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Ep 70: Why GCs need to care about ESG with Christine Uri, Founder ESG for In-house Counsel
46 Plays14 days ago
If you're in the C-Suite, what do you really need to know about ESG? Is ESG the new privacy? And should ESG really be so controversial?
Join Christine Uri, founder of ESG for In-house Counsel, as she explains the importance of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) to both public and private companies in today’s global regulatory climate.
Listen as Christine draws on more than a decade offering sustainability solutions to her corporate clients to explain how GCs can advocate for ESG to fellow executives, why ESG is great for the bottom line, and why, as she puts it, “ESG is the new privacy.”
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-70
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
What are sustainability solutions?: 4:03
The difference between Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental, Social, and Governance: 7:36
Why she decided to launch a consulting company?: 10:09
Why should ESG matter to in-house counsels?: 11:59
Explaining why “ESG is the new privacy:” 15:28
How general counsels can advocate for adopting ESG practices: 20:11
Is ESG relevant at the board level?: 24:40
Why ESG has become politicized in the United States: 26:52
What ESG for In-house Counsel offers: 30:43
How to advocate for ESG at your company: 33:50
Rapid-fire questions: 36:50
Book recommendations: 38:29
What Christine wishes she’d known as a young lawyer: 40:02
Connect with us:
Christine Uri - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christineuri/
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues.
Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
Recommended
Transcript
Starting with a 90-Day Plan
00:00:00
Speaker
When I was a general counsel, I would i always had a 90-day point and for every team member that brought on. And then at least half of that plan would be a list of names. And the I would tell them, the most important thing in your first 90 days is to go find these people and build a relationship with them. and Get on their calendar, set up 30 minutes, you know go to a function, however you do it. But i'm I'm going to be asking you at the end of the 30-day or 90 days, like do you know these people? Because that I would pick out folks that I knew would be making the right for but the team members.
Introducing Christine Urie
00:00:43
Speaker
If you're in the C-suite, what do you really need to know about ESG? Is ESG the new privacy? And should ESG really be so controversial? Today, we are joined on the abstract by my friend Christine Urie, founder of ESG for In-House Council. She helps In-House Council launch ESG initiatives that meet client, investor, and regulatory expectations. Before starting her own consultancy, she was the chief legal officer and the chief sustainability officer at NG Impact, which she joined via a merger. She actually joined that company via an act So she basically spent like 10 plus years working for businesses that deliver sustainability solutions and services to corporations, cities, and governments around the globe. So she knows a lot about ESG from a lot of different angles. And a fun fact, she is a longtime resident of the Pacific Northwest, but she clerked for a federal judge in West Virginia early in her legal career.
00:01:57
Speaker
Christine, thanks so much for joining me today for this episode of The Abstract. so It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for the invitation. I was just thrilled to hear that this is something that you're interested in and Spot Drop is interested in, and you think your audience would want to learn more about.
00:02:13
Speaker
Absolutely. I think a lot of folks listening in who are GCs, members of in-house teams, legal ops professionals are going to be super interested to learn about ESG today. But let's start like easy and soft, which is before you launched your business at the start of the year, you've took a lot of last fall off. What did you do with that time? Yeah.
A Break and New Beginnings
00:02:37
Speaker
ah Great question. I actually keep this noted on my LinkedIn profile because I want people to know that I took time off. I had been in 10 years in a law firm and then 10 years at a corporate job without really any break at the time that I left NG impact. and I just thought, you know when am I going to get a chance to really take a breather again in my career? Probably you know we you just don't run across that very often. So luckily I'd been around long enough to know, take advantage of it. It helped that my job, I ended my job right going into summer. So that in July and August, if you know anything about the Pacific Northwest, that is the time to be here. And I'm like, I'm not going to work. That's it.
00:03:22
Speaker
So I took the summer. I played a ton of pickleball. I spent time in the yard with my my dog, Scooter, um in September. I was very fortunate. My brother was getting married in Italy, so I had an excuse to go to Italy for two weeks ah um and play there. And then, you know, October, November, I started just thinking about what I wanted to do next.
00:03:44
Speaker
That sounds like a dream lifestyle, like pickleball, hanging out with your dog, going to Italy. I love that. And I really like that you leave it on your LinkedIn profile, too. I mean, you know that probably comes from many years of being a member of the C-suite and wanting to signal to folks that it's OK to take some time away from from work. OK, before you launch the consulting business, as I mentioned, you spent about 10 years working for companies that provided sustainability or provide sustainability solutions.
Sustainability and Energy Solutions
00:04:13
Speaker
what What does that mean? like What does sustainability solutions mean? And then the fact that you were in the sustainability sector, how has that impacted your view or influenced your view of yeah ESG?
00:04:26
Speaker
Well, starting broadly, and sustainability is a word that that really gets misunderstood quite a bit. So with sustainability that at its base is about processes, a process that can continue on its own without collapsing. Though it has a very broad meaning. ah For the company that I worked at, we really focused on climate and energy. And this is where you see sustainability, that word being used very often these days.
00:04:56
Speaker
ma My theory of it is that climate is one of the least sustainable things that we have going on in the world. So if you're trying to focus on what's not sustainable, how we're approaching climate, that's got to be top-top of the list. So the company I was at worked in energy, worked with Fortune 500 to help reduce their carbon footprint, reduce their energy usage. And for me, what that means is I spent 10 years just steeped in this environment that was that was all about climate and how corporations can solve for climate. When you started working on ESG for for NG or for the sort of companies that that came before, did you have any idea that ESG was going to become such a big field or that so many other folks who were in-house were going to want to work on this? Was was that clear at that point
ESG's Evolution and Importance
00:05:45
Speaker
in time?
00:05:45
Speaker
No, yeah I started in 2013 in house and at that time I wanted to work at a company that aligned with my values, but I had no environmental sustainability background. I had no ESG background. I had i wasn't really, I was more focused on a values alignment than an environmental mission.
00:06:05
Speaker
In 2013, companies were pretty early in on what they were doing. So we had a corporate sustainability program, our corporate, it was corporate social responsibility. That's what companies called it. And I was an advisor on that from the very beginning. And it you know it was really treated in companies like something separate from the business like, oh, this is a nice thing we're doing on the side to give back with our employees. And we're planting some trees and making some charitable donations.
00:06:34
Speaker
you know Our everyday work was still around energy and helping clients use less energy. There's more of an economic motivation at first, although carbon was always a piece of it. And then what I saw you know over the next decade was this huge you change in how companies approached sustainability and the the term ESG kind of ah it shifted out of a pure investment context into more of a company operations context.
00:07:05
Speaker
because investors were really wanting companies to improve their ESG practices. And then along that line, you saw I saw companies really setting bolder goals. In 2019, 2020, many, many companies coming out with net zero targets or carbon neutral targets. And all of a sudden, yeah this became a top you know top live issue on corporate executives' plates, so which is very different from where where it was when I started in 2013. You used a term there, and and maybe it's good for us to be doing this early on. You said corporate social responsibility, CSR. We're also talking about ESG, like environmental and social governance. Where did those two terms come together? Are they different? Do they mean the same thing in a lot of contexts?
CSR vs. ESG: Key Differences
00:07:53
Speaker
Walk us through that.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah, they are different things. And I can tell you, experts can spend a lot of time arguing over what they mean. ah But fundamentally, corporate social responsibility is a term that was used more, you know, early 2010s. And it was about corporations, you know, being responsible citizens. And like I said, we're really kind of separate from their operations. So, you know, maybe they do some philanthropy, or maybe they do some employee volunteering,
00:08:23
Speaker
and something along those lines, but it wasn't really integrated into operations. And then you know that term started to to slip out and sustainability came to be the term, the term that was used. And when sustainability came in, It increased the environmental focus a lot. It increased the climate focus a lot. ah What happened was that companies were putting out sustainability reports and sharing sustainability data on a voluntary basis. But the data and reporting and statements, there there wasn't confidence that they were accurate and they weren't ah comparable. So investors started wanting to know that the data was accurate and wanting to make it comparable.
00:09:06
Speaker
So the that's when you saw the term ESG come in and investors push for and regulators responded to requests to have um regulations and standards for these disclosure processes. So you're seeing that now a shift from voluntary to mandatory. And then in the US, you have this whole, and i as far as I can tell, it's US only, you have this whole other dynamic of anti-ESG backlash that's coming out of the political sphere.
00:09:36
Speaker
And in some cases, companies are kind of retreating to sustainability. But the two are really, you know I'd say, in my opinion, ESG is part of sustainability. And it's honestly of the part that we really want companies focusing on because it's the part that's directly within the company's control that's measurable.
00:09:54
Speaker
that they can make progress against and that investors, clients, stakeholders can can really uncover what is ah what is a company doing. so There's a lot for us to unpack in that. and that I think and we're going to keep talking about it. I want to hear first, though, about why you decided to launch a consultancy. like Why did you decide to step away from doing this full-time for one company in-house and try to help others? like How did you know it was the right time to do that?
00:10:24
Speaker
it's ah It's a great question. i don't know if you you know When is it the right time to start a business? In 2020, you twenty twenty i'd started publishing on LinkedIn and I dealt with this idea of seeing more and more in-house counsel taking on ESG or sustainability issues.
00:10:44
Speaker
And rarely did they have the kind of expertise and support that I had at NG to do that. um And so there's a lot of struggling to get going, or I'd see general counsel who wanted to do something, but just didn't have the confidence. So I started publishing on LinkedIn resources that to encourage the in-house community to become more active, to help make them more effective in advocating for this in their companies, to provide know, practical solutions, practical steps that they could get their arms around and take and implement in their companies. So I've been doing that since 2020. And during that time, I just saw the need really grow as these regulations came into effect. And I was, you know, after 10 years in a company, I had kind of reached um as much as I was going to learn and in the position I had there. And I just thought, okay,
00:11:36
Speaker
Here's an opportunity to grow and expand and learn new things and help more companies. And your content is fantastic, by the way. If folks don't follow you on LinkedIn, they absolutely should. They'll just start learning like a little bit about ESG, week in, week out from the graphics and, you know, slideshows and et cetera, all the things that that you publish. Why do you think yeah ESG should matter to in-house counsel, to to your clients? and I might also sort of ask a question that's that's encapsulated in that, which is, is it different if, let's say, you are a public company and so the SEC regs affect you as opposed to if you're a private company?
The Growing Importance of ESG for Counsel
00:12:17
Speaker
like Why should it matter to sort of those two populations of in-house lawyers? So for private in-house lawyers, what I what i see all the time is that yeah ESG is landing on their desks in some way. So most commonly I hear yeah and from a US context where often if you're a private company, you're not really subject to regulatory disclosure requirements currently around ESG. I hear about clients and how clients are asking for ESG data and ESG reporting. And that's been mean that's been happening for years, but it was happening when I was a chief legal officer. But honestly, clients weren't super serious about it. like you
00:12:57
Speaker
You could find a way to kind of fudge around answering the questions if you didn't have good answers. That's not the case today. Clients really want answers and they they want good answers. And that's because of a couple different drivers. One is if you have larger PN clients or large global clients, they are becoming subject to regulatory requirements that require them to dive into their supply chain and get this data. so it's part of their compliance programs. And then it also, a lot of the companies have set with a net zero goal. And if they've set a net zero goal related to their scope three, that you know these are, I know, terms of terms of art within this world. But if they've set these targets, it means they are including their supply chain in what they consider their carbon footprint and committed to driving that down. So you're seeing, if you're a private company, you're ah in a B2B sector. we're talking this is
00:13:53
Speaker
you know very much need to be. this These client requests often land on in-house counsel's plates. If you're private equity owned, um a lot of the private equity players are also pushing for this kind of information. This can also land on in-house counsel's plate. Usually in-house counsel is also more aware of the regulatory environment. and you'll kind of If you're in Europe, you are just awash in regulations right now. i mean that You are buried in yeah ESG regulations that you have to figure out how to comply with. If you're in the US or Canada, you're kind of watching this and you're wondering, okay, when is this going to impact me? What do I have to pay attention to? so It kind of becomes one of those things in the in the background of your worries. so All of these um and it contribute to why in-house counsel at private companies are getting involved in ESG. At public companies, yeah things look a lot different. Usually they're larger. Usually and they'll have a separate sustainability team of some kind or some leadership level that is responsible for ESG or sustainability, whatever term you decide to use. And what the the the legal counsel really has to make sure
00:15:02
Speaker
that and the company is disclosing accurately, that they're disclosing consistently, that they are that they're you're more likely to be subject to some of these broader global regulations or financial reporting standards, that those are getting hit. So there there being there is a real legal role that has to be played regardless of where yeah ESG or sustainability sits within the organization. You've coined a term and I spent ah you know a good portion of my career working on privacy and data protection issues. So it really resonates with me and also based on all the things that you've just said, right? Like vendors are demanding it, investors are concerned about it. You're thinking about diligence down the road. There may be regulation coming even if it's not here yet.
00:15:50
Speaker
yeah ESG is the new privacy. Tell us more about sort of how you came up with that, why you came up with that, why that you think is the right framing for in-house counsel potentially to be using around this. Yeah.
ESG and Privacy Laws: A Parallel
00:16:04
Speaker
so The way i I roll back to my, I was a US General Counsel in 2015 and there we knew that GDPR was coming and it's going to be enforceable in Europe in 2018. And this was down the road and I started learning about it um and what will be required. And my first reaction was, that's insane. That's an European problem. I don't to deal with this. You know, I had that um initial pullback on on privacy. And there was a moment
00:16:34
Speaker
in the US when, you know, if you were had a US only company and I let later i grew over in a leadership over 20 countries, so that changed the picture. But if you had a US only company, you would be looking for ways to ignore this because it just seemed tremendously inconvenient and you didn't want to deal with it. but Pretty soon what happened is it became very apparent that you could not ignore privacy ah and and GDPRs specifically because now we you know we operate in a global world. Most of the businesses that are big enough to have a GC will have global ambitions of some kind. We'll have you know some global clients. It's a much more borderless business operation. And if you are operating, so a couple of things happen. If you're operating in multiple countries,
00:17:22
Speaker
it is very difficult to maintain different you know privacy practices across the board because yeah you know you have too much data flowing in different directions. So it's much easier to just apply a conservative standard. So that's one. And then once you have those larger companies just applying GDPR in the marketplace, you see it become a competitive issue. And then you have you know small startups that have to end up with the SOC 2 compliance and it just becomes a standard for doing business that people expect. and so i yeah I saw that whole progression and I see yeah ESG in the same way in terms of the reporting. Now, what the actions you have to take are very different. and in If you're complying with European CSRD regulations, they'll honestly be much heavier than GDPR. However, I think from a US general counsel perspective, it's
00:18:17
Speaker
It's a hopeful comparison because it's a reminder of, okay, European regulation can expand out and impact US businesses. So even if you are not directly subject to this regulation, companies do do substantial business in Europe, they will be setting up these disclosures and being able to provide this information. They will be expecting it from their supply chain and it is going to infiltrate and be something that you have to deal with regardless of whether the US government ever has regulation related to these disclosures.
00:18:55
Speaker
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00:20:11
Speaker
Let's say that you're the GC and you, for whatever reason, you are now the one sort of advocating for adopting ESG practices or reporting. is Is that really the answer that you give your CEO or your CFO if one of those folks is pushing back? like how How have you dealt with the investment needed in these programs?
00:20:34
Speaker
Never start with regulation. Regulation, very important to lawyers. I'm sorry, it's not as important to any executive team member. What I do with my clients is I start by going out and looking for what the stakeholders are asking for. If you can gather data that shows over half of RFPs are coming in with requests for this information or clients are asking for it in onboarding or that your deal velocity is slowing down because you can't provide adequate responses. Everybody's going to care about that. Bringing that perspective in. If your investors are at your doorstep asking for this data, your CEO will definitely care about that. For your CFO, oftentimes you can bring in cost
00:21:24
Speaker
savings through efficiencies. CFOs love that. There's also a risk management aspect to the the CFO. So talking to them about, okay, what are the material risks that this is triggering for our business and how do we manage those? Then bringing in your CHRO, Human Resources, they're about the talent pipeline and employees and prospects are asking about a company's sustainability practices, and they want to know that they're working for a responsible company. So I do think it's important to bring for lawyers to bring in the regulatory piece. I choose when I'm kind of talking to executive teams and doing trainings.
00:22:03
Speaker
I put all that other stuff first, and then I bring in the regulations and the the role of the regulatory piece and the message when you're building a business case is to show, and this isn't going away. so its um is there is Especially in the US, s because we had this situation where the SEC put out climate disclosure regulations and then immediately spayed its own regulation, there's a kind of this back of the mind sense that maybe this will all just go away.
00:22:31
Speaker
But once you start looking at that um global regulatory perspective, it's like, huh, all right, clients, investors, employees all asking for this, and it's not going to stop. And so that's that's the key message from a regulatory perspective in, in again, the US.
00:22:48
Speaker
In the EU, it's, nope, we have to do this, and we're going to be subject to huge fines if we don't. So, you you can lead with regulation in the EU. What if the objection is different from the C
Handling ESG Backlash
00:22:59
Speaker
-suite? Maybe instead of the CFO and the CEO being concerned about, hey, look at the headcount, we have to allocate to this, and oh, you're telling us we have to go hire a consultant to help us with this, and there's some advice from outside counsel. What if the objection instead is,
00:23:13
Speaker
like from the CMO and the CEO saying, okay, I see how this could be good for us, but what if there's backlash to us doing ESG stuff? How do you explain that to those sorts of internal stakeholders? Yeah. I mean, companies choose a different forms of communication. There's companies that believe that taking action on ESG topics is key to their brand and they want to lead with it and they want to have it on their website and they want to have, you know, ambitious goals, and it makes sense for for who they are.
00:23:44
Speaker
And then there's companies that don't want to lead with it. They don't think that it's going to resonate with their audiences that are out um you know looking at their website, but they still have to be able to answer on the back end. They still have to meet investor needs. If a client requests the information, they still have to be able to provide it. And if you look at the numbers, so this is the other thing I love to lead with when I'm talking to executives, you know it is impacting things like credit ratings. It's impacting things like um the cost of borrowing money. So there's all kinds of financial reasons that you may take action even if you're not splashing it on your website. In fact, you know splashing it on the website has gotten a lot more tricky as greenwashing litigation has increased and there's
00:24:35
Speaker
and more scrutiny on this the statements that companies are making. Is this bubbling up to the board level? I mean, that's kind of an interesting question maybe. Is the board your ally here potentially if you're looking for resources and funding and you want to push yeah ESG programs within a business?
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it should be bubbling up to the the board level. I saw a ah quote in from a Harvard Law Review publication that was, you know yeah ESG is the new frontier of fiduciary duties. What you're seeing, you think about a board's fiduciary duties, and it is all about managing kind of material risks and opportunities. for the business. maybe Maybe managing is not the right word. Let's say it's all about overseeing and making sure that the company is appropriately managing material risks and and opportunities. And that doesn't just stop at the environmental and social ah role. is A a yeah lot of politicians would like to say, oh, nope, you you don't have to manage those material risks if they are related to the environment or
00:25:42
Speaker
or social classes, but that that it just makes no sense. If it's a material risk to the business, it just is. you know and so your That extends into your fiduciary duties, which means as environmental issues and social issues, they've become tremendously more complex and impactful over the last two decades. so Boards really have to understand how these impact the company and make sure that there are appropriate procedures related to it. now Are all boards doing this? Not yet. and There is an upskilling that's underway. I do some training through the boardroom Africa, which is fantastic. That helps board members and future board members upskill on ESG so that they are conversant in these topics.
00:26:27
Speaker
There are similar ESG board training programs around the world. and I've done some individual board trainings where it's like, okay, we're ready to upskill and uplevel how we're thinking about this and know what we need to do, whether you're you know preparing for new disclosures.
00:26:43
Speaker
or just thinking about what your risks are. so This is absolutely becoming a key part of fiduciary duties ah and something that the board should be aware of and and monitoring. you've You've touched on it a couple of times, and it's this idea that ESG has become, and I mentioned it in my introduction as well. that ESG has become politicized. And we're not on CNN, so I'm not asking for like a deep dissection of what different politicians think. but and And then the flip side of this, too, is you also mentioned sort of greenwashing. It's that some companies aren't really doing much substantively around ESG or sustainability.
00:27:21
Speaker
but are trying to take advantage of what they can say from a marketing perspective. So, I mean, I guess, you know, on the politicization point, like a broad question, like, why do you think that's happened? And then maybe on both sort of topics, what sort of responsibility do you think that C-suite leaders have to change the narrative around ESG or around sustainability? Or is that, you know, I don't know, above their pay grade even?
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, from a political standpoint, there there are kind of philosophical reasons that the Republican Party in the US prefers smaller government. We can go back, you know, more than a hundred years about that. And the Republican Party generally wants government to stay out of different issues, including environmental and social issues as part of the overall philosophy of small government. what that's meant for their political rhetoric is that they've taken this term ESG and that is very much a business term and come out to their constituencies and made it a political term. So ESG is really not about government action. It's about what a company is doing and what a company does is based on the interests of the stakeholders of
00:28:46
Speaker
that company where the board and the management team are in the best position to make those decisions. And so it's it's been, it's been a good source of headlines. It's been ah a good source of kind of getting the base riled up to talk to rail against yeah ESG because it sounds like you're you know railing against a ah larger government and overly controlled um approach and you know your um liberal elite or however you want to to discuss it but the the political conversation really has nothing to
00:29:21
Speaker
do with the actual business, the underlying business reasons that a company would want to move forward on ESG. so it's It's unfortunate that it's been and of brought into that sphere. At least I look at it as unfortunate as an ESG professional. but that's That's where we're at ahead today. i mean Maybe put another way, let's say that companies got worried about this and then rolled back some of what they were doing on ESG. like What is the cost? What does that look like? Yeah. what i've seen you know companies have There's companies that have changed how they talk about ESG. Very few have changed what they're actually doing because typically what they're doing was ah you know supported by business fundamentals. Now, there are exceptions to this. There's a ah tractor company that really just killed everything related to DEI and ESG because
00:30:15
Speaker
their constituency was not was not happy about it, um that I think that they faced some consequences afterwards related to that decision. So there are a few examples where companies just completely backtrack. But typically, what happens is maybe a company changes how much or how it talks about it, but it moves forward with actions at staking because they made the decision to do that for the benefit of the business.
00:30:43
Speaker
Can you tell us as you know as we start to wrap up, and then I've got some fun questions for you too, a little bit about how you help companies on
Starting the ESG Journey
00:30:52
Speaker
ESG. like what What do your services look like? What do you offer? That's a great question. I love that question. All right, so what I do, I start with companies. Usually they're at the beginning of their yeah ESG journey. and they're They're realizing some of these client and investor pressures. They want to take action, but it feels kind of overwhelming and they don't have the in-house expertise necessarily to sort through it. Now, I'll start by doing just a targeted needs assessment, go through, figure out, OK, what are all your stakeholders looking looking for? What are your different pressure points? I do a little bit of digging to figure out what is the company actually doing. Usually what I find is companies actually doing a lot more than people realize. It just hasn't been kind of aggregated together. So there's already an underlying narrative before we you know take further action that the company can share. if it's aware of what's happening, then organizing that into yeah know what I call quick wins and strategic items. So there's some quick wins you can always get there. you know Maybe you're missing a Modern Slavery Act policy or something like that. like you know If you're a US company doing business here, you'd
00:32:03
Speaker
you don't have slavery, so let's just get the ah policy in place. um If you're ah a broad multinational manufacturing or raw materials firm, it gets more complicated. But a lot of the companies, you know there there are these little think actions you can take where you're you're just reducing friction with your stakeholders. And then the strategic items are more things that will require a longer term investment. Typically, you climate would fall within this. DEI would be something that could fall within this. um I'm seeing AI governance. That's a big one that companies need to take on right now.
00:32:39
Speaker
And those need to be brought up to the executive team because you're going to have to engage the the company across the board. You're going to have to have resources, internal resources from different teams, which requires a broader executive support. i'll go um can do some executive training and board training on these topics so that executives and boards have the the basic picture and understand why this is important and can start building a consensus around it and figuring out how to move forward. And then um if companies want to do some reporting, i don't I won't do a hundred page glossy report. I don't really
00:33:17
Speaker
I believe in those for these small companies, but I have something I do called the minimum viable report. and This is, hey, we're just going to strip it down to the information that your stakeholders need and provide that. and let's not Let's provide that and let's not you know go off the deep end in terms of the the reporting. so I try to really help companies strip it down to the material issues.
00:33:41
Speaker
get what's core, focus on those material issues, and make actual progress against them instead of and trying to cover everything on the waterfront. Let's say that I'm in-house, maybe the last sort of like substantive question for you. Let's say I'm in-house and I want to learn more about ESG. I want to start educating myself on this. Or I want to advocate to take on some of this work internally. Where should I look outside the business to learn besides your LinkedIn posts? And how should I make the case to my GC or maybe I'm the GC to my CEO that like I'm the right person to do this or help do this?
00:34:21
Speaker
Okay, fantastic questions. So for the first one, actually, I have a visual aid. I i have this book, ESG mindset. It's by Matthew Sokol. He's one of my favorites on LinkedIn. He publishes on ESG all the time. And it's really one of the few books I've seen that's done a fantastic job of tackling this subject. So if you're a reader, get a copy of Matthew's book and start there, you're a alone, you're learned quite a bit.
00:34:49
Speaker
And then the other thing that I thought was just fantastic, ah this summer, Nawar Alsadi, who publishes quite a bit on LinkedIn, that's N-A-W-A-R-A-L-S-A-A-D-I, he put together a nine week series of posts that broke down ESG and what he did is pulled together yeah the best articles and free resources across nine different topics. So if you wanted to go on a self-education journey, go back and look at his post because it it is a very excellent, just guided map through what's already out there. That's great. And but's say let's say that I am in-house and I'm sort of like advocating to my boss to to take on some ESG work. like how How have you seen that done well?
00:35:44
Speaker
Typically, if you raise your hand and you're willing to do it in a company, people are happy to let you do it. so it's they're in Until you ask for budget. And really, when you ask for budget is when the rubber meets the the road in terms of action.
00:36:00
Speaker
and what What you really have to do in that case, and this is the perfect season right now. We're early October when we're recording this. This is budget season. You have to build those individual supporters, whether it's your salesperson, your CFO, your CHRO, to bring that ask and to bring that full picture business case. so Talking about the clients, the investors, the employees, the different financial impacts ah of this so that there is an underlying business case to support why the company should invest in it. If you are just going to spend 10% of your time working on it, put up your hand and companies will generally let you do it. But once you need those dollars, you have to be a bit more strategic.
00:36:46
Speaker
Well, this has been a masterclass on ESG. I've got a few fun questions for you now, Christine, that I like to ask our guests. The first one is what your favorite part of your day today is.
00:37:01
Speaker
um Gosh, that's a tough one. so Actually, i I really like people interactions and really being able to spend time with people. so Doing things like this, yeah do I do a lot of podcasts. I do um a lot of presentations. I do presentations for my clients. and I work in my little virtual office, right? This is where I am at most of the time. But when I get to have those moments of interacting and helping to educate people, that really means a lot to me, which is one of the reasons I said yes when you called me. And you've got the mic. You're like, you're a professional podcaster. I'm good to go. Do you have a professional pet peeve? Oh, I do have a professional pet peeve.
00:37:45
Speaker
what i so When that you're in a large meeting, yeah this this would happened to me quite quite a bit in executive meetings, sorry for all the executives who worked with me, and the conversation comes down to just two people, and the two people are circling around and circling around and circling around, and it's then 30 minutes later, and it just has nothing to do with the rest of the meeting. So I really like it in ah in a large group meeting situation when it's, you know, you're keeping the conversation so that it is involving everyone in the room. Don't waste people's time. That's a, that's a very fair one and good one. yeah yeah deserve' more toing yeah Much more succinct. I am a big reader. You've already given us one book recommendation specifically on ESG. So if you want to skip this one, that's cool too. But I'm always looking for book recs for myself and for our audience. Could be something environmental related or could just be a great book that you've read recently.
00:38:46
Speaker
Oh, I'm a reader too. And not everything I read is on yeah ESG. Usually at the end of the day, I do read some kind of fiction. I hate looking for books. um So I found this shortcut. If I read a book, it's either off of the Oprah list or off of the Reese Witherspoon list. did i That's it. I kind of confined my world to these two and it's always good. that I recently just read the story of Edgar Satill off of the Oprah list and it's a story about a mute teenager who's living on a farm in the 1960s with his family and the family's business
00:39:25
Speaker
is to raise these incredible, amazing companion dogs. And they're it be the dogs in this story kind of take on a little personality and a a life of their own, along with the, of course, coming of age and the story of the family and the setting.
00:39:41
Speaker
um So if you follow me, you know, I post weekly on Scooter, my dog. I am a big dog person. And I believe in sharing the love of dogs. So getting this kind of, it was a dramatic novel, but having this, you know, the perspective of the dog ah weaved in there really, really hit home for me. That's great. I need to read more fiction too. So I like that. Last question for you, Christine, as we wrap up something I like to ask all of our guests. It's if you could look back on your days, just getting started as a lawyer, something that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then. Yeah. I think when I think back to my early like law firm associate days, the the thing that took me a long time
00:40:28
Speaker
to realize was the importance of relationships. So I i went into law firm life and I was like all about the work production, all about the the billable hours, all about having that perfect product, which is, you know, I thought that it was was really the key to success. And it, you know, it is important clearly in that area.
00:40:49
Speaker
But what I learned in in law firm life is really the make or break was the relationships that you built. And so having a proactive plan and a proactive approach to building those relationships is critical. And this is why when I was a general counsel, I would i always had a 90-day point and for every team member that brought on, and then at least half of that plan would be a list of names. And the I would tell them, the most important thing in your first 90 days is to go find these people and build a relationship with them. get on their calendar, set up 30 minutes, you know go to a function, however you do it. But i'm I'm going to be asking you at the end of the 30 days 90 days, do you know these people? Because that I would pick out folks that I knew would be making a break for but the team members.
00:41:38
Speaker
I love that advice and I love that tip for managers everywhere. Christine, thank you so much for joining me for this great episode of The Abstract. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. And to all of our listeners, thanks so much for tuning in and we hope to see you next time.