On Tuesday, February 25th, the 23plusone Friends attended the SDG Action Manager event at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam. It was organized by B Lab in collaboration with the United Nations Global Impact, to share with us how the SDG Action Manager will mobilize companies to increase their positive impact.

Decade of Action

With 10 years left to achieve the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it’s time for the business community to lead this global effort. To support this Decade of Action, B Lab and the UN co-created an impact management solution that enables businesses worldwide to set goals, track progress, and stay motivated on making the world a happier and healthier place for all. 

Hugo von Meijenfeldt from the United Nations Global Impact was there together with Dan Osusky from B Lab, to guide us through the evening.

Level of ambition; from complying to activism

On a scale of complying on one side and activism on the other, most businesses are somewhere in between. Doing no harm is great and being responsible is much better. But it’s nog enough. To stop global problems from getting bigger, companies need to be mobilized toward activism. It’s the only way to achieve the ambitious SDGs in time, which will ultimately lead to a happier, healthier and sustainable living for all. Besides that, as Hugo stated, companies that are comfortable with just being compliant must be worried. But what will happen to these businesses? Will there still be a place for them in the market?

SDG implementation framework

Companies wanting to increase their impact needs to anchor their ambition in the long term strategy and governance. That means redefining or rethinking the purpose of the company, creating an overall narrative about what they stand for and strive for, and then making sure that the strategic planning and goal setting is aligned with that north star. From here, it needs to be translated across operations. For example into how people are lead and managed so new talent knows and can believe in what the company is about and how they are impacting the world for the better. Then engagement with all stakeholders must be enhanced through marketing, sales and partnerships

The SDG Action Manager

The SDG Action Manager will help companies to create a holistic view of their performance on the SDGs based on question modules. Giving an answer to a question about current performance can lead to the confrontation that the company is lagging behind or even having a negative impact. After selecting the desired future answer, the tool then facilitates the steps to help achieve that desired impact.

Press play and find out how the SDG Action Manager works

Our learnings

• To create a company culture where the SDGs are embraced, all the internal and external stakeholders must be involved in anchoring them in the long term strategy. It starts with asking them what they find important in life. Therefore we new to pay more attention to leadership skills at all levels.

• Many ceo’s are confused at this stage. They want to contribute and they want to make an impact, but they don’t know how. It is important for enterprises to set goals to be able to get collaboration throughout the company. This is why the SDG action manager is so interesting - it makes leaders understand, set goals and create clear action steps to take.

• There is a need to confront ourselves as a means for internal conversation and not the other way round. Any kind of tool or partnership that creates momentum in the right direction is the right kind of tool or partnership.

• It’s ok to focus more on one SDG as long as we see the others in the corner of our eye

• The tool is for free! Since both UNGI and B Lab are non profit organisations, this tool is especially set up to really support more companies in getting actively involved (data collected will be anonymous and only for benchmarking).

• So many interesting people attended the launch of this new tool showing their commitment to work together for a new kind of economy. And during the after party we got to know new friends running clever businesses and new connections are made.