60 G making sustainability work Leadership. Provide a framework for checks and balances; identify and build skills to address sustainability issues Engagement. Support engagement as a corporate value through dialog and consultation with stakeholders Alignment. Establish operational practices and incentives that align with sus- tainability policies and performance goals Diversity. Include a diversity of races, skills, experiences, genders, and ages in executive and director positions Evaluation. Evaluate the performance of the board and the company in pro- gressing toward a higher level of accountability and sustainability perfor- mance Responsibility. Ensure that the board responds to and maintains trust with company stakeholders 3 G G G G G Numerous corporate collapses and scandals have spurred recent changes and boards are being required to take a more active role in monitoring, evaluating, and improving the performance of the CEO and the company. Many companies are creating board committees specifically focused on governance, accountability, and sustainability. BP, for example, has established an Ethics and Environment Assurance Committee, chaired by a nonexecutive director, to monitor all nonfinancial aspects of the company's activities. Boards are also being asked to focus more on evaluating and improving their own performance as a means of improving corporate governance and transparency. Boards can significantly improve both the evaluation and management of the fundamental ele- ments of corporate governance and sustainability through better measurement sys- tems that will provide relevant information on the performance of the board, the com- pany, and the CEO. (I have more to say about these performance evaluation systems in Chapter 5.) CEO commitment to sustainability The CEO is in a key position to convince the company's constituencies that achieving sustainability is a corporate goal. Research has clearly shown that sustainability strate- gies are typically top-down, and that the most effective implementation occurs when top management is clearly committed to the strategy. 4 The CEO leads the company in setting sustainability policies and making key decisions for sustainability strategies. To deliver positive sustainability outputs and outcomes, leaders should: G G Know their company's current sustainability activities and impacts Set the organization's sustainability strategy and goals and gather informa- tion on sustainability indexes through benchmarking with peers and com- petitors