LØRN Case #C1000
A Strategy for Sustainability
In this episode of #LØRN Silvija talks to Lin Hammer (sustainability manager) and Ellen Skarsgård (head of sustainability development and climate) from DNV to discover exactly how DNV are utilizing sustainable strategy and sustainable reporting in order to increase their viability in future years. They specifically discuss how taking sustainable strategy and reporting seriously may involve questioning the company’s identity and lead to a shift in how a company will operate. This shift may be inspired by questioning both how and if a company may be successful in the future, and the culture change may come from the very top through ambitious goal setting and the goals being clearly measurable.

Lin Jacobsen Hammer

Sustainability Manager

DNV

Ellen Skarsgård

Head of Sustainability Development and Climate

DNV

"The sense of urgency when it comes to sustainability has picked up. In particular, what this means for how companies, societies and individual behaviour must not only adapt, but transform"

Varighet: 40 min

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What is your education and do you have any hobbies?

Lin: Production manager for film & television. Hobbies: Gardening, bicycling, hikes, kayaking, swimming, reading & knitting.

Ellen: BSc Government & Foreign policies, University of Wales and Six Sigma Black Belt project management. My hobbies include running and sailing. I teach kids to sail in a local sailing club.

What is your professional dream?

Lin: Contributing to others development

Ellen: I have just started my new role; it is certainly part of my professional dream!

What is your project at work, and why is it important?

Lin: ESG/Sustainability – because it is vital to secure a sustainable future for nature and future generations.

Ellen: The sense of urgency when it comes to sustainability has picked up. In particular, what this means for how companies, societies, and individual behavior must not only adapt, but transform.

Sustainability is an integral part of the new strategy and we are working both to get our house in order and to help customers do the same. Our goals to reduce our carbon footprint by 50%, switch to 100% renewable electricity and become climate positive will get our house in order. The far greater impact is how we advise customers to decarbonize, improve ESG and make an impact on the sustainable development goals.

Why is it challenging, and how do you build the culture around this work?

Lin: Because it requires change. Leading by example, motivating through connecting with relevance for the person I talk to.

Ellen: We have extremely passionate and motivated employees at DNV that care about delivering on our purpose and are excited about the new strategy. Our vision directs us to be a trusted voice to tackle global transformations. To take this role we need services that help our customers to tackle the energy transition, decarbonization, digital transformation. And to be a trusted voice, we need to make sure that we have our own house in order. That we are living what we are preaching.

Any interesting dilemmas?

Lin: (1) Profitability vs save the planet and (2) that we can contribute more than we think.

Ellen: Our goal to switch to 100% renewable electricity is an ambitious, hairy goal, which we don’t yet have the answer to. We have 276 offices and labs in regions and countries where there is currently little renewable electricity. This is a challenge that many of our big customers and brands are trying to achieve which as well gives us the opportunity to use our own in-house expertise; Energy systems, Instatrust; when exploring our options. Do we need to look at what does green really means? How can we ensure that in switching, we are making a long-term change?

What is your education and do you have any hobbies?

Lin: Production manager for film & television. Hobbies: Gardening, bicycling, hikes, kayaking, swimming, reading & knitting.

Ellen: BSc Government & Foreign policies, University of Wales and Six Sigma Black Belt project management. My hobbies include running and sailing. I teach kids to sail in a local sailing club.

What is your professional dream?

Lin: Contributing to others development

Ellen: I have just started my new role; it is certainly part of my professional dream!

What is your project at work, and why is it important?

Lin: ESG/Sustainability – because it is vital to secure a sustainable future for nature and future generations.

Ellen: The sense of urgency when it comes to sustainability has picked up. In particular, what this means for how companies, societies, and individual behavior must not only adapt, but transform.

Sustainability is an integral part of the new strategy and we are working both to get our house in order and to help customers do the same. Our goals to reduce our carbon footprint by 50%, switch to 100% renewable electricity and become climate positive will get our house in order. The far greater impact is how we advise customers to decarbonize, improve ESG and make an impact on the sustainable development goals.

Why is it challenging, and how do you build the culture around this work?

Lin: Because it requires change. Leading by example, motivating through connecting with relevance for the person I talk to.

Ellen: We have extremely passionate and motivated employees at DNV that care about delivering on our purpose and are excited about the new strategy. Our vision directs us to be a trusted voice to tackle global transformations. To take this role we need services that help our customers to tackle the energy transition, decarbonization, digital transformation. And to be a trusted voice, we need to make sure that we have our own house in order. That we are living what we are preaching.

Any interesting dilemmas?

Lin: (1) Profitability vs save the planet and (2) that we can contribute more than we think.

Ellen: Our goal to switch to 100% renewable electricity is an ambitious, hairy goal, which we don’t yet have the answer to. We have 276 offices and labs in regions and countries where there is currently little renewable electricity. This is a challenge that many of our big customers and brands are trying to achieve which as well gives us the opportunity to use our own in-house expertise; Energy systems, Instatrust; when exploring our options. Do we need to look at what does green really means? How can we ensure that in switching, we are making a long-term change?

Vis mer
Tema: Bærekraft og sirkularitet
Organisasjon: DNV
Perspektiv: Storbedrift
Dato: 210614
Sted: OSLO
Vert: Silvija Seres

Dette er hva du vil lære:


How DNV aligns it services with customersEmployee branding issues
Cultural change in a business
The concepts behind Instatrust

Mer læring:

To Kill a Mockingbird, DNV’s Energy Transition Outlook and Crime fiction

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En LØRN CASE er en kort og praktisk, lett og morsom, innovasjonshistorie. Den er fortalt på 30 minutter, er samtalebasert, og virker like bra som podkast, video eller tekst. Lytt og lær der det passer deg best! Vi dekker 15 tematiske områder om teknologi, innovasjon og ledelse, og 10 perspektiver som gründer, forsker etc. På denne siden kan du lytte, se eller lese gratis, men vi anbefaler deg å registrere deg, slik at vi kan lage personaliserte læringsstier for nettopp deg. Vi vil gjerne hjelpe deg komme i gang og fortsette å drive med livslang læring.

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Utskrift av samtalen: A Strategy for Sustainability

Velkommen til Lørn.Tech - en læringsdugnad om teknologi og samfunn. Med Silvija Seres og venner.

 

Silvija Seres: Hello, and welcome to a Lørn conversation. My name is Silvija Seres, and my two guests today are Lin Jakobson Hammer, who's a sustainability manager at DNV. And Ellen Skarsgård, who's head of sustainability, development and climate at DNV. And you'll have to help me sort out your titles in a second. Ladies, welcome.

 

Ellen Skarsgård: Thank you.

 

Silvija: So, I'll just say a couple of words about the series. And then we'll jump into the heart of the conversation. This is a series of six conversations that are going to be used also as background reading in a course about sustainability and business at the Norwegian School of Economics in the autumn of 2021. And what we're hoping to do is give very concrete examples of what sustainability means in practice at one of the companies that I am most impressed by when it comes to plans and sustainability, and that's DNV and you two are in charge of gathering all these sustainability thoughts, and putting them into the practice of today's business and tomorrow's business is my understanding. Excellent. With that, I'm actually going to open the floor and ask you to please introduce yourself, both professionally and personally. And perhaps we can start with Ellen. Okay. Yep.

 

Ellen: Ellen Skarsgård. I joined DNV back in 2018, three years ago in communications at group. From that time, I was responsible for the annual report and our sustainability reporting. And that really got me into how we do sustainability at DNV. And why and with our new strategy, which was put together last year, and sustainability really rose up to the fore as a major pillar of how we do business at DNV. And with that, came the opportunity to take on this role, which I now have that started just in April, on delivering DNV sustainability strategy. This is now no longer like an issue that we deal with on the side of our business kind of NGO style with the nice to have sustainability projects, but it's much more related to the sharp end the business and which Lins is a part of now.

 

Lin Jacobsen Hammer: Yes, that's true, and my name is Lin Hammer. I'm the sustainability manager responsible for all the sustainability services that we deliver out of Norway. I've been in the company for 11 years in August, I started out building a training portfolio for the certification unit. And I've been doing a lot of business development now has the sustainability responsibility.

 

Silvija: So, if I understand correctly, Lin comes from the background of communications, and is in charge of the strategical sustainability all over. Sorry, Ellen is coming from communications. And now she's the head of the sustainability strategy. And Lin is coming from the background of technology and is implementing this, is that correctly Understood?

 

Lin: Or advising our customers. 

 

Silvija: So very cool. I also going a little bit back to who these two ladies are personally, I have to ask you, do you have any eccentric hobbies? Or you know, how can our listeners remember you?

 

Lin: I'm very passionate, passionate about gardening. But you see a piano behind me. I'm a very eager audience. When my family creates music, so then I'm uploading and listening to everything that's going on, but gardening is my main hobby, and also hiking, bicycling, swimming in the ocean all the way around. And just being active. That's and my family's also my passion.

 

Silvija: So, you're an ice swimmer? 

 

Lin: Yes. I started actually the year before Corona. I started bicycling to work and we're so lucky that our workplace is by the ocean side. It was a nice august. I took a swim and it was really nice and I did it every day and then suddenly it was fall break, and it got colder and colder. And I just kept going all the way until the corona stopped it's so now, I'm looking forward to getting back in the ocean in the wintertime as well.

 

Silvija: Very cool. And you Ellen?

 

Ellen: Quite similar that I really enjoy being active, maybe that's very Norwegian as well. So I enjoy running all year round. In the winter, I really like Telemark skiing, I'm a real youth of the 90's keeping that sport going. And in the summer, it's all about sailing for me.

 

Silvija: I'll have to ask about sailing because I want to send my kids I think to your school, but about telemarking. There might even be some colleagues of yours at DMV that don't know what it is. So say a few words about telemarking.

 

Ellen: Like Nordic downhill, so it's kind of like thick cross-country skis where your heel is loose, going downhill and you're skiing in a slightly different or opposite way to slalom skiing, we're putting weights on the opposite leg, going down and trying to be elegant and getting really deep into the turns going down. I'm not that that great. But trying. When you go downhill skiing or Telemark skiing, we're all of a similar age. Youth of the 90s who have kind of stuck with it from the Olympics in 94. I think

 

Silvija: It's so beautiful to look at as well it looks completely exhausting because you have to go down on your knees in every swing. Yeah, I remember my first downhill vacation with a group of Norwegians. We actually went to Austria, all things but one of the ladies was a Telemark skier like you and she did it within a woolen skirt. And with a wooden pole and it took my breath away the first time I saw it, and still absolutely adore seeing it in the slopes. Very nice.

 

Ellen: I really enjoy it. But I've not been able to convince my children to take it up.

 

Silvija: I think we just have to make them realize that even though it's not on Snapchat, it's still the coolest thing ever. So, tell me a little bit about the process of the strategy of sustainability at DNV. And perhaps how do you two connect your roles? And again, maybe we'll start with Ellen and then go to Lin.

 

Ellen: Yeah, well, the strategy work and DNV started with a big project looking at all the major drivers happening around us and speaking to employees and customers and management. And the big drivers that we've been talking about for a long time a digitalization and decarbonization, but also urbanization. And a lot of those big, big trends. So, the strategy was built on that. But even as we realize the sustainability had to be an integral part of it because of our research. I know you've spoken to our head of the energy transition Sverre Alvik. And our research really shows how the world is changing and must change how things are changing for our customers. And that will change things for DNV as well. And it means that we need to adapt both how we do our business, and how we advise our customers to do that. The strategy was launched at the start of this year. But at the same time, I mean, these things have, the sense of urgency has only increased with the EU Green Deal. China's commitment to net zero, and Biden coming back and rejoining the Paris commitment has really placed this front and center as well.

 

Silvija: So, it's a necessary strategy, but it's also a strategy that suits the purpose and the vision of the company and perhaps can even be used as a necessary differentiation. 

 

Ellen: Exactly. 

 

Silvija: And Lin, what does this mean to our customers? Or how do we bring them on?

 

Lin: This is a very good way of working when you're implementing sustainability into your strategy. Looking at what are the drivers in the market, and how do you affect the world around you, and what is affecting you from the world around you. And the conversations with the stakeholders that they mentioned, are also very crucial for companies these days to understand what are their expectations of you as a company. And there can also be new stakeholders, people, or stakeholders that you didn't need to relate to before, which is suddenly a new stakeholder for you as a company. When you understand the drivers and how you affect and how you're affected by these, and you've, you've talked to your stakeholders and understood what their expectations are, then you have the means necessary to actually do a risk assessment. What is good for us, how do we want to move forward, and then create the strategy of sustainability and towards that? And then, of course, it's the implementation phase that we can come back to. But I think DNV has set out a very good pathway of how to actually create this strategy. Then there's the next step that's coming. Sowe advise our customers to do the same thing that we've done internally.

 

Silvija: If I understand you correctly, and very simplified, you look for market drivers that are beginning to be very obvious, and you try to help customers find an opportunity in those drivers that will help them continue to deliver the same service or the same purpose, but in a new and more sustainable way.

 

Lin: Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that they need to deliver the same things, the same services or products, because maybe you discover in this journey, that actually the things that you are producing or doing today are not going to be viable in the future, it's not going to be investable in the future. So maybe this, what we see quite a lot of companies coming to terms with, okay, we need to change something big here, because the requirements that we will need to relate to now is not going to bring us money in the future. We actually need to do a large change with our business, we might change from, from oil and gas into energy, we might change into doing services towards the oil and gas industry into doing services towards other industries. So, we need to look at both the risks of not being able to produce or be there in the future, towards the opportunities of what kind of competence and knowledge do we have in our company that will be necessary? And how can we then turn our business in that direction? And this is quite heavy material for a lot of companies. And expensive, it can also be

 

Silvija: I want to just go one step further with you on that limb. So, for many companies, I think sustainability is the thing that they know they should be thinking about. But it's really difficult to change the way that you think about your identity and your business model. And it's taking that step of challenging what you always used to do what you understand, and what is your definition of what good looks like into a different definition of yourself. That must be very difficult. How do you create a strategic room?

 

Lin: First of all, you need the acceptance and anchoring with the top management, and also the board of directors so that these two groups can work together to motivate the entire company and the culture in the company to do this, which because I think when the CFO suddenly has a finger poking his shoulder from the banks or the investors saying, Okay, so what are you going to do in the future for me to invest in anything green? Then the CFO is like “Well, I haven't gotten that question before, but now I need to relate to it”, right? And then he goes to the chief of the company and says “Okay, we have to do something here”. So, this is normally the driver that something is pushing you into a new direction. And we see that now with all the new regulations and the drivers from the EU specifically that companies must change, but it's also totally necessary to start at the top management and the board level. Because there they can make the decision of how and if the company is going to change.

 

Silvija: One more on that one, Lin, because as a board member, I have seen two very different styles of companies and to be honest also styles of CEOs and some believe that innovation, disruptive innovation, sorry, is really the necessary way forward. And then some talk about it, but would rather not have to think about it more than necessary and outsource it to somebody in skunkworks-style. And I think the same goes for sustainability. You know some realize that this is the only way forward, and then there are those that kind of outsource it a little bit to the side. And my impression is that that DMV is definitely not that kind of a company. I know that Jeremy has been talking about both decarbonizations, but also many other aspects of sustainability long before it became fashionable. So, Lin, sorry, Ellen. I want to ask you; how do you work with a CEO or CFO with very strong ideas of what sustainability means? And then you still have to be the one defining that strategy?

 

Ellen: Well, I think in DNV, it's a case of evolution, not revolution. This very much ties back to our purpose of safeguarding life, property, and the environment. And that's a purpose that's 150 plus years old. And something that's really keenly felt by all employees. I think it's been a little bit more gradual, perhaps for us than maybe some of our, or some customers or other companies now who are facing up to having to do radical change instead. So, like you said, we have been talking about sustainability for a very long time. But now it's far more an integral part of what we're doing not just to get our own company in order, but also how we help but to our customers the same. It's much more aligned with our business areas with our advisory services, certification, and verification services. I think that makes it easier, in a way as well to get everybody on board and working towards the same goal. At the same time, you have that dilemma of are we going too far? Are we not moving fast enough? That dichotomy in big companies as well.

 

Silvija: Or perhaps that it's divided in how or how much urgency is felt among the employees?

 

Ellen: Absolutely. And I think, sitting here in Europe, maybe we have a very real sense of panic almost. And we think things need to change very, very quickly. But we are also working in a lot of other different parts of the world where the challenge is different. At the moment, the transition is going to be at a different pace, then we have to acknowledge that as well.

 

Silvija: What do you think, Lin? I think Ellen is absolutely correct. I think that this is also not only a brand issue, or a risk and opportunity risk issue, but it's also an employer branding issue because one of the largest stakeholders in a company is their employees. And to get keep people on board, or get people on board, you need to show that you are sort of in line with the expectations of where the company is going. I think employees today are more driven by values than before. They come to a company because they relate to the company's values, and they are very concerned or want to contribute in some way. So, then they go to a company that they see actually is able to do this. I think one of the stakeholder's groups, which is an employee's as is also an important driver for this change. It's a cultural change. And perhaps a company like DNV that was all based around sustainability and long-term-ism in 150 years now has an advantage. And we see that other companies are also trying to create that kind of advantage in terms of the employee, attractive employer branding, but also future business models. I want to ask you two things about this cultural change. And one is the dilemma that you mentioned yourself, probably profitability versus saving the planet, which to be honest, I interpret a little bit differently. I think of it as short-term profitability versus long-term profitability. In a world where too many leaders have been trained to think quarterly results, and annual shareholder value. How do we build in more of that long term-ism into our companies? And then the other question I also want to ask is, again, a cultural question, which you mentioned that we can all contribute more than we can think. Perhaps Lin can start and Ellen can play ball with those.

 

Lin: Yes, for the long-term perspective, I think it's important when you do create that strategy around sustainability, that you actually look a bit forward, you don't necessarily look for the next three years only, you need to plan ahead. And that's what we see in the EU. Green Deal as well that's, it's okay to not be sustainable fully today, but you need to create some kind of a plan, so that you in the long run, actually do contribute the way you want to. And that forces companies into a planning mode, which is very, very cool, actually. And what many companies get sort of stressed about it. Our greatest tip around that is to use the management system that they have. Because in the management system or the running business of a company, there are so many tools that can actually help you in creating good plans for securing that you reach your goals in time. And that you actually make the strategy accessible available, and that you fulfill it when you say that you will fulfill it. And I think that that sort of allows you to create passion into the work of all the employees and build on that culture that you have. I'll let Ellen comment on this one.

 

Silvija: Do I understand you correctly Lin, that when you're saying use your management systems, that you're basically building into those management systems also the goals related to sustainability?

 

Lin: Yes, definitely. So, imagine when we all got GDPR, to relate to and everybody was panicking. And somehow companies actually managed to create GDPR rules and create policies and principles and processes around it. And I think with any regulation hitting a company, they're sort of looking at it and saying, who is going to be responsible for this? Is it relatable to our strategy? Or do we need to do some changes there? And then they sort of set some goals, create a process, build competence with employees who are going to fulfill the tasks, they follow up with good routines, good evaluations. And that is using the management system and driving sustainability in the same way, will help you create success with your strategic sustainability strategy.

 

Silvija: Lin, one more question there. Actually, the GDPR example was a great one. I have a feeling that when you want to inspire people to do what's good for them, long-term sticks work better than carrots. What do you think?

 

Lin: Well, I think it needs to be a combination. And I think here is the role of the management very important. Because if you only have six, you won't get anywhere, you also need to motivate. And you also need to secure that there is a good process, there is a good competence building around how to actually perform that process. It needs to be good measurement tools around. So there need to be follow-up routines. Both sticks and carrots, I think are important, not just either one. But I think both of them are very important. And I think that's where the employer branding case comes in at well because if you only put the sticks behind the drivers for your employees, they will for sure just disappear because it's no fun in it. But if you keep it motivational as well, then you will actually manage to keep your employees as well.

 

Silvija: Something else important here is that you have to celebrate the achievements as well. You have your sustainability parties as well. Ellen, you say something like you know, we are going to be the trusted voice to our customers. And so, we have to have our own house in order and you know, eat our own dog food, show them what good looks like. How do we work with that?

 

Ellen: We're setting some goals, sustainability goals in our strategy, which are similar to some that our big customers have done as well. We've set one to switch to 100% renewable electricity for all our offices and labs around the world. Now we have 276 offices and laboratories. Some of those have 2000 people like here outside Oslo, and some of them might have four people. They're in very different regions and countries. It's an extremely ambitious, hairy goal, where we don't yet know the answer on how we're going to get there. But we've set the goal first, to reach this by 2025. We're working with some of our own consultants who typically advise our customers on this and energy systems and instant trust. And we're going through that same process to understand how do we do this at the different offices? Is there one solution that fits all or most of our offices? Do we need to customize? We could purchase green certificates really quickly for all our offices. But is that really green? Or does that kind of jump over some of the other more long-term solutions? Where we can look at how do we actually reduce the energy usage long term? How do we put into place some energy efficiency measures? Or are there other alternatives that we could look at that add on renewable energy to the market for the long term, for example? This is an extremely exciting project, which we're both using our employee's expertise, and bringing them along and in solving our sustainability challenge as a company,

 

Silvija: I think it's a great example. Because, first of all, when we do it ourselves, we realize that you know what's hard, and what's easy about the project like this before we start advising our customers on it. The second thing is that it's very, we're focusing on being measurable. And maybe you could say a little bit more about instant trust. And maybe even some of the work we do one say blockchain and relation, or maybe Lin can come in there better. But we are focusing big time in the future, on making both value chains, but also, you know, delivery models very transparent.

 

Ellen: Yeah. So, we have instant trust as one of our services where we can connect our customers with offers of renewable electricity, they can also help to put together a corporate purchase power agreement, to cover a big supply of energy use for our customers, for example.  We've also used blockchain, we've been partnering with a smaller company, a startup here in the Nordics called Nordic Store. And they have been working to help IKEA and their owner, Inka, do exactly the same that we're trying to do now switch to 100%, renewable electricity for all their stores and warehouses. And they have used a different approach, more automatic. Connecting their warehouses with renewable electricity sources. Here DNV is helping to assess and assure the blockchain solution that lies underneath this, for example. So we're involved in a lot of different ways, there are a lot of different solutions because this is an area where there isn't just one size fits all for our customers and for us.

 

Silvija: Lin, can I ask you to also expand a little bit more on blockchain and let's say food, My Story, or something like that. Luca has talked a little bit about some other examples, but not that one.

 

Lin: Okay. My Story is a service that tracks the, let's say, for a wine bottle, the grape from where it has actually made, to when it where it was produced, to the truck that it traveled through Europe, and into the Vinmonopolet, for example, here in Norway. It's actually showing the product's journey from the soil to the table. Another example is the Salmon, which is usually out in the pen. And then it must keep a steady temperature all the way to the store. We also have a solution where we can then track what is the temperature and secure it has the cool temperature needs, from the pen to the store itself. There are different solutions and we're also working together on the tech trace trust solution, where we can actually sort of see where this is in a blockchain solution, we'll see where it is actually at every time and, and how this all combines together.

 

Silvija: And the point is basically showing to people that they can see the whole process of the production, and it can be connected as well, I guess, to some sustainability measures that we can add in the future. So, you know, what's the carbon footprint of the salmon or what's the soil quality of the grapes and the wine.

 

Lin: It makes it much easier to track those things. And to have an overview of that so that you can all the time Look at how are you reaching the targets? How are you working with the targets, and do you see anything good going on in one part of the business that can be moved over to another part of the business where you might have things not going so well. It's all about creating trust, we see it also in the CIRCAL and REDUXA solution for hydro, for example, with the aluminum, where we see the circularity degree of the aluminum, where they have made a protocol of what they want to be the recyclable grade of the aluminum, and where we then verify that it actually has that degree and put that into a tag trace just solution where they consider the buyer of the aluminum can be certain that it actually has the right level of circularity in it.

 

Silvija: So, what you're saying is that I can require, for example, that the old accounts that I'm going to use are at least 90% or 75%, or something like that recycled. And you can prove that that's really the case.

 

Lin: Yes, and I think that's a good point you have that you can require something, I think as a purchaser today, there is a lot of opportunity in both inspiring innovative ideas, like what both Oslo kommune and Ruter did. Oslo kommune was wanting to have a building site fully electrical. So, the suppliers needed to sort of figuring out how to do that. And also, when the Ruter went out to their suppliers and said, we want to bring people from A to B without any fuel consumption. They didn't say we want the electrical buses, they said we just don't want any Co2 going out in the air. And then the suppliers needed to sort of come together and see, okay, what do we do now, and innovate the whole process itself. It doesn't necessarily mean that you as a company need to be innovative, but you just got to ask the right questions.

 

Silvija: I think that's a super important point. Because very often, people will get into almost religious discussions, whether it should be hydrogen, or electricity, or biofuel, or what, instead of actually focusing on solving the problem, which is making the carbon footprint as small as possible. I also want to ask you about the measurability of this, because part of the cultural problem here is that we often feel that, I'm too small, just one of me won't change anything, just my company won't really move the needle, but it really is where it has to start. So how do you inspire people to be a part of that change?

 

Lin: I think people have realized more and more that they can make an impact. And I think creating the right environment for that, for those people to actually create the change or create an impact in some way, is a very good tool. If you have employees with good ideas or ideas that they want to share, give them the space, we have a couple of tasks for us internally now in DNV. And, and we see that by giving them the space to actually grow and understand and figure out something good is actually coming out of it. And something that we both will benefit from internally, but also our customers externally. And just having one person starting such an idea or being giving room for building on something can create an impact. Just look at Greta Thunberg. I mean, she started a youth revolution on the environment, just by standing in front of the Parliament in Sweden with her poster, right? I think she shows as Pippi did 100 years ago in the 70s, it just takes a person to believe in something and then have somebody else believe in them to create the environment for actually building on something like this.

 

Silvija: Ellen, what do you think?

 

Ellen: Yeah, I think also it's about getting started. And taking those small steps. Because trying to design the perfect solutions or solve everything at the same time is a monumental task, and we'll be exhausted before we start. But it's about looking at where can you start with your goals. What can we start to measure in terms of our carbon footprint as a company like DNV, for example, we don't know everything about our carbon footprint? We're a company of 12,000 employees. Some of our purchasing is centralized, some happen individually on the spot because somebody decided they needed to go buy something. So, it's a near-impossible task for us to have total control of that. But we can start with some things that we know and measure that, and then set some goals based on that and reduce. And that helps us quite a long way.

 

Silvija: You're reminding me of a conversation I had with a guy called Strategibonde, the strategic farmer is really kind of no-nonsense wise guy in the best meaning of the word. And he says, there are only two rules of success. The first one is, you know, get going. And the second one is to keep moving. And I think it's a really important point to many companies that are wondering, where do I start? How do I create the perfect strategy? And there is no perfect strategy. It's just about getting started. And then learning as you move along. I just want to ask you, as you're moving along, how do you translate this into business terms? You know, how do you make sure that your board says, fine, okay, we have to do this. And we can see that we can afford it long term and short term.

 

Ellen: It ties back really well to where Lin started about really knowing what are your stakeholders asking about you? What is important to your employees? What's important to your customers, or your financers and investors? And if you can go to your board and say, if we really want to get this loan, for example, if we want to secure these big customers, we must do the following, then that's a pretty compelling argument for any board, I think. 

 

Silvija: Lin?

 

Lin: Yeah, I think Ellen is correct there. And I think also now that the board has a different responsibility than before, also to sign off on the non-financial sort of things going on in the business play a key role here. I think it was the UN sustainability development goals that actually has that in their sort of genes to go outside, you know, don't look back at what you did last year, to find the same stakeholders the same kind of measures and goals, go outside be explorative and try to figure out what is affecting you and going to the board or to the management and to the employees, as well as saying that, you know, we have to do this to survive, or we have to do this change to actually go in a direction, then people will understand when it's sort of thoroughly gone through and they understand that the reasoning behind it. Obviously then our stakeholders as well, then they will think, well, they listened to us, they understand what we mean. And we're going in that direction.

 

Silvija: I think the last question are very often like to finish with recommended literature and kind of friendly banter about that. And Lin recommended good crime. I actually got hooked again on science fiction, and I'd like to psychoanalyze you and me and try to figure out what does it say about the way we look at the world? Right now, but Ellen talked about "To Kill a Mockingbird". And to my great shame, Ellen, I have to admit it's a book I haven't read. I keep confusing it with "The Mice and Men".

 

Ellen: Yeah, I was lucky enough to be forced to read it in junior high school. And it really stuck with me because I was lucky enough to have a fantastic teacher, who not only made us read it but really took us through what it meant. And it's set in the 60s in the US. It's the trial of a black man and a horrible crime that he has purportedly committed against a white girl. And it's about all the reactions in that local community. There's a lawyer, of course, defending the black accused man, and this is told from the point of view of his children. And it's a very interesting book, if you haven't picked it up yet, I would recommend it, I pick it up now and again, maybe every five to 10 years, and read it with new eyes because you definitely read things in a different way as an adult and as a child, but it's, it's really sad that it's still as relevant today in 2021, as it was in 1960. And hopefully, one day it will be a historical curiosity instead.

 

Silvija: But the quotes that you bring up from this book, "You'll never really understand the person until you consider things from his point of view until you climb inside of his head skin and walk around in it". I think it'll be relevant always.

 

Ellen: That's true.

 

Silvija: And in this case of sustainability, I guess we have to try to perhaps work a little bit in the skin of our kids, but also in the skin of our politicians and our employees. And as you both have been pointing out, understand your stakeholders and where they need to be going. And that's when we get things moving.

 

Ellen: Exactly. That was a really nice way to summarize it. 

 

Lin: Yes, it was.

 

Silvija: Thank you so much for participating in this inspiring and very educational, friendly chat. 

 

Ellen: Thank you very much.

 

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