 It's okay to bring to work the things that you care most about I'm Phil Ruckston chief sustainability officer at Crowder International. We're a speciality chemical manufacturer My personal impact has been to help bring a bigger part of Crowder on board through my network and contacts Help them understand where we want to go but also help them take ownership And I think that's the most important bit because everyone talks about sustainability Having come from a parallel universe and it's no longer a parallel universe of measuring stuff alongside the financials It's trying to embed that and measure the whole performance of the organization I was in a great position to be able to do that. In a nutshell its systems change We've learned that in Crowder that our impacts are far greater Upstream and downstream of us than in the operations we control and that's a new thing for Crowder It's a new thing for the chemical industry, but it has to be looking at how do we influence an impact outside of our own control. The easiest example is you look at our greenhouse gas emissions and Roughly our scope one and two emissions from our own facilities are about 20% of our total carbon footprint And so we've got a far greater impact on all the emissions created upstream of us in our supply chain Leadership has to be able to take on board the complex world and with help Nobody can do it on their own with help work a way through that to find solutions that make impact But in the end it's about people your systems your data have to be there But unless a leader can engage the people to deliver on this and make sure that it's not top-down only We're not going to get systems change I have a lot of one-on-one catch-ups for 20 minutes with lots and lots of people around the organization not just senior leadership, but Graduates people in roles all over the organization if you find the right people with the right action at the right time You can make a bigger impact. And so I guess a lot of what I'm trying to do is Find those change agents around the organization at any level work with them and help them take ownership It's okay to bring to work the things that you care most about You've also got to be able to respect other points of view You've got to be able to bring on other people and accept that other people are gonna have the answers And I think the other piece is where's the balance to move forward and I call it my reason on this test Is what I'm expecting of other people is what they're expecting of me. Is it reasonable? We're all human after all we're not super human doesn't mean say you don't have passion and vision and know where you Want to go but how do you get people moving in that direction in a way that's empathetic to them? So I come from the commercial side of the organization and so as I've moved into this corporate function One of the big areas I've had to learn about is governance and assurance and it's a still a work in progress a very clear example was where we Were downgraded on one of these ESG ratings agencies in my tenure and when we did the investigation We discovered it wasn't about our activity Activity was actually very good It was about the quality of the data and the submission we made and this is the complexity of ESG instead of Hiding complaining appealing we embraced that error Embrace the mistake and use that as a positive opportunity And one of the big opportunities was the fact that it got our CFO and our finance team into the room Because it had been noticed by one of our investors They're suddenly realizing that their external auditors are asking them all these difficult questions that they keep putting on to us and I keep pointing out that a lot of the skills in data quality Data governance sit with finance teams and it allowed us to bring the right people and have a much better quality Discussion about what should we do in the future to avoid this? It's resulted in more people involved in the discussion Which is brilliant and actually we see ourselves moving forward to even better scores in the future. I think the greatest allies have been People across the organization in various roles. I've had people in the warehouse teams. I've had people in customer service in R&D team Who want to make a difference and are a change agent to influence locally and some of those are senior leaders as well I have to recognize two great allies in the chief executive chairman because they set this strategy and wanted to be a leader in this space It is a struggle if you don't have those as allies But in terms of then making change once you've got that overarching support It's finding the change agents the people who can be with you actively think about When to act quickly because you can't wait versus when to act really well and In every decision around sustainability, you've got that balance Do we invest in fuel substitution to reduce our scope one emissions or Do we wait until we've got a new process that's lower emissions and the answer is probably both But in each case you've got to weigh that up and recognizing that you don't have to act every minute instantly But equally you can never wait for perfect data Can you really make change from inside the system the establishment? Or do you need disruptors from outside to come in and the answer is you need both You've been in an organization a long time You'll know a lot of people and so don't be afraid to get out there and talk to all the people you know and have those Discussions I guarantee you in nearly every case. There's more than a few who would be keen to support But sometimes might need a catalyst to make the change and so there is something about changing from within On a personal front, it's been really useful and insightful engaging with CISL I've attended some of your courses which is not just exposed me to the best thinkers in this area And made me realize the scale of impact we need but also helped me improve my external network Which is one of my personal development aims