Three Kearney consultants have completed the Leading the Sustainability Transformation certification program: Partner Brent Ross, Principal Sujoy Biswas, and Consultant Elena Rohner.

Leading the Sustainability Transformation is intensive, demanding eight to 10 hours per week of active engagement from participants over a 10-week period. The heart of the experience is a complex simulation, where multi-stakeholder teams collaborate via remote technology to transform a fictional but realistic conventional business into a sustainable enterprise over a 20-year period. Teams are advised and critiqued by expert faculty as they work. The result? Accelerated learning as the teams shape and fulfill a simulated multi-decade sustainability strategy in a matter of months.

The insights and skills gained from the program are immediately applicable in Kearney’s work with clients, Brent Ross explains. All three Kearney participants are excited about transferring their certified expertise in sustainability transformation to clients via their project work, and thus drive the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits.

Brent, Sujoy, and Elena are also applying their Leading the Sustainability Transformation experience as members of the Sustainable Design Team within PERLab―Kearney’s hands-on, cross-functional product excellence and renewal lab. Product design and packaging innovations offer compelling opportunities for sustainability breakthroughs.

Q&A

Q&A: Leading the Sustainability Transformation

Kearney Partner Brent Ross recently completed the Leading the Sustainability Transformation certification program, which builds the competence, confidence, and credibility leaders need to drive business decisions that are both profitable and sustainable. The editors of Kearney.com asked Brent to describe what he gained from the program―and to explain what that might mean for Kearney clients.

Kearney.com: What are the roots of your interest in sustainability transformation?

Brent: The practical approaches required to achieve sustainability have a lot in common with the ways Kearney works with clients to transform and optimize their operations. The endgame for both is efficiency. As I began to appreciate all the ways in which these pursuits work together, I got more excited about the opportunities to create positive social and environmental impact as we help clients drive profitable growth.

Kearney.com: Why did you decide to participate in Leading the Sustainability Transformation?

Brent: Kearney consultants take pride in being hands on, practical, and highly collaborative because we know that’s what it takes to make big things happen. Leading the Sustainability Transformation resonated on all three levels. It treats the imperative to operate more sustainably as a given. The focus is on understanding how people from across a business can best work together with outside stakeholders to deliver real, measured sustainability and profitability gains.

The program was designed by people with a pragmatic but sophisticated understanding of sustainability transformations. I wanted to tap the best and latest thinking about how leaders can be effective sustainability champions without compromising their commitment to deliver superior business results.

Kearney.com: And what was it like, being a participant in Leading the Sustainability Transformation?

Brent: The certification program is essentially a crash course in sustainability problem solving. The centerpiece is a 20-year simulation where you pursue a sustainable transformation. For my simulation, the company was a Wisconsin-based pulp and paper manufacturer expanding operations into South America.

Our team worked through a complex simulation that integrated budgetary planning, investment decisions, and application of sustainability transformation frameworks. My teammates were people from different companies across the globe that played roles within the company and in local government and NGOs. Together we crafted a strategy, set goals, then put it in motion. Things went smoothly for a while. Then the simulation hit us with a series of unexpected climate and economic shocks―challenges that forced tough decisions as budgets were cut. Recovery took time and if we had just defaulted to whatever seemed the most sustainable option, we would have failed to profitably grow the business.

Kearney.com: How do you envision clients benefiting from all that you learned?

Brent: I have already applied what we learned as participants in Leading the Sustainability Transformation with Kearney clients. This wasn’t hard because many industries are facing sustainability challenges right now and the solutions align with Kearney’s proven consulting approaches. More to the point, the program helps answer a question we know is on the minds of most leaders: How do I reduce the seeming tension between my business objectives and my sustainability objectives?

I believe the ultimate answer is to roll both sets of objectives together into a single ambitious set of higher goals―stretch goals that are sound from both a business and environmental or social perspective. Then you tap the full creative and collaborative powers of your people and your ecosystem to drive toward those goals, engaging everyone and finding ways to harmonize their collective efforts. The most successful sustainable businesses will be those that reimagine the way they deliver value instead of just making the easier incremental improvements.