We’ve all heard about sustainability practices in business: reusing materials, recycling products, and choosing items that are durable and ethically sourced. But what does sustainability leadership look like in retail?

Adrian Cullen, Head of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) at one of Australia’s leading private equity firms, and a Macquarie University Business School MBA alumni, says the companies that are leading the way in sustainability are those that care about the impact of their business and aim to create good.

Adrian says, “They are allocating the relevant resources and, in many cases, have someone at a senior level who has the role to bring single-minded advocacy for sustainability to strategy and decision-making. These leaders are elevating sustainability at the executive level to accelerate change and work towards their ambitions.”

Good sustainability leadership is about implanting thoughtfulness and responsibility at all levels of the organisation and in everything a business does.

“Leading companies are also embedding sustainability as part of how they do business and integrating it through the entire company so that it’s not the responsibility of a team that sits in a silo, but rather it’s everyone’s responsibility," says Adrian.

“These companies are also acting with pace by collaborating across the value chain to solve some of the industry’s biggest challenges across climate, waste, food security, and ethical and responsible sourcing. These leaders are motivated by purpose and use their scale for good. They go well beyond regulation to deliver the change that is needed."

Leadership in sustainability goes beyond shop fronts and products

Adrian’s leadership in sustainability has covered many traditional and non-traditional ideas of retail – we all think of retail as fashion, food and the little independent shop next door, but retail can also extend to banking, luxury goods, sports and adventure, hardware, and even online marketplaces. Adrian’s leadership has seen companies like McDonald’s Australia and Woolworths think more strategically about their impact on the world.

Adrian says, “At McDonald’s Australia, I was fortunate to be able to lead a number of great initiatives across the areas of packaging, new store development, waste and recycling, and energy and renewables management.

“Shortly after moving to Woolworths, I was appointed to the Head of Sustainability position where I was responsible for leading a team dedicated to embedding sustainability in the day-to-day operations and across the areas of circular economy, own brand packaging, responsible sourcing of high-risk commodities, and animal welfare. I was lucky enough to grow that small team of five passionate experts into a team of 25 with a presence across Australia and Asia.

“In the last 6 months, I’ve moved into the new world of private equity, where my work is focused on setting the right trajectory for the firm and establishing frameworks to deliver change at pace while also collaborating with portfolio companies on their ESG strategy and approach.”

Listening to your customers can help you prioritise time and resources

Some of the challenges in the sustainability space are associated with time and resources; conducting market research, implementation, and the solutions themselves can be costly. This is particularly challenging in a high-inflation environment. But, as Adrian explains, issues can be reframed into challenges for which businesses can provide solutions.

He says, “Customer needs are constantly changing as they gain more knowledge about certain topics across ESG. Many of them want to do the right thing and they are looking to businesses to help them make sustainable choices while also providing great value.

“Actively listening to what customers tell you is important to them can really help a business address some of their pain points while working through where to prioritise their time and resources.”

An MBA can teach you how to approach sustainability leadership with a strategic mindset

Can you learn to be a good sustainability leader? The skills you require to be a good leader can definitely be learned and practiced and can be applied to anything from sustainability to team development, leading through change, and being influential and inspirational in the workplace.

Adrian says an MBA helped hone these skills and encouraged him to develop a strategic mindset, which helps with any leadership role across any industry.

He says, “The tools I gained throughout the MBA program provided me with confidence and credibility when discussing financial and non-financial information with the executive team. I also highly valued the focus on teamwork, which was a large component throughout the MBA. In the ESG space, you are always going to be stretched for resources so it is critical to be able to partner horizontally with different business units to deliver on the strategy. Throughout my MBA, I enjoyed working with people from different industries and backgrounds to collaborate, problem solve and build recommendations.”

Even six years after graduation, Adrian still reflects on the learnings from his MBA at Macquarie University Business School – a program that challenges students to think about purpose over profit as they develop into modern business leaders.

“One of my favourite ESG quotes that I picked up during the course, and which I often use, is by management educator and author Peter Drucker. He said that 'Profit to a company is like oxygen for a person; if you don’t have enough of it, you’re out of the game. But if you think life is about breathing, then you’re really missing something.'"

Five tips for using the power of business as a force for good in retail

So, what can existing or emerging leaders do to progress sustainability and use the power of business as a force for good in retail? Here, Adrian provides five tips.

1. Focus on progress over perfection. “Just like anything, it's important to continually learn to improve. One area to focus on is marrying sustainability with the profit motive, often referred to as the purposeful P&L (profit and loss). If your program can develop things that benefit the company while connecting people and reducing your environmental impact, you’re going to get great traction. For example, a supplier I worked with in the banana industry was generating a considerable amount of banana waste due to an oversupply in their crop.  Instead of continually sending this product to landfill, the farmer invested in some manufacturing capability that could convert ripe bananas that were no longer fit for supermarket shelves into banana flour, which is a high-quality ingredient used in the baking process. This not only helped to reduce food waste (and harmful methane emissions), but it also opened up a whole new revenue stream for that business to produce commercially viable products from waste."
2. It's important to be ambitious. “Prioritisation will be key to ensuring you don't overcommit, and you have a clear delivery path. Setting goals is the easy part. Turning them into reality is where you need to focus, and your biggest resource to do this is your team. As a leader, you need your team to understand what success looks like. They also need to understand the role they play in reaching that success.”
3. Collaborate with your partners in the value chain and engage with your network. “Externally, the big opportunity here is to collaborate with your partners in the value chain to deliver and support where you can. There are also opportunities to engage the community by using mainstream and social media to share success stories, make sustainability a key part of your roadshows, and even make sure your website is a good source of all things sustainability for anyone who is interested in finding out a bit more about your approach."
4. Develop bold aspirations, and know they are different from targets. “Quite often the challenge is that there are always a dozen or more competing priorities across the business that you’re having to navigate. Sustainability can add to this as being quite complex, so it's important to get creative in how you manage a lot of complicated information and really boil it down to the one, two or three things that make it relatable. Setting targets can really help.”
5. Consider an MBA and learn to be purpose-driven. “As modern leaders, you are going to have much more information than we’ve ever had and even more opportunity to make a positive change. The next challenge is how, as leaders, we convert that knowledge into action and deliver great business outcomes while having a positive impact on the planet and our communities.
   
   “An MBA really does challenge you to think strategically about any problem and collaborate to find the best solution.”

Did you know Macquarie University Business School offers a scholarship for Master of Business Administration (MBA) students working in retail who can demonstrate sustainable leadership? Find out more about the Sir Theo Kelly Sustainable Leadership Scholarship, which reduces domestic student fees by 25 per cent for up to three years.

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