Surviving Contact With Reality

A Net Zero target doesn’t replace your organisation’s fundamental purpose.  You still have to deliver the products and services you exist to deliver.  Between now and 2050, it is inevitable that your organisation will grow and change in order to do that.  On top of that, there will be external factors that you can’t control, and that none of us could even see coming.  Extreme weather.  Global pandemics.  Strikes.  Political changes.  Alien invasion.  Who knows?!  Quite frankly, at this point, anything is possible.

How can you make sure your strategy will still get you to Net Zero when there is so much reality to get through between now and 2050. 

What’s going wrong?

You wrote a detailed strategy, supported by a timeline of planned activities and corresponding carbon reductions.  But now that you are into the delivery phase, you find your strategy isn’t working, despite all the hard work you put in.  Everyone bought in at Board level and agreed that was the way it was going to be done, so you can’t change it now, can you? 

But why?

Your targets are fixed, but nothing else is.  External events have an impact on your business operations but they aren’t in your control.  Which means you are responding and reacting to whatever reality has in store for you.

But even without external factors, businesses are constantly changing.  Success is measured in ever-increasing revenue and greater demands for products and services. That pushes up your carbon emissions as you increase headcount, travel more, use more square footage, buy more stuff from your supply chain.  Your product goes viral on TikTok, or you win a big new project you didn’t think you had a chance on, and suddenly all of your projections are nonsense and you can forget any meaningful comparison with your baseline. 

Is there another way to think about this?

I visualise delivering a long-term Net Zero strategy as if I am a contestant on It’s a Knockout (younger readers may wish to substitute Total Wipeout here).  Before the starting whistle went, I thought my best route was to go over the red one and round the blue one, but now that I’m in amongst it, I see I have to go under then over.

And the same goes for Net Zero strategies.  The end point of achieving zero emissions by 2050 is fixed, but everything else along the way is going to have to flex and adapt.  Because it is impossible for anyone to know what metaphorical custard pies and wet sponges are going to be thrown at you along the way. 

But if you are being precious about the strategy, then you’re focusing on the wrong thing – it’s really only the route map to get you to your destination.  An ideal strategy has enough contingency built in to allow for the inevitable forecasting and course correction.   

…..Plot Twist!

Targets are sacred; strategies are sacrificial.