Lancaster University Management School - 54 Degrees Issue 12

the reduction of resource consumption. Clearly, we have to be more responsible to our planet, or we are not going to sustain our lives. Sustainability is deeply rooted in that concept of climate change, but it is moving beyond that. We have expanded the concept to include things like organisational and social sustainability. Sustainability means organisations must sustain themselves, they have to think about acting in ways that are resilient and agile. We look at how we can make organisations sustainable in communities – businesses coming into a community and then abandoning it are neither responsible nor sustainable, and we have to look at ways of avoiding that. There are some interesting examples in the USA, with companies i n ‘Coal Country’ in Appalachia . You literally had company towns, where the only work was in the mines, with maybe one doctor and a school-teacher. As coal is being phased out – and quite rightly from a sustainability perspective – you also have to recognise that these communities, these families, aren’t just able or willing to pick up and move. So, we’re looking at how companies partner with, for example, solar panel manufacturing companies, build manufacturing plants and essentially retrain coal miners to work in new industries. If you pull out of a community, and leave that community devastated, then the ripple e ff ect will ultimately impact your ambitions. It makes good business sense, it makes good business sense, to be sustainable within the communities. INCLUSIVITY Of the three pillars, this is one that is less often considered. But we are seeing the highest levels of human migration on the planet that we have ever seen; companies, even local SMEs, are already global, with global reach, global supply chains; and we are working in increasingly diverse communities. From this diversity, we need inclusion. We have to recognise that token representation in decision-making is not enough; we actually have to create workplaces that are inclusive. People’s voices must be taken seriously, must be included in decision-making. That’s listening to community leaders, creating a diverse workforce, responding to the various elements in your organisation, from the supply chain, to consumers, to product manufacturers, and it is about actually listening to those voices. One of the things the Covid pandemic has demonstrated is that when we listen to more voices, listen to those who know, those who have a di ff erent perspective, then we make far better decisions. The bene fi ts of inclusivity are enormous, it’s something we have to take seriously, but we have to be smart as well. For too long, we have treated issues around equality and diversity as a bean-counting phenomena: we make sure we have a certain number of women on our board, we have various marginalised groups represented. But that’s not inclusivity, that’s numbers. We need to be more serious about who we are including and how we are including them. Smart leaders need to actually listen to all these groups. SHAPING BETTER LEADERS What we try to do, instead of giving quick little one-o ff solutions, is to build mindsets around responsibility, sustainability and inclusivity, so that as problems change and evolve – and they will – our managers, our leaders, are equipped to respond to them. Leaders – and our MBA students – come from so many di ff erent places, so the one-size- fi ts-all solution isn’t going to work. What we need are those mindsets to help us think in terms of responsibility, sustainability and inclusivity, as opposed to saying ‘here’s a plan that you can implement across the globe, that will work in every situation’. If we think critically and with these principles in mind, then we can go into a variety of workplaces and cultures and do what needs to be done to the bene fi t of many more people than just the shareholders. Dr Robyn Remke i s a Lecturer in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, and Director of the Lancaster MBA . For more than 30 years, Lancaster’s MBA programme – ranked among the top 100 globally by the Financial Times – has transformed high- calibre students into leading managers in their chosen sectors. Lancaster University MBA students graduate as globally fl uent leaders, ready to shape organisations, industries, and societies. r.remke@lancaster.ac.uk FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 41