The word sustainability is very ambiguous and it means different things to different people. However, it does just mean one thing, and I like to use the ESG acronym because it's so simple. Environmental care or environmental stewardship, social responsibility and governing your company ethically.
-Elba Pareja-Gallagher
Episode Summary
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Whiteboard Wisdom: Quick Tips for Supply Chain Success, with Scott W. Luton!
This brand-new, YouTube-only podcast program breaks down supply chain success into quick, easily digestible lessons. Join host Scott Luton along with expert guests as they explore key strategies, best practices, and innovative approaches to elevate your supply chain game. Whether you’re a logistics expert, supply chain enthusiast, or somewhere in between, tune in to this special series and learn how to drive success in the dynamic world of supply chain management.
Join us for this first episode as Scott welcomes back Elba Pareja-Gallagher, Principal with Sustainability Navigator, and they walk you through four easy steps to launch a simple starter sustainability strategy. Walk away with tips to take constructive action in your role and organization. Join us for Whiteboard Wisdom!
Episode Transcript
Scott Luton (00:01):
Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are, Scott Luton and special guest, Elba Praha Gallagher with you right here today on Supply Chain. Now welcome to today’s episode, Elba. How you doing?
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (00:35):
Great. Glad to be here.
Scott Luton (00:37):
We are so delighted to have you back. You’re on top of the charts for appearances here and it’s so neat to have you back after way too long. So folks, we’ve got a great episode here today, especially for our supply chain now community on YouTube. We’re featuring a practical and efficient and fun discussion on four steps to launch a simple starter sustainability strategy. Say that five times fast, right? We’re offering constructive tips for taking action and making progress in your organizations and in your role. So stay tuned. But before we move forward, I think federal regulations, Elba requires me to ask all of our viewers out there to like and comment on this episode. And if you enjoy this conversation, share it with a friend, they’ll be glad you did. Okay. Again, great to have Elba back featuring my dear friend, a proven leader, proven practitioner, Elba Perha Gallagher, who brings over 26 years of experience at UPS to the table and a whole lot more, a plethora, as I call it, of get it Done, leadership Success. Elba, great to have you back and if you would tell us a little bit about yourself.
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (01:46):
Great, I’m so happy to be here. I became a supply chain professional years ago and I have just so enjoyed networking with the supply chain community. So I am glad to be back and sustainability is so important as organizations look at the risk around their supply chain and how to be more environmentally sustainable. So I’m excited today to talk to everybody about what you can do about supply chain sustainability.
Scott Luton (02:18):
We’re going to do that. Elba, I always have loved not only your constructive and sheer capability for making things happen, but the passion in which you do it, it is contagious. Lemme tell you, Elba, the very practical agenda we have here today. Please share it with us.
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (02:34):
Sure. I’m going to give everybody a four point checklist if you don’t know where to start with the sustainability strategy or doing anything with sustainability, I’m going to basically give you the four things that you can do. And it’s all about stakeholder engagement, contacting your customers, finding out what’s important to them, talking to your employees and understanding what’s important to them, recruiting an to help you summarize some information and then sharing the information with your executive leadership team with a call to action. So we’re going to walk through that today.
Scott Luton (03:10):
It can be just that easy. I can’t remember the quote out there, Elba. It’s not easy to keep things simple, but gosh, when you can bake in a lot of simplicity into a process or an initiative or a change effort, you can bring a lot of people to the table to help drive more outcomes quicker. Is that right?
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (03:31):
Yes, absolutely.
Scott Luton (03:32):
Okay, so let’s do this, Elba, before we get into these four steps, what I love where you’re starting out is to make sure we’re all part of the conversation. No one’s left behind because we hear this acronym e, SG regularly. So Elba, if you would walk us through what folks should be thinking about when we hear the acronym ESG.
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (03:53):
And really even the word sustainability is very ambiguous and a lot of people are like, what does that mean? So it means different things to different people. However, it does just mean one thing, and I like to use the ESG acronym because it’s so simple. Environmental care or environmental stewardship, social responsibility and governing your company ethically. So if an organization does these three things in balance, they’re going to create an organization that lives a long time, right? Has longevity, and that’s really what the word sustainable needs. So the environmental section includes the typical things you’d think of, waste reduction, energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions. Certainly in the transportation and supply chain sector, we emit a lot of carbon dioxide emissions. So that’s a key part of the environmental section. In the social responsibility side, I like to think of people, it’s all about people. So you’ve got gender diversity, labor standards, certainly giving the people a right to organize and keep the company in line with keeping their rights in check, human rights, human capital management, so all of the things around people.
(05:10):
And then the last one, governing ethically or governance. A lot of times people say government, but it’s governance and it has to do with how does a company govern itself? Does it follow all the rules? Does it work within the guidelines? Certainly board diversity, which sometimes people think about gender equity and board equity, but it’s within the governance part. How does the board govern itself? Executive pay auditing. Also, another thing that people may not think about is IT security falls under governance because you’ve got to protect the information of the customer and the organization itself, all the employee data, all of that stuff. So that’s in governance. So those are the three components of what we mean by sustainability.
Scott Luton (05:57):
I love that. And on that last note, goodness gracious folks, if you think there’s been massive cyber risk in the most recent years, just wait, it’s about to get a whole lot more challenging and that just brings a lot more weight and importance to the whole ESG world. Is that right, Elba?
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (06:14):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. There’s so much risk. All of the ai, I mean every day there’s some more and more information and ways that you can use AI and it’s just another opens up more doors for more risk.
Scott Luton (06:28):
Well, more bad folks out there trying to do bad things, but hey there, there’s always good news if you go looking for it. And on the flip side, that intersection that you’re kind of speaking to Elba of where modern technology, AI of course intersects with ESG and sustainability, there are some powerful things taking place. In fact, I was reading the other day, Elba and Harvard Business Review where GE Research partnered with GE Renewable Energies and they applied modern machine learning to wind turbines across a certain part of the world to really optimize maintenance when they operated just all of this stuff, saving billions of dollars in a renewable energy sector. So massive opportunities. And
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (07:17):
Scott, you bring up a great point, which is that a lot of people think that it costs money to be more sustainable, but many times being sustainable actually saves you money. And you were just describing one example when I was at UPS, we use telematics a lot in our vehicles and it helped us reduce the amount of maintenance that we had to incur expense and it helps you save on energy, save gas, et cetera. So absolutely
Scott Luton (07:44):
And beyond saving, adding to the bottom line as investors and consumers and all those stakeholders we’re going to probably touch on in a moment, they’re demanding more. Action is made, more progress is made when it comes to the whole ESG umbrella. So a lot of good news there folks, if you go looking for it. Okay, so Elba back to our four point checklist. We’re going to make this really practical and give folks an opportunity to take action when they leave this show here today. So where are we starting with the first step?
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (08:19):
So let’s go for it. I think we have a slide. So step one. So the first thing you want to do is to contact, just pick your top three customers and talk to them and ask them these three questions. Hey, what part of sustainability, if any, because some companies, for whatever reason, that may not be something that they’re going to focus on and it would be good to know that so you’re not wasting your resources. So what part of sustainability matters to your stakeholders? So you’re asking your top three customers what matters to their stakeholders because what matters to their stakeholders matters to them, and it should matter to you. And stakeholder engagement involves talking to customers, employees, suppliers, investors, regulators, and communities. So have a chat with your top three customers and take a lot of notes and listen closely about what is important to them so you know how to prioritize your resources.
(09:13):
Then the second one, Scott, if you can pull up that slide. Sure. Where are they in their sustainability journey? Are they just getting started? Are they in the middle? Are they well advanced? This is important for you to know so that you can figure out where you fall in, where they are in their journey. And then the last one is, do they have sustainability goals? Ask ’em what are they? You should get familiar with them and ask them, how could you collaborate? Is there a way for my company and your company to work together to move their goals forward around sustainability? Back to your comment on it doesn’t just cost you money, it can create growth opportunities. So if you work with your customers, you might be able to add an additional product or sell more of what you’re good at because you engage in this relationship around sustainability. So that’s number one. Talk to your customers.
Scott Luton (10:04):
Yes, and where you started back on the first part of this first step is listen. Listen to them. That’s the word you emphasize on the front end. I love that all of us talk too much and we don’t listen enough, but this is such an important first step. And I would just add also Elba, I love the emphasis on customers, but all those stakeholders you listed there, especially suppliers, supplier, relationship development and management, big powerful trends that can really deliver some big time results as well. So this might be a helpful exercise beyond just customers, but all those stakeholders. Yeah, and
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (10:42):
Scott, you mentioned one thing. Listen, one of the things that I really learned from my education and sustainability is listen to your critics. So if you listen to your critics, that’s how you really understand opportunities and risk. And so that’s key.
Scott Luton (10:58):
Wonderful. I love that. All right, Elba, man, we got so much going on and we’re just the first to step out of four. Where are we going with number two? Number
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (11:07):
Two, okay, so now we already talked to your customers and understood their stakeholders. Now I want you to talk to your employees. Our employees are so critical they understand our business in whatever role they play in the business. And so if you convene a diverse group of employees, and I just pick 10, right? Keep it simple, just pick 10 diverse employees from different parts of the company, different backgrounds, and talk to them about these three things. Number one, what part of sustainability matters to you and why? Really understand why. All those things on that chart that you showed, right? Those three columns, E, S and G, which one of those matters to them and why? Number two, how could sustainability impact their day-to-day job responsibilities and goals, which one of all those things in sustainability, could it be that there’s hidden opportunities that the business could grow from? Each employee is familiar with their area of responsibility and maybe they can find a hidden gem. Number three, based on their job knowledge area, what business growth opportunities could sustainability generate for the company as a whole? So really understanding your employees and what they know about sustainability and how it could create opportunity for the business.
Scott Luton (12:25):
I love that Elba engaging the team members and employees from diverse walks of life functionally, all the different full holistic definition ways that we can define diversity. One quick question, I love that. Number 10, I know you have led big old auditoriums full of thousands of people and you’ve led really small and small groups. That number 10 seems to be significant to me because if you get a group of eight, 10 folks together, everyone can really share in a full sense what their perspective, their expertise, or what their views are. Would you comment on that?
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (13:02):
Yeah, exactly. It’s like a focus group, and by having a group of 10, it enables, like you said, people to feel comfortable speaking up and having a chance to be heard. In a group of 10, everybody gets a chance to talk. Where if you have a large group, different personalities, people may feel intimidated, may not be able to be more candid with you. So I find that a group of 10 is a great number and it’s easy to manage, right? To schedule 10 people to take notes for 10 people, et cetera,
Scott Luton (13:35):
And making sure this is manageable, actionable, practical. There’s a big important aspects of this approach. We want to again, give folks an opportunity and a guide for getting started basically the minute they finish watching this video, right?
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (13:50):
That’s right. And one last thing about this, number two is that there’s a hidden benefit of engaging with your employees, making them feel like they matter. Like wow, they’re asking me for my opinion, talk about employee engagement and retention. It’s a great practice,
Scott Luton (14:12):
Absolutely great rule of thumb, whether you’re talking sustainability or really anything else, I would argue, okay, Elba, we’re 50% down, 50% they go, if my South Carolina math works for me, let’s move on to number three. If you would tell us about number
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (14:26):
Three. Sure. So reviewing number one, we talked to three customers. Number two, we talked to 10 employees. Number three, we’re going to recruit one top performing employees. Sometimes we call these high potential employees, employees who are very committed and have a lot of capacity to add value. And we are going to recruit them to now summarize all this information from the customer groups and from the employee focus groups and consolidate it and create a presentation. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to look for a high potential employee with a passion for sustainability, to volunteer for a high profile project that they’re going to be able to help you take to a senior leadership team for consideration and what’s in it for them. They can help craft sustainability actions and receive coaching and executive visibility. So you’re basically recruiting someone because we know we don’t have budget for consultants and we don’t have a lot of time, so how can we make this easy to execute ourselves?
(15:29):
So recruit an employee, help them summarize all this information and then have them create a PowerPoint deck. And this short PowerPoint deck is what the leader can take back to some executives and say, Hey, this is what we did. This is what our customers and their stakeholders are saying, this is what our employees are saying, this is what we can do. What do you think? We want to create a call to action. So step three is recruiting a high potential employee to help you consolidate this information, create a presentation that we’re then going to take and deliver a call to action to executives.
Scott Luton (16:04):
Love that. Alban, let me ask you a critical question that I always struggle with because if anyone knows me, they know I’m not real brief. Brevity is not my strong suit. But when you’re thinking of assembling all this information, great information, but into any kind of visual or any kind of plan, presentation, brevity is really important. Your thoughts.
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (16:23):
Absolutely. And so you see there’s a theme here where you’re going to see it in the last one, the 10 PowerPoint slides. So we got 10 diverse employees that do the focus group and then 10 PowerPoint slides. And really I’m being generous with 10, when I was presenting to executives, we might only get five slides. So it really requires strategic thinking, critical thinking, and a strong capability to summarize and condense information into only the most essential points. And so that’s why you need a high potential employee who has the skill to consolidate information.
Scott Luton (17:00):
Excellent point. And I didn’t mean to overly foreshadow point number four, but it’s such a great bridge. So point number four, this four point checklist is as you’re saying,
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (17:10):
Yeah, so you’ve got this high potential employee, they’ve volunteered to create this message of 10 slides and now you’re going to go present it at a future meeting to leaders and explain to them what happened, what you did, and what your call to action is. So based on these findings from interviews with customers and employees and other stakeholders, you’re going to ask your executive leaders, Hey, what do you need to know to support the development of a sustainability roadmap that aligns to our customer sustainability goals? So you’re not asking them to spend money and create this big program and electrify the fleet, for example, or anything crazy like that. All we’re going to ask them is, Hey, what do you need to know to support the development of a roadmap on a piece of paper? Just a roadmap. If we did something, these are five things we could do. So that is number four, a call to action to your executive leadership team.
Scott Luton (18:10):
I love it. Elba, it seems like to me this exercise of, especially in this case, starting with your customers meeting, whether you’re meeting them in person, which is always valuable. And as the world has started to open back up, man, I really enjoyed those opportunities or Zoom or whatever. You know what I’ve come to appreciate just simple little phone calls with no video these days, but as you’re gathering information, really listening to them, whether it’s five or 10 or a hundred, and as you go through these steps and then take the most important points to your point, which is a really important point as part of this conversation and sharing that with leadership that is valuable as it relates to sustainability opportunities and really the organization as a whole. Because it’s the thing over the pulse, it’s what customers are saying, right?
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (19:00):
That’s right. And the thing about these four steps is they really are simple. Like if you were doing nothing with sustainability right now, you could do these four things pretty easily. No money’s involved, really, it’s just using the time of your employees and you’d be able to come back and give the executives the summary that is so aligned with your organization.
Scott Luton (19:22):
That’s right. Okay. Speaking of, I forgot the phrase. We preview what we’re going to share with folks, we share with the folks and then we tell ’em again what we told ’em somewhere in that butchered phrase I just shared there. Let’s just quickly review what we’ve shared here with this four point checklist.
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (19:43):
That’s right. So if you want to do something about sustainability and you don’t know where to start, here are four simple steps you can take immediately that aren’t going to cost you any money. Number one, contact your top three customers and listen to what matters to them about sustainability by asking them those key questions. Number two, convene a group of 10 diverse employees and leverage their insights about sustainability and how sustainability fits into their jobs and what opportunities they see for growth within the company around sustainability. Number three, recruit a top performing employee to help you develop and launch an executive conversation around creating a roadmap. And it’s a great with them for the employees, they get executive visibility, coaching and personal fulfillment for doing something that’s different than their day-to-day job. And then number four, using steps one, two, and three information, you’re now going to make a call to action and you’re going to ask executives, Hey, what is needed for you to be able to support the development of a sustainability roadmap? So you’re not asking for money, you’re just saying, Hey, what would it take for you to let us write down steps of what we think could become a sustainability roadmap?
Scott Luton (20:55):
Well said, well said Elba. I love that recap and hey, I messed up that last phrase, but we have what we’re going to nail this one. Cause the three Bs we have been brief, you have been brilliant, and now we’re about to be gone, right? So the three Bs I think is a rule of thumb. Alright, so what I want to make sure folks is y’all connect with Elba, connect with all the great things she’s doing, take action. I love how actionable this expertise and advice and information that Elba has presented here today. So Elba on that note, so we’ll make it really easy for folks to connect with you. How can folks connect with you and grab a conversation with you or a cup of coffee or you name it?
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (21:36):
Sure. So I’ve got a website, sustainability navigator.com. There’s also a QR code there. I write a sustainability newsletter on LinkedIn. You can sign up for that. But yeah, reach out to me. You see my cell phone number there and I also want to put a plugin for a $49 course I’ve got out on my website for anyone who wants to figure out how to get into a sustainability career. So there’s so many young developing career professionals and many people who want to change into sustainability. So I’ve got a course out there, 60 minutes and you can get my tips on how to transition into a sustainability career.
Scott Luton (22:18):
I love it Elba. I love it. What a great deal and what you can’t even call it an emerging market these days. Again, the interest, the demand is out there. It’s really been cool to see the places we’ll go across the globe in the months and years to come. Okay, Elba Prayer High. Gallagher, thank you so much for joining us here today. Really have enjoyed your time as always.
Elba Pareja-Gallagher (22:41):
Thanks everybody.
Scott Luton (22:43):
Alright folks, on that last note, again, Elba has shared a real simple but effective and proven plan for how you can get started here today. So I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation with Elba as much as I have. Hey, be sure to connect with her, take advantage of those resources she shared out there. I love that LinkedIn newsletter, I’m a regular reader of that. But you know that the onus is on you now to take at least one thing, hopefully four from today’s conversation, put it into practice deeds, not words. Your customers, your suppliers, your leadership, your colleagues will all be thrilled. And with all that said, Scott Luden here challenging you on behalf of the supply chain now team to do good, to give forward and to be the change that’s needed. And we’ll see next time right back here at Supply Chain now. Thanks everybody.
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Elba Pareja-Gallagher is a finance and strategy professional with 20+ years of experience at UPS. She’s held roles in Finance, Investor Relations, Marketing and Strategy. Today she’s part of a Business Intelligence and Analytics team, reporting on the $46B+ US Domestic business unit. She’s an enthusiastic champion for change and for finding new ways of thinking about problems. She believes in the power of diversity and inclusion to harness the creativity of all levels and generations of employees. Elba is also the founder of ShowMe50.org. The non-profit’s vision is to achieve 50% women in senior leadership positions across America by influencing change in workplace cultures and talent management practices.
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