Making Change Sustainable

The world is changing — and with it, our expectations of business.

Today, companies are expected to stand for more than just their bottom line. It’s no longer enough to give lip service to social responsibility through siloed efforts and one-off projects. Empowered stakeholders and consumers are demanding that companies integrate social responsibility into the very core of how they do business — and they’re calling companies out when they don’t.

In turn, the role of the corporate social responsibility practitioner is shifting. Teams are being called on to educate, empower and equip people across the business to own the sustainability agenda. They need to spark culture change, create internal movements and build consensus among people who don’t usually agree with each other. They need to persuade, nudge and influence people to change the very way they approach their jobs.

The job description is changing — from program manager to change agent.

This shift requires a whole new toolkit of skills. In addition to making a rational business case for sustainability, social responsibility practitioners also need to layer on a clear understanding of how people change. We need an approach informed by the latest insights in behavioral science, an interdisciplinary field that draws from fields like cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, sociology and anthropology. We need to explore questions like:

What are the drivers of behavior change?

What motivates people?

And how can we make sustainable change more, well, sustainable?