PepsiCo Chief Sustainability Officer Jim Andrew was operating the $92 billion meals and beverage firm’s SodaStream enterprise when CEO Ramon Laguarta tapped him to steer sustainability technique in August 2020.
Laguarta’s marching orders for the skilled enterprise growth strategist: Outline the processes for embedding environmental metrics extra deeply into the operations of PepsiCo’s working models. Andrew’s connections within the discipline and familiarity with managing revenue and loss statements are key strengths.
“Issues don’t occur at headquarters in sustainability, they occur in our companies,” stated Andrew throughout the newest episode of Local weather Pioneers, our sequence that includes innovators and leaders shaping the company local weather motion. “Every single day, I’m speaking to my friends on the manager committee, specifically the CEOs of the companies.”
Sustainability as workforce sport
Andrew, who studies to CEO Laguarta, speaks with a lot of his C-suite colleagues a number of occasions weekly and checks in with others at the least as soon as each two to 3 weeks.
“At PepsiCo, we’d like all people — and positively have all people — as a part of the workforce,” he stated. “But it surely’s additionally a full physique contact workforce sport, so that you’ve received to be on the market. You’ve received to be speaking to folks. You’ve received to be having these conversations.”
Andrew believes his expertise in managing enormous company budgets — at PepsiCo and in his earlier position as head of technique and innovation at well being tech firm Phillips — taught him the way to argue extra successfully for investments in power or operational effectivity applied sciences in a manner he’s almost certainly to win assist.
He advocated strongly for a course of that embedded local weather threat components and different environmental issues into PepsiCo’s monetary governance, together with how the corporate evaluates mergers and acquisitions.
Sustainability leaders can’t ask or count on a division head to close down a manufacturing unit for a serious retrofit at a time when it will impression income, Andrew famous. Due to his enterprise background, Andrew is aware of when it would make sense so as to add these tasks, resembling when operations are paused for different enterprise causes.
“I believe having run companies truly permits me to be a greater accomplice to our companies relating to actually making sustainability occur,” he stated.
Find out how to change ‘No’ to ‘Sure’
Reflecting on PepsiCo’s progress over the previous 5 years, Andrew acknowledged that he underestimated the complexity concerned in making an attempt to vary established programs — each inside the corporate and amongst its enterprise companions. That have formed how he responds to resistance to the sustainability workforce’s agenda or proposals.
Turning “no” into “sure” requires digging under the floor to uncover the foundation reason for an objection and understanding whether or not there’s a possibility to resolve for that want in addition to the unique request, Andrew stated.
“Should you can pull aside what appears to be a disagreement, you’ll discover there’s two questions or two completely different goals,” he stated. “It’s truthfully quite a bit simpler to resolve for 2 completely different goals than to resolve for simply two basically completely different factors of view on one goal.”
