we need to be fast and move fast, but you're also sitting in systems that have taken years to build and you can't just change them overnight. And that's kind of the frustration, especially when you're working with change management and in sustainability, you want it to change overnight. 

[00:46:24] Jenn: And in terms of, you know, coming back to the individual level, in terms of keeping current on sustainability topics or business topics, what are some of the sources, Lisen and Pia, that you either listen to or read to make sure that you're current?

[00:46:40] Pia: Yeah. I mean, if I take me individually as an individual, that was one of the hardest, leaving and being outside, so to say, because I had so many resources through the company, both in terms of having a fantastic, super knowledgeable team that I could always tap into if I wanted to deep dive in a specific topic that kind of understood all the angles.

Um, but also in terms of access to, to leadership trainings or, you know, courses or all kinds of things. Also, of course, podcasts and books and newsletters and now being more as an independent dipping into that, into the companies I work with, so board trainings, and then of course more, you know, personal responsibility to keep connected, to talk to people on different topics, to stay up to date because it changes so fast.

Jenn: Lisen, what about you? 

[00:47:35] Lisen: Yeah, I'm actually a frequent podcast listener, so I have a few recommendations there. So, Outrage and Optimism, I'm sure many of your listeners also listen to that one. I like, I follow a newsletter, which is also a podcast by Judith Walsh. She's very much working with AI tech and sustainability, and she hosts a podcast called Cow On The Ice on Spotify.

And ‘How do we fix this?’ Another new podcast. And a book that gave me a lot of energy and optimism was Exponential Climate Solutions by Swedish author Rebecca Carlson. And the reason for that is that the perspective of exponential in itself is something that is very difficult to grasp for us humans. But there's a lot of things that are boiling now, and with exponential growth, those are things that could truly, I don't want to use the word safe because you shouldn't be too tech optimistic, but at least really support the development in the right direction. And then a final maybe recommendation, which is slightly different, but that's a book called Humankind by Rutger Brechmann. He's a Dutch popular historian. And this book we have actually referred to as well in our book, because it's about rewriting some of the human history into a bit more positive perspectives. He has been doing a lot of research on different events throughout history and for stories that have not been told, showing how people have truly come together and supported each other. For example, he mentioned the storm Katrina or the hurricane Katrina, where we from the receiving news perspective, we're only seeing the negative stories and how people were vandalizing and there was a lot of fights and so on, but he is showing the other side of how people came together, opening up community centers, bringing opening up their homes. The same for COVID. So that was a really beautiful story of, that gave me much more hope to humanity, if you put it like that. 

[00:49:43] Jenn: If there's one book that's most shaped the way you think, I'm really interested, what would that book be?

[00:49:49] Pia: On sustainability? I don't think I can answer because there's so many different ones throughout, like, throughout my years. I mean, one of my first was probably, yes, when I started to study environmental management and, like my textbook, which started to make me connect and understand climate change and biodiversity and water scarcity. So because I have a business degree from the beginning, so just, kind of, starting to connect the dots. So that book is probably one of the most influential because that's kind of how I started to change the course of my career. But, but then there's been so many good books that you, depending on the timing, when you read them and is it what you need at the time, but then also Brené Brown on leadership, because a lot of sustainability, as I, I think I feel like I've said it maybe too many times now in the conversation, Jennifer, but sustainability is about staying updated with sustainability knowledge, but it is very much about leadership, uh, leading people, leading teams, leading organizations. And Brené Brown, who talks a lot about vulnerability, authenticity, at least for me, helped me when sometimes it was scary to push things and not just kind of do business as usual. So her books has been super helpful. 

[00:51:10] Jenn: Brené Brown is fantastic. And I'm really delighted that you suggested that, Pia. Thank you. Uh, Lisen, it's a very difficult question, but I don't know if there's, there's a book that's most influenced the way you think. 

[00:51:23] Lisen: I would actually mention the two that I just said. So for me, the, um, both the Exponential Climate Solutions and the Humankind, they are both together giving a very optimistic worldview, one on tech and solutions that can really support us and the other one more on the humankind willingness to do it. So I am very much, of course, concerned about the challenges that we are facing today, but having a bit more of an optimistic worldview and an action oriented hope, if I put it like that, helps me to work in this environment on a day to day basis.

[00:52:06] Pia: On that, what Lisen is saying, I think books that I've read from Singularity University and also Jeremy Rifkin, and there are many similar, so I'm not to really pinpoint them, but those who kind of take a step back and just look at the megatrends and the changes and the shifts we're going through as society, at least for me has helped to kind of when you're, when you're in it and you feel like we're not moving fast enough and you kind of zoom out and you see the big, the big shifts that are happening, that I've also felt helps and teaches me patience sometimes. 

[00:52:40] Jenn: And of course we're going to need to add Embedding Sustainability to this list for the listeners. And so where can listeners get their hands on this new book? 

[00:52:51] Pia: I would say almost everywhere online. So more or less all the, of course, Kogan page, who's the publishers on their website, but also on, I don't know if you can say names here, but I do marketing, but Amazon and Debris book is, I mean, it's not just in the US. The easiest would probably be to put in our names and Embedding Sustainability, and then it will pop up on the online store that's closest and most convenient for you. 

[00:53:18] Jenn: And we'll also include a link in our show notes. Lisen, Pia, Thank you so much for joining us on the future and sound podcast. I really appreciate it. 

Pia: Thank you so much for having 

[00:53:28] Lisen: Yes.

[00:53:37] Jenn: The future and sound podcast is written and hosted by Jenn Wilson and produced by Chris Attaway. This podcast is brought to you by Re.Co, a tech powered advisory company, helping private market investors pursue sustainability objectives and value creation in tandem. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to tell a friend about it. And if you have a moment to rate us in your podcast app, we'd really appreciate it until next time. Thanks for listening.