Lisen Wirén and Pia Heidenmark Cook - Embedding Sustainability

Lisen Wirén is a sustainable business leader with over 15 years of industry experience. Her extensive background includes tackling labour migration and human rights issues in South East Asia and advancing sustainability in product design and working with social entrepreneurship. Her leadership led IKEA to win the most sustainable retailer award and a nomination for Wirén for the prestigious Sustainability Manager of the Year award in the Netherlands. Key to her approach is the seamless integration of sustainability into every function and team to reach the set organizational goals. She is based in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Pia Heidenmark Cook is a Senior Advisor with Teneo, working with the ESG and Sustainability team to advise clients on how to develop and operationalise sustainability strategies and the implications for reputation strategies.

Prior to Teneo, Pia was the Chief Sustainability Officer for IKEA, where she led the development and implementation of the IKEA People and Planet Positive strategy. Her cross-functional team worked closely with the business on developing circular business models (including take back offers, leasing and second hand), launching new sustainable offers (such as selling solar panels across 14 markets) and helping customers to live more sustainable and healthier lives. During this time, IKEA ranked in the top three most sustainable brands and managed to decouple carbon dioxide emissions from its commercial growth across the value chain.

Pia and Lisen Join Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Their co-authored book, Embedding Sustainability
• First steps for companies getting started with sustainability, including engaging stakeholders
• Tips for incorporating sustainability into each employee's day to day job and tying these actions to sustainability objectives
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals

Pia and Lisen's Final Five Questions Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? 

Pia: I would start by saying understanding that sustainability and working with sustainability is as much about technical competence to understand the topic and all its facets as it is about change management and understanding how to work with people and change management. 

Lisen: This field has become very much about reporting and that's something Pia and I have discussed quite a lot and of course that's very important and that's something that is driving sustainability and is also a wake up call for many businesses. But I would also encourage sustainability managers to try not to get too stuck in that, but to involve other relevant functions to support with the reporting so that they can still keep a strategic focus and lead the sustainability agenda. What we see is that the sustainability leader, manager, CSO, should be orchestrating the change, um, rather than getting too stuck in reporting.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? That 

Pia: That it's becoming more and more mainstream. We're still not doing enough, but most people just know that it's here to stay, it's something we need to deal with. There's  levels of how deep the integration is and how far they come, but people are not questioning that the long-term direction is that companies need to deal with social and environmental issues to stay in business and be relevant. 

Lisen: One of the persons that we interview is a designer and she talks about that 80% of the climate footprint sits in the design stage. For me that really triggers something for me to think about the real opportunity that sits within circularity. When designers and product developers and architects and so on, when they are opening up their eyes for the possibilities of circularity and getting excited about the creativity and innovation that that requires, I think there's unlimited possibilities. 

What is one book you'd recommend sustainability professionals read? 

Pia: I would say a mix of books that paint a picture of 'why' to more CSO handbooks. Books that are more hands-on, painting the picture of the environmental challenges or the social challenges so you build that knowledge, to those where where you get practical, concrete examples from others that have done the work. I think it's a lot about recognizing different situations and learning from them to get tools to keep doing the change journey yourself. I would also recommend one of the many books by Berne Brown about leadership and personal leadership and being your authentic self. 

Lisen: I would go for a more action oriented solution-focused book, and that one is called Exponential Climate Solutions by Rebecka Carlsson. She's a Swedish author and she started at Singularity University and focused on different solutions that can have an exponential development. That's a very interesting, practical hands-on book with loads of examples. 

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? 

Pia: Talking to people, meeting people, listening to people. Maybe not a lot of newsletters, of course to stay updated, but really the dialogue when you listen and talk to people and learn from them. 

Lisen: To compliment that answer, one of the advices or suggestions that we give in the last part of the book is actually to sometimes look at what you need for yourself to keep on going, since this is not a sprint, but it's rather a marathon. You need to be able to last long as a leader, and one tool to do so can also be to sometimes zoom out from negative news and practice basically a news detox, trying to focus on the long-term positive improvements that are happening and that might not be an phone alert. Balance the negative news with some positive long-term development. 

Where can our listeners go to learn more about both of you and your book?

Embeddingsustainability.com or our LinkedIn pages.