Qualities like balance, equality, and a healthy dose of humility; an outward- facing focus and strong global market mindset; an unwavering emphasis on efficiency, functionality, and continuous improvement; and the ability to think long term and see the big picture, and of course, an appreciation for nature.

It’s no surprise that Sweden consistently ranks in the top of multiple sustainability indices.

The country has ranked number one in the Green Economy Coalition for top national green economy plans, the Global Sustainability Competitiveness Index, the world’s Most Reputable Country, the Sustainable Development Index measuring a country’s progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and RobecoSAM’s Country Sustainability Ranking, among many others.

So, what is the “secret sauce” that has led to Sweden’s leadership in sustainability? In our new book, Sustainability Leadership: A Swedish Approach to Transforming Your Company, Your Industry and the World (Palgrave MacMillan 2020), we offer a look at those ingredients from the private sector perspective.

We also offer a simple but powerful three-step sustainability leadership model to guide business leaders anywhere on how to increase their ambitions, while taking inspiration from the Swedish approach.

For the book, we interviewed more than 25 sustainability experts, including a dozen CEOs of both global Swedish companies and start-ups.

That included global appliance leader Electrolux whose long-standing commitment to sustainable products has paid off, with the company’s most energy- and water-efficient products by far the company’s most profitable, consistently delivering higher margins.

Then there’s Northvolt, building the world’s greenest battery and establishing one of Europe’s largest battery factories. It has its sights set on feeding a booming electric vehicle market with more sustainable batteries.

Start-up Karma is tackling food waste. For its Millennial founders, it was about identifying the business opportunity in the 1.3 billion tons of food waste globally, and creating a clever app and service to bring consumers and retailers together to purchase food that would otherwise go to waste, so far rescuing 1,200 tons of food.

And Swedish outdoor wear company Houdini is redefining sustainable fashion. Its aim is ambitious: to meticulously track all of its environmental impacts, reduce the negative ones and reinforce the positive ones to create a regenerative business model that couldn’t be more different from today’s fast fashion.

While each company is different, and at different stages of their sustainability journeys, what they all have in common are committed leaders who dared to put sustainability at the core of their business.

In other words, the drive for profitability is complemented with a sense of responsibility to create positive impact in the world, and for leaders to leave a legacy that has sustainability as a central, defining aspect.

This is not to say that Swedish companies are perfect or better than their peers in other countries. They have had their share of challenges in living up to their purpose. But it helps that Swedish businesses are intrinsically connected to their heritage: the culture, the values, Sweden’s model of social democracy, the country’s role as a champion of sustainability.

Their leaders do not shy away from the challenge of making both their companies and society better, and the concept of society as a stakeholder, as opposed to shareholder-centric views, is well-rooted in Sweden.

Stockholm’s startups also get a boost from the country’s investment community when it comes to sustainability.

Private equity companies like EQT are increasingly using the Sustainable Development Goals as an investment lens, and others like the Norrsken Foundation, which is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs solve the world’s greatest challenges.

Norrsken recently announced a 100 million euro impact investment fund to scale early stage startups that use their business models to solve challenges like poverty, health, discrimination, integration, food waste, mental health and climate change.

Another ingredient in the sustainability leadership of Swedish business is its long-established view that society is a stakeholder on a par with every other stakeholder.

For Swedish companies, shareholders are important, yes, but society has always been on an equal footing, as we describe in the book—a viewpoint we shared recently in Sustainable Brands.

But whether you are Swedish or not, and regardless of whether you are a start-up, scale-up or large enterprise, tackling complex sustainability problems requires dedicated ambition that can be operationalized.

That is what we have attempted to capture in our Sustainability Leadership Model, which outlines a simple roadmap that anyone can follow.

The first step is to establish a Foundation: this entails knowing your footprint and building trust through responsible business practices, establishing your company’s purpose and connecting that to its culture and values.

The second step is The Core: Embed sustainability into the core of your business—across your entire organization and your products and portfolio and link sustainability to the value you are creating for your customers.

The third step is The Leap: This is the exciting stage where you can not only transform your company, but you can also influence your industry and even the world, through your own leadership and platform.

This is the essence of having society as a stakeholder:  seeing the world through the lens of your company’s social and environmental impacts so that you can be a force for good in the world.

The Sustainability Leadership Model is our attempt to draw from the Swedish experience and guide leaders on how to build a consistent and impactful approach over time. While each journey is unique, the journey begins and ends with leadership.

The three steps are the guideposts to help you ensure that you’re doing everything you can to maximize your positive impacts and minimize the negative ones, and that you can capture the business benefits of doing that.

We think a lot about the legacy we want to leave as sustainability leaders. It is part of the reason we wrote this book. We recognize that we are living in a world facing extreme challenges, from the latest emergency of the global coronavirus pandemic to the no less urgent climate crisis.

So we decided to use our own personal influencing platforms and our Swedish experience to encourage more leaders to start to act on how they will use their own platforms.

If more leaders put themselves on this type of track, we believe this is a way to get even greater traction in addressing sustainable development challenges.

One final thought on lessons to be learned from the Swedish way: not least, the Swedish tendency for consensus and cooperation. To tackle problems of the scale we are facing today, we all have to work together.

Henrik Henriksson is the CEO of global sustainable transport company Scania, headquartered in Stockholm, where he leads the company’s commitment to decarbonize the heavy vehicle commercial sector.

Elaine Weidman Grunewald is a global sustainability executive and former Chief Sustainability and Public Affairs Officer at Ericsson. 

Their new book, Sustainability Leadership: A Swedish Approach to Transforming Your Company, Your Industry and the World is published by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Springer International Publishing, Price £27.99, 32.99 € (Hardback).

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