About Rob Abbott
ROB ABBOTT is one of Canada’s leading sustainability strategists, writers, and speakers. An expert in the integration of sustainability with organizational and competitive strategy, Rob works with senior executives and their teams across a wide range of industries, including energy, utilities, mining, manufacturing, renewable energy, technology, and financial services. He is also a trusted advisor to government agencies, NGOs, and academia. Rob is a frequent media commentator on sustainability and green economy issues, and he is recognized globally as a compelling and motivating speaker. He is also an expert conference moderator and content weaver for large-group processes.
Rob believes that the world – and the world of business – is at a hinge point of history and that profound change in the way strategy is created, implemented, measured and reported will become commonplace as human society confronts manifold changes in the environment-energy-economy nexus. He has honed his thinking and approach in this regard over 25 years of consulting practice and is known for his ability to quickly absorb and distill vast amounts of information from all areas of a business and focus leadership teams on what truly matters. His interest, emphasis and expertise lie in creating the conditions for transformational rather than transactional change.
Rob is a certified management consultant, and a leader who has helped craft national environmental policy, certify environmental professionals, and guide environmental NGOs. He is a former sustainability practice leader with two of the world’s largest and most respected business advisory firms (Coopers & Lybrand and Deloitte and Touche); he led the Western Canadian operations for Stratos, a leading sustainability consultancy; he served as director of strategic environmental management for Golder Associates, one of the world’s most respected consulting engineering firms; and he led one of the Networks of Centers of Excellence in Canada. A prolific and passionate writer, Rob has published two books, Conscious Endeavors: Essays on Business, Society and the Journey to Sustainability (2009) and Uncommon Cents: Thoreau and the Nature of Business (2008). The unifying theme in Rob’s undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral research was the integration of sustainability with competitive strategy. He remains fascinated by this topic and continues to develop tools and techniques to bridge the gap between the world of strategy and business and the environmental or sustainability community.
He divides his time between the Prairies and the Coast of western Canada.
Less is More in Sustainability Reporting
The emergence and (tentative) mainstreaming of sustainability has helped unlock new sources of innovation and opportunity for business – to say nothing of helping to reduce humanity’s footprint on the Earth. That ‘s the good news. The bad news is that in the rush to demonstrate their sustainability credibility, many companies are spending too much time and money on sustainability reports groaning under the weight of too many “metrics” and “indicators”. By way of example, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines – an influential set of sustainability reporting tools – suggest up to 81 indicators! Even the Balanced Scorecard, the most influential strategy measurement template of the past decade, recommends 20-25 measures. These one-size fits all efforts don’t really speak to or “fit” anyone. Worse, tracking too many measures may cause managers to lose sight of the few that really drive the achievement of strategic objectives. Hence, less is actually more when it comes to measuring and communicating sustainability performance.
