When Sustainability Becomes Business: Lessons from IBM, Apollo and GM

Antenna House at New York Climate Week provided me with the opportunity to convene a panel discussion featuring three stalwarts of the CSO world, each hailing from a different industry. The three: Christina Shim of IBM, Jaycee Prubulski of Apollo, and Cassandra Garber of GM, shared perspectives that reflected both common themes and insights unique to their respective industries. The conversation meandered, as all dynamic conversations should, but certain meta-themes emerged, including the reality that sustainability is moving from aspiration, virtue, and pledges to execution, business value, and transparency. 

The panel was an hour long and teemed with nuggets of wisdom, but a few stood out as particularly instructive. 

The panelists unanimously endorsed the notion that, in many cases, sustainability initiatives have become so embedded in business operations that they are now a norm in how a company conducts business. For example, at Apollo, sustainability is now treated as a management and investment discipline, beginning with materiality, underwriting risk, and opportunities for long-term value creation. 

As the panel unfolded, the panelists kept circling back to transparency as critical to establishing sustainability as a credible business imperative, and each one lived up to that value while sharing their company’s sustainability story. Cassandra Garber at GM, for example, shared that EV adoption at GM did not live up to the original hype and that ICE vehicles continue to fund GM’s investment in EVs. As Cassandra articulated it, when it comes to EVs, GM is “off track,” but still committed, and “rerouting.” Christina Shim shared that IBM is focused on identifying enterprise workflows where sustainability can be embedded, but acknowledged that they are only 40% of the way there and still have more work to do. In other words, 100% probably doesn’t exist anywhere, and what separates credible sustainability programs from others is transparency about the methodology, the goals and objectives, and the bumpy road to getting there. 

For anyone attending the panel, it was clear from the outset that each panelist is a gifted storyteller. Cassandra distilled her mandate at GM into the 3Ds, “Decarbonize the enterprise, Delight Customers, and Drive the EV transition.” Notably, each of those components is a business imperative with embedded sustainability value. Much of the challenge in sustainability storytelling is to de-jargonize complex programs and objectives into common-sense business objectives that resonate with non-CSO professionals. Cassandra’s “3Ds” is a great example of doing just that.  

Energy transition communications are made even more challenging by the diversity of its audiences, each with a different definition of success. Jaycee pointed out that Apollo’s European stakeholders may emphasize energy security, while affordability is paramount to US audiences. Christine advised that at IBM, she addressed this challenge by making the underlying sustainability data accessible to employees and client-facing teams so they could translate it for different markets and customer needs. In other words, don’t change the facts for the audience, but make those facts relevant and digestible for each audience. 

It was noted that the strongest sustainability stories tell themselves, because they are buttressed by an economic foundation. Jaycee highlighted, for example, that Apollo’s underwriting includes an examination of physical climate risk across 18 facilities in 18 states. By connecting sustainability considerations with operations and capital allocation, Apollo identifies significant opportunities to improve EBITDA.   

We concluded the panel with a thought experiment, namely, what will distinguish trusted companies five years from now? Cassandra emphasized value; that sustainability must continue to create tangible value for stakeholders. Jaycee identified execution as core to building trust. And Christina reinforced the centrality of data-driven transparency and the continued integration of sustainability into the enterprise. 

If I had to distill an hour's worth of insights into a conclusion, it would be that companies with thriving CSO initiatives are able to provide data-driven evidence that sustainability creates value, demonstrate measurable progress, celebrate incremental milestones, and acknowledge that there is still more to do. Enterprises, regardless of industry or business line, that are committed to this matrix for success will continue to strike a bold, progressive path well into the future.