Companies shown how to help customers and suppliers behave in a sustainable way

Sustainability strategies are likely to remain ‘words on paper’ unless boards take practical steps to help their employees, customers and suppliers behave in a sustainable way according to Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas speaking in Westminster at the 8th International Conference on Corporate Governance.

According to Coulson-Thomas “People need to be helped to understand environmental impacts and options and what they can do to achieve sustainable outcomes. They must be equipped with the processes and tools to make a positive contribution to the environment.”

The Professor showed how pioneering companies are making it easy for people to understand complex issues and make informed choices: “A new generation of support tools can enable people to quickly assess the consequences of different courses of action. Customers can be helped to select what is right for them and suppliers can be helped to satisfy purchasing requirements.”

The results of Coulson-Thomas’ research programme into what the most successful workgroups do differently are summarised in a new book ‘Winning Companies; Winning People’ just published by Policy Publications. He finds “Winners monitor environmental issues, assess their impacts and develop new and alternative approaches that generate goodwill and incremental income streams.”

Boards of companies are a key workgroup. Coulson-Thomas finds “Winners regard responding to environmental threats as a major business opportunity. They are proactive and work with others to make a positive contribution to the environment.”

The Professor and author of ‘Developing Directors, a handbook for building an effective boardroom team explained how boards need to be developed to enhance sustainable value: “Directors need a greater appreciation of cost-effective ways of helping others to understand what they can do to work in a sustainable way and enable customers to make sustainable choices. They need to understand how average performers can be helped to behave in winning ways.”

Prof. Coulson-Thomas was giving a plenary address at the first day of the 8th International Conference on Corporate Governance held at the UKTI Conference Hall, I Victoria Street, Westminster. The theme of the two day conference is ‘Creating a Better World through Corporate Governance’.

The approaches of successful directors and boards are discussed in ‘Winning Companies; Winning People, making it easy for average performers to adopt winning behaviours’ by Colin Coulson-Thomas (ISBN 978-1-872980-32-4) which costs Price £24.95 plus p&p and is available from: http://www.coulson-thomaspublications.com

’Developing Directors, a guidebook for building an effective boardroom team’, by Colin Coulson-Thomas (ISBN 978-1-872980-32-4) is published by Policy Publications, costs £34.95 plus p&p and can be ordered from: http://www.policypublications.com/developingdirectors.htm

Information about other books and reports by Prof. Coulson-Thomas can be found on http://www.ntwkfirm.com/bookshop/ while details of the bespoke benchmarking and research reports covering critical success factors identified by his research can be obtained from http://www.winningnewbusiness.biz/

Professor Coulson-Thomas, an experienced chairman of award winning companies has helped over 100 boards to improve board and/or corporate performance and spoken at over 200 national and international events in 35 countries. He is a member of the Professional Accreditation Committee and Board of Examiners of the Institute of Directors and the ACCA Governance and Risk Management Committee and can be contacted by Tel: 00 44 (0) 1733 361 149 or email: colinct@tiscali.co.uk and via http://www.adaptation.ltd.uk