Season 4, Episode 156 : Anna Murphy

Will Richardson 00:03
Welcome to the Green Element podcast where we meet business leaders and innovators, transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable, and in the process help you on your sustainability journey. I'm your host Will Richardson. Our guest today is a freelance consultant who supports companies embrace a systems based approach to sustainability, ensuring their strengths are utilized and equity is achieved. She uses the Future-Fit business benchmark methodology to achieve sustainability goals for her clients. Welcome Anna Murphy.

Anna Murphy 00:40
Thank you, Will, it's great to be here.

Will Richardson 00:43
I'd like to start by asking you about your journey into the sustainability sector. How did you get involved in sustainability?

Anna Murphy 00:51
Yeah, so I was having a think about this. And I think a lot of it comes down to or at least some of it comes down to the fact that when I was a child, I got really weirdly obsessed with primates. Especially gorillas, and orangutans, I've always loved them. And it became very difficult to learn about them without becoming very upset about the conservation issues surrounding them. So I actually remember crying in front of the TV once I don't remember how old I was, but seeing orangutans being forced from their homes because of deforestation and the fires that were being lit in order to make way for palm oil plantations. And then learn a bit later about Diane Fossey, who is this very prominent conservationist who was murdered by poachers for her work with mountain gorillas. So I think that sparked quite a lot of it from from a relatively early age and then there were a couple of really influential other experiences in my life. One of those was on my gap year, I went to Tanzania to take part in, you know, one of these very typical Gap Year volunteering schemes, and found that extremely, extremely problematic. The whole process of going and building toilets and teaching children English, when really, we were young, and kind of had no idea what we were doing, we had no idea about the culture that we were immersed in. That then prompted me to go and learn to go and study colonialism and postcolonialism when I did history and politics at university. And while that might not seem related, actually, it was an inroad to learn about the economy and how our economy over the past couple of 100 years has resulted in a huge amount of environmental degradation and some of the relevant structures. One other experience, which was very influential was interning with Bailey Gifford, which is an asset manager. So I got this kind of research travel internship and ended up looking at the role of blockchain and how it could be used to facilitate transparent supply chains. So that consumers then had more information about certain products and could make more informed choices. And just through conversations with people at Bailey Gifford, I got a real sense of how powerful finances and actually changing finance just a little bit, could do a lot more good than, you know, setting up a social enterprise or working for a small charity or something like that. So that got me really interested in impact investing, which is was then kind of how my career started.

Will Richardson 03:40
We're seeing or hearing a huge amount about that at the moment, aren't we? Around finance and pensions and where people store their money, keep the money, save the money, and the effects that it can have.

Anna Murphy 03:57
Yeah, definitely. I think it's, I mean, actually, I watched a YouTube video yesterday by Business Declares and John Elkington was really hammering that home, how important the role of finance is, and Future-Fit. The Theory of Change really, is grounded in providing better information to investors about the social and environmental impacts of companies. Because at the moment so much, you know, one of the problems with ESG metrics is that they're not actually giving people the right information. And that then means that financial decisions and investment decisions are based on not particularly valuable, and material information.

Will Richardson 04:44
I always find it funny. And kind of, I guess worrying because of the network that we have and the way that we do business. We're paying money into accounts of sustainability experts and a few of the more prominent ones have still got some of the banks that you wouldn't necessarily think they should be banking at as their banker and it just shows where we've got to get to. Because if those seasoned professionals are not changing their banks and knots, and we've changed our bank now twice in the last few years because of, first of all, because of ethics, and second of all, because we outgrew them, but it's not that hard to do. It is a bit of a pain in the backside to be honest with you. And I guess well, I guess what I'm saying is, is that there's a lot of communication that needs to go on, on top of the communication that's already going on around this, isn't there?

Anna Murphy 05:44
Yeah, I think that's true. And I think there are two issues that you know, I've changed my bank to Triodos, which is good, but I mean, the online banking experience, I'm sorry Tridos, but it's pretty terrible compared to what I had before. So like, at the moment, there is a trade off to using a more sustainable banking option. And that's just me as an individual, never mind when it comes to business banking, which I have much less experience in. But then the other thing is that a lot of these so called more sustainable options are actually not - they're not sustainable, they're still investing in oil and gas, even if they've decided to eliminate some of the worst options there. They are by no means sustainable. So yeah, I think I think those are the two main issues there.

Will Richardson 06:33
Can you tell us a bit about the Future-Fit methodology that you use?

Anna Murphy 06:38
Yes, I would love to. What I think is really special about it is really that it starts with the destination in mind. So a lot of sustainability benchmarks are encouraging businesses to become iteratively better, or to become better compared with others in their industry. Whereas Future-Fit has this vision of a Future-Fit society, which is that all humans and other life can flourish on earth forever. So it sounds very, very grandiose and slightly ambiguous. But actually underpinning it are these eight properties. So you've got energy is renewable and available to all, water is responsibly sourced and available to all, you know, waste doesn't exist, pollution doesn't exist, people have the capacity to live fulfilling lives. And there are eight of these properties. And then underpinning these are 23 breakeven goals, which provide a very practical way for businesses to understand how to get to a point where they're no longer undermining the pursuit of that property and what they need to do to get there. Now, Jeff, who's one of the CO is the future for all his jokes that if we could go back and redo it, we probably wouldn't use 23 of them because it's somewhat cumbersome, can be slightly intimidating when you're when you're talking to businesses for the first time. But at the same time, they are really practical. And you know, each one of them has what's called a progress indicator. So you get a score from 0 to 100, depending on how well you're doing. Some of those are really simple to be honest, and really quantifiable in that - say the goal to do with waste, you literally just need to get to the point where you have eliminated all waste and that's how you get to 100 and it is done by weight. Whereas some of the more people related ones are more done by a set of or more measured by a set of criteria. So with regards employment times, it's to do with you having sick pay and you having holiday and you're not working over a certain number of hours per week. So those breakeven goals articulate what any business must do in order to reach what we call this extra financial breakeven or this line in the sand where you're no longer doing any negative damage. And then Future-Fit also has what we call the positive pursuits, which any business can take part in or can contribute to, to speed up progress towards the society which embodies the properties which I mentioned earlier. So one example just to help clarify, the difference between the breakeven goals and the positive pursues is that if you're say, a chemicals company with regards water, you want to make sure that you're not using water in water stressed areas, and that your discharge is of a safe discharge quality. So that's you making sure that you are reaching 100% on the breakeven goal, but you're unlikely to be doing something proactively good for the world regards water, whereas a water treatment company which is helping provide clean water for those you previously didn't have access to it is contributing to the positive pursuit. So that's kind of the difference and there are positive pursuits across all of the properties in the same way that the breakeven goals also cover all of the properties.

Will Richardson 10:14
And any organization can go through it, can't they?

Anna Murphy 10:18
Yes, for any for any organization.

Will Richardson 10:20
Of any size?

Anna Murphy 10:21
Any organization of any size. And there are different ways you can approach doing it. So, we have this online community, which is fantastic way to get started, actually. And we've just published in that a tool to help you prioritize the most important goals to start with. So, I was going to say, for smaller businesses, but actually, for any business, quite a useful way to get started is to think to use this tool to work out your most, most important breakeven goals to get going with so you don't have to look at all 23 ones.

Will Richardson 10:58
Okay. Why do you use this methodology? And what value does it offer?

Anna Murphy 11:04
There are a variety of reasons that I was really drawn to it and actually ended up applying for a job with Future-Fit in the first place. Because I really believed in it having spent a bit of time researching and analyzing different frameworks. I think Martin, so he's been on your podcast before, he's one of the CEOs, he talked about it being used by investors, which is true. What I personally find really exciting about it is the way that it can be used as a strategic management tool. In the it collates and brings together so many existing, basically so much expertise across the social environmental space. And so it's a really good kind of one stop shop for understanding the best course of action across your business and in all of its different fields. On top of that, I think it gives a really clear definition of what sustainable looks like. And unfortunately, that is incredibly rare. You know, some of the founding team spent about six years I think, researching environmental and social system science to develop the benchmark. And this is incredible, because there's so much confusion in this space for businesses about what sustainable means, what green means, what regenerative means, you know, we've had this whole trend in in greenwashing. And you've got certifications emerging like B Corp, which are really valuable and plays such an important role in getting businesses going on the journey. And Future-Fit's quite different to that because there is no Future-Fit certification, there is no business yet, which has benchmarked itself against Future-Fit and which has reached a state of you know, breakeven across all of the goals. But what by defining future fitness, it empowers a company to be really, really transparent about where it is on its journey. And I think that lends, it shows a degree of ambition and a degree of authenticity, which I think is really important. A second reason that it's really special is that it very, very clearly delineates between what positive impact looks like, and what negative impact looks like. And this is important, because so many ESG funds and impact funds and ways of categorizing companies, they put them in a - oh your product isn't necessarily doing something good for the world. But because you go about things responsibly, you kind of broadly fit in this responsible ESG bucket. And then other products where, because you're building wind turbines or because you're building solar panels, you're automatically in the positive impact pocket. And that is such an artificial separation. Because realistically, oil and gas companies create huge amounts of employment, which is really valuable for the economy. Wind turbines, there have been issues with wind farms, resulting in the resettlement of local indigenous communities because they've come on to local land. You've got massive issues in solar panels supply chains, because one of the key components comes from China and their report showing that there's force labor. So basically every company is going to be producing both some positive impact and some negative impact. And Future-Fit is a framework which helps a company record both their positive and the negative, and therefore have really informed nuanced conversations about the trade offs because there are always trade offs and I don't think we talked about them enough. And Future-Fit kind of helps companies to evaluate them and therefore make better decisions. So those are two big reasons that I think it's really valuable and really important.

Will Richardson 15:08
I think, really good reasons as well. I mean, you've taken us through the methodology quite early on in your thinking. And actually going back to that, do you don't do it just once, you should be reviewing it. And would you be reviewing it annually?

Anna Murphy 15:26
Yeah, you definitely want to do it more than once. I think an initial baseline, it's pretty resource intensive. I don't think you can get away from that, especially because most businesses are not yet collecting a huge amount of social environmental data. But once you've done it once, it's then a lot easier, obviously, to go and do it again. So yeah, I mean, essentially, you'd want to do a baseline, work out where your key improvements need to be and then over time do subsequent - I guess you wouldn't call them baselines, but subsequent updates. Yeah, exactly. But we don't have, because there's not a certification and because we really advocate for it to be used as a strategy tool, there isn't a prescribed journey that you have to go on as a business to tick any boxes. So it's really up to you how you want to use it best. So one company might decide that they want to do a baseline across all 23 goals. Whereas another business might think actually, 10 of these are much more important to us. So we're just going to start off with 10. And then, and then develop over time.

Will Richardson 16:40
And I think that's actually a really important point to note. Because certification can be downgraded through the quality of the companies and organizations that are going through that certification. And the reason that can happen is because of the drivers that each of those individual companies have. And there's always ways to get around certification. In my mind, having worked in certification for so many years, it doesn't matter how robust certification is, you can still get the outliers that have managed to get through that shouldn't have that certification. And I think what you've just said, negates that, because the quality control is on being combined, not the certification company itself.

Anna Murphy 17:38
Yeah, it's, it's true. And we've had some conversations internally about this, and it was quite a steep learning curve, for me, appreciating that Future-Fit puts out the guidance, but it is not our responsibility to basically to do the auditing. So we have auditing partners, like Grant Thornton, which companies can use to, to audit their baseline or to audit the calculation of their progress indicators. But that is, that is not our job. And also with as with anything, there's always got to be a degree of interpretation. And companies can choose how extensive they want to be, when it comes to say, you know, BO5 has to do with harmful emissions. There has to be a point at which they decide that something is immaterial, and therefore, they're not going to measure it. I remember us doing research and being like, oh, new furniture emits harmful things, and, you know, freshly painted walls can emit harmful VOCs. But are we going to expect to business to try and calculate that so that they can put it into their Future-Fit baseline? Well no, because it's really difficult and really expensive and not a good use of energy. It is the role of the business to work out what they want to get out of Future-Fit, and to use it as a strategic tool to work out where they want to get to. And there's a degree of flexibility.

Will Richardson 19:17
I think that's -

Anna Murphy 19:18
I hope I'm getting the point across? [laughs]

Will Richardson 19:19
No, it is. And I think that's a really important definitive gap between you; between Future-Fit and other certification actually. And I think that's actually really, that's really interesting. And I think it's really, really, it's a really strong point.

Anna Murphy 19:36
And also, you know, so this is been quite interesting transitioning from being part of the Future-Fit team to being freelance because now what I do a lot more of is bringing a Future-Fit lens to companies who might have, they might already have a sustainability strategy, or they might be mainly using B Corp, but looking for something else. And that's actually been really refreshing. Just bringing in relevant pieces of relevant pieces of Future-Fit and helping companies use it in a less formal way. Because really the challenge, well not not the challenge for Future-Fit now but for us to be successful, we want companies to use it. And actually, at the end of the day, does it matter whether companies are using it as part of a broader strategy? Whether they're doing a full baseline or whether they're getting inspiration from it? I mean, it doesn't matter, we just need to get companies using it in the ways that work for them.

Will Richardson 20:34
Yeah, no, absolutely. And some businesses pursue sustainability measures to survive in their market, whilst others choose to embed sustainability in their organization, because they're concerned about the future of our planet. What is your experience been whilst working with businesses? Are they driven by their impacts on the environment, or the expectations within their sector, or something altogether different?

Anna Murphy 21:02
What I have found is that generally, the people who I'm most in contact with are sustainability managers or head of sustainability. And they are really in it for the impacts on the planet or the impacts on people and planet. And then the challenge comes in them kind of selling it to the board or selling it to the C suite, who do care to an extent, but also are very much focused on the bottom line, which is understandable, because they're a business. So I think, quite a consistent experience has been working with really incredible passionate individuals at the sustainability manager level, and then being consistently challenged to be as transformative as we would like to be at the high level.

Will Richardson 21:58
Okay. The climate and ecological emergency bill campaign is something you've been working on. Can you tell us a bit about this?

Anna Murphy 22:08
Yeah, sure. So, for a bit of context, I got quite involved in Extinction Rebellion last summer, last September.

Will Richardson 22:17
Yes. I remember this now.

Anna Murphy 22:18
And participated. [inaudible] Having a mild, mild existential crisis having been arrested. [laughs] and chatting to one of my good mates who's a police officer about what to do about it. But basically, what Extinction Rebellion was advocating for at that point in time was the climate and ecological emergency, which I then became really, really interested in. And why it felt so amazing to be part of Extinction Rebellion, and to be to be supporting it is that it really, it actually gets to the heart of, I think, the what, and the how, of the climate emergency in that it's saying we really need to focus on 1.5, not two degrees. And we need to use real deliberative democracy to work out how to get there. So in terms of the what, you know, I recently this summer I was I was thinking about how to spend my summer and I spent a bit of time looking at the Better Business Act, which is also something definitely worth supporting, and it is fantastic. But why I was attracted to the CEE bill is that it's actually demanding action, which is both in line with planetary science and social justice. So what I mean by this is that at the moment, the net zero target by 2050, that the government has, it reduces emissions at a rate consistent with at least a 66% probability of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, as long as everybody gets to net zero by 2050. So everybody across the world, or it's aligned with a two degree world, in a scenario where the UK decarbonizes faster than others, meaning that not everybody does decarbonize by 2050. So it doesn't actually align with a 1.5 degree world, where the UK accounts for the fact that it has contributed huge amounts of historical emissions, and is actually much more developed and therefore can decarbonize faster than other economies. So that's what the CEE is really trying to get at. And it also takes a really systemic approach, in that it's talking not just about reducing emissions, but really restoring biodiversity, which, although this year has been much more on the business agenda last year, wasn't and is still very much the underdog, despite being both really important to actually reduce emissions and also important in its own right as part of one of the planetary boundaries that we need to make sure that we preserve. So that's kind of the what, and then in terms of the how the CEE bill advocates that we have a citizen's assembly to decide the processes and some of the mechanisms by which the UK decarbonizes, and this is really valuable. I mean, we don't need to get into the issues with British democracy, but it's giving people a very genuine voice in how they want society to look and will therefore result, I think, in a much fairer transition than if we didn't have a citizen's assembly. Now, I'm aware that there has been a climate citizen's assembly, but the government's response to it has been entirely tokenistic. So, yeah, I guess in conclusion, the work that I've been doing in getting businesses to engage with the CEE bill is really encouraging. It's about encouraging businesses to get political with their action. And that's kind of at the heart of it, right? Businesses can become more sustainable themselves. But business alone is not going to solve the climate emergency, we need regulation. And this is a chance for business to drive forward the governmental change, which is necessary for sufficient action to happen. And where are we with that? Yeah, so we've got 119 MPs supporting it, I think, 29 peers. We've now got a conservative peer supporting it, which is really, really exciting. There's another reading, I think, in September or early October. But even on that, I mean, yes, the aim is to get the entire bill passed. But actually, already, you can that it's been successful in certain avenues. So this year, the carbon budget integrated shipping and aviation emissions for the first time. So the British carbon targets now include those and they previously didn't, and that was included in the CEE bill, which I think is a really important kind of success to celebrate, because it demonstrates that even as the bill goes through extremely, extremely slowly, these things are gaining traction or elements of it are gaining traction.

Will Richardson 27:41
That's pretty good to hear. It's nice to hear positive news. It's good.

Anna Murphy 27:46
I try. [laughs]

Will Richardson 27:49
You'll soon be starting a master's in public value Public Policy and Innovation, what inspired you to enroll in this course?

Anna Murphy 27:58
It sounded really fun. That's my new career plan is just do stuff that's fun. My mission, I mean, this sounds probably a bit intense, but I really care about playing a meaningful part in transitioning our economy towards a well-being economy or an economy which has people and planet at the center. You know, at the moment, we haven't delved into it, but I think we've skirted around it quite a lot. You know, our economy is so driven by growth and by GDP and by profit, on the assumption that these things by default will improve people's lives. And actually, increasingly, we're seeing that they sometimes do, and they sometimes don't. And there are there issues like obesity and diabetes and depression and increasing rates of suicide and things which all demonstrate how economic development is no longer necessarily improving people's lives across the board. And therefore what we really need to do is, rather than measuring economic success by profit, we need to measure economic or societal success by other metrics, which is really about people's well-being and the well-being of the planet. And so, from this master's, what I'm really looking, what I'm really looking to get out of it is the role of government and policy in driving forward this change and the role of business and driving forward this change, how they can work together and my role within that. Because my experience up until this date has been much more in business. I'm really aware that at the same time that the real leadership needs to come from government, and there is a total lack of leadership from governments around the world. You know, people talk about how the UK is pioneering the net zero by 2050 target is pioneering is around the world is leading. And yet it is nowhere near what we actually need. Nevermind business, the government - sorry - isn't even on target to achieve it. So there is such a big gap between -yeah, there's just a total gap in in leadership from the Masters, I'm really hoping to delve into the role of business in driving forward that political change, I think. And also Mariana Mazzucato, who set it up. So she set up this institute of innovation and public purpose. She's amazing. She's such a, she's such a hero. But her book called The Value of Everything I would recommend to everyone. It was one of the most influential books I think I've read, and she set up this master's and what we teach on it, so yeah, my might get to meet her. And George the Poet, I'm not sure if you've heard of George the Poet, but he's doing a PhD. So maybe, maybe I'll get to bump into him in the corridor at some point as well, which will be pretty awesome.

Will Richardson 30:59
I will look, I will look him up. That's great. I've been lucky enough to be a part of your most of your professional career, I think, haven't I? Cause we met probably when he just finished at Bailey Gifford. And I feel really fortunate for that. And so I'm really curious to know the answer to this. What lasting change would you like to achieve in your career? Or put another way, what legacy would you like to leave?

Anna Murphy 31:30
I mean like I said, I think that our economies need to put people and planet at their center rather than GDP. And that's not to say that I hate GDP, and it's not useful. But we need to move away from this obsession. We need to stop seeing the means as the end, and start defining success by the end, which is people and planet rather than seeing economic growth as a good thing in its own right. And playing a meaningful part in persuading ultimately, governments to measure their success differently is where I would like to go. Scotland's doing really amazing. Well, it's talking good talk in that space at the moment. Whereas Westminster, it's just nowhere. It's so far away from getting there. And that experience I talked about in Tanzania, I think was quite transformative in me thinking, Okay, I really want to drive change within a culture that I understand. And that is kind of mine, that is mine to change. So I feel like Britain's kind of the playing field that I would like to act on.

Will Richardson 32:52
It's funny, isn't it? One of the Kennedy brothers, I can't remember which one, actually talks about GDP back in the 60s, didn't he? And said, I can't exactly remember what it was. But I remember thinking that he basically said, the more mafia, and the more criminal activities that go on in the US, the better the GDP. It just to me showed how flawed GDP was. And so even then, they knew it was flawed.

Anna Murphy 33:19
Yeah, he basically says it measures everything except that which makes life worth living, I think, is the quote, in that it can't measure justice, it can't measure empathy, or integrity or any of these things. And Donella Meadows also has some really interesting things to say about it. And I think one of her key messages is, you know, like, measuring social and environmental well-being is really hard, like, GDP is are one lovely number, it's one number. It's one metric, profit is one metric. And you know, if you're a business, you know, whether you're in debt or in profit, and social environmental impact is much messier. But the fact that it's hard doesn't make it like, that's not an excuse to not try. I think that's really important to acknowledge and just accept that it's going to be imperfect, but measuring it imperfectly is better than just choosing another metric and not measuring it at all.

Will Richardson 34:22
Lastly, what would you encourage businesses to think about with regards to their own sustainability journey? Bearing in mind what you just talked about the GDP.

Anna Murphy 34:33
I think there's three, three things I would probably want to leave as lasting thoughts. One is why are you doing it? You know, what is sustainability actually all about? Is it because you're scared about the existential crisis for humanity? Is it because you care about your bottom line? Or is it because, for me, the reason I'm really passionate about it is that those who have contributed least, are going to suffer disproportionately, both now and in the future. And so it's a, it's fundamentally an issue of justice. That's what really, that's why I care about it. And as soon as you have that justice lens, sustainability becomes about treating the people in your supply chains or in your value web, who are most vulnerable, a lot better. And so you can't just, you tackling your carbon emissions without paying, you're making sure that your people in your supply chain are paid living wage is just totally misaligned. So yeah, really thinking about the why of sustainability. And if it is to do with justice, trying to integrate social equity into that strategy. The second thing is systems, obviously, because I've been at Future-Fit and I've had this drilled into me [laughs]. The world works in systems and change happens in a really nonlinear way. So get to grips with planetary boundaries. One of the best papers I've read this summer actually has been by Kering, and I think it was just titled Country Boundaries and Business or something. And that's really, really interesting. And it basically, it's a useful framing for what things to prioritize based on what the world needs. And then also, there's this emerging field of social tipping points and how we can actually we can, we can drive forward change, which will then lead to positive kind of cascades of change. So have a look at social tipping points. And then and try and work out where you can drive positive change, which is actually already part of a really important movement, which is going to result in further cascading positive change. Because that then basically allows us to make the most of the nonlinear way in which change happens because of, you know, the well being very complex system. And then the third thing is just be open to much more radical transformation than you would probably like to be open to. I read this really interesting article yesterday, which basically said that, in most settings, climate and sustainability professionals are not getting paid to change important things, they're getting paid to protect important things from change and that our primary offering becomes the least cost plans for incremental socially credible action, rather than successfully convincing companies to take really transformative action. So I think what that demonstrates is, if you're going to bring on board a sustainability professional for help, really be open to the possibility that it might be your entire business model that needs to change over time, rather than just incremental things. We're kind of going into this age of disruption. And actually, that makes this a really interesting time to bring in new thinking, because you're going to end up with a competitive edge if you're ahead of everybody else doing that. And so one kind of final question, which I think came from one of the Future-Fit strategy workshops is how can you use your unique set of competencies and resources to address society's most pressing needs in a Future-Fit way? Because if you can, if you can do that, then yeah, then you're pretty awesome.

Will Richardson 38:34
Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today, Anna. It's been brilliant talking to you.

Anna Murphy 38:41
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Will Richardson 38:43
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