An Interview with Olivia Tyler, Edge Environment Managing Director, ANZ

Interview

10 Oct

What do you think set you on this path you’re on today?

When I was little, I loved the show, A Country Practice, and wanted to be a small town vet in the country. I didn’t get the marks to be a vet so I thought, if I want to save the animals, I'll save the planet. That was literally the thought process. And that led me into environmental engineering and marine science.

I thought if I did engineering, people would have to take me seriously. As an engineer, I figured I could form sensible, rational arguments with those people who are trying to destroy the planet.

When I was in my third year of uni, I got a job with a group in the beverage industry that was actually set up to fight container deposit legislation. At the time, the beverage industry was against the legislation but it got me deeply interested in waste and gave me an insight into how manufacturers considered the end use of their products.

So how did that experience translate into your later roles?

I started working in environment manager roles with manufacturers and consumer product companies such as Coca-Cola Amatil [now Coca-Cola European Partnersl] and Goodman Fielder, which was a thrill because it was so tactile and tangible. In production, there’s no messing around and I loved watching things get fixed in real time. We were seeing how we could use less energy and water while creating less waste – all the 90s vernacular around cleaner production.

Over time, my roles with different companies exposed me to a whole range of areas such as brand and marketing, consumer demand, supply chain, compliance, and reporting and disclosures. This was all around the time that the corporate social responsibility movement was really ramping up.

What threaded all those roles together?

The main discipline that I’ve developed is being able to connect and think in loops. I believe that sustainability people think in loops, not lines. We're always spinning around saying, ‘hang on, have we thought about it like this or how do different things impact our core?’ It’s just like the shape of a daisy, with the petals always looping back to the centre.

I also love complex problem solving but you have to make it super tangible. There’s a dichotomy between dealing with a massive issue, threat or risk at a high level but then making it really clear what someone has to do differently each day.

When I started doing my MBA, the main motivation was understanding how a business operates and then knowing how to switch models. If you don't understand how financial accounts, commercial value or operations work, it's very hard to change the way it's approached.

“All that experience and learning has given me a much better appreciation of the interconnectedness of a business and what the options are for doing things differently. ”

So how do you deal with the tension of working in a consumer space selling goods like bottled water and then reducing the waste that comes from those products?

I remember being asked by someone in procurement at Coca-Cola where people like me came from. And I said, ‘well, we all come out of the same paddock but some of us go into corporates, some of us go into NGOs and some of us go into government. But we all want to change things for the better, to move towards a new way of doing business.’

I would rather be on the inside making the change, because that’s my skill set. I get joy from preaching to the non-converted. It’s not going to always be a perfect outcome but I like to solve practical, immediate problems, and drive that improvement over time.

Of course, there have been times where I've lodged ethical objections and you have to keep reassessing the limits of your impact. My mantra from my very first corporate job was: I will always do what I do, but I choose where I do it.

So I’m always evaluating what I'm doing and if it’s moving the right direction. If I’m making microsteps towards change, that's a good thing. If not, for me personally, it’s time to move on.

You mentioned moving towards a new way of doing business. What sort of things need to change to make that happen?

One of the things that needs to change is how we evaluate worth and value. Edge is a certified B Corp and I've never worked in an organisation where its sole purpose and constitutional being is to do good or better. It’s a stark contrast from my previous work because we literally think through the financial outcomes – do we have the money to run the business and make a profit? – while at the same time we’re asking if we are still making the right impact, and whether our team is getting their ‘purpose hit’ and being involved in the kind of impact work we all need.

It all means that the questions you ask are different, the evaluations are different, the decisioning is different, the mindset is different. It takes a long time to evaluate a decision because you’re balancing so many things.

This approach also requires a different type of leader. To be honest, it’s really difficult. You have to be financially viable, but not everything that that’s good for revenue is actually improving things overall, from the true benefit or impact.

“Having said that, there is a movement starting to reassess how investors value risk and longer term company performance. It’s not a linear solution, which is why I think a sustainability person’s loop mindset is brilliant because you have to be able to interrogate a problem from all different angles.”

You don’t get taught the loop mindset at uni so how do you develop it, where does it come from?

It’s about having a natural curiosity about the relationships between parts of a business or an issue. You need to like asking hard questions. I think that sustainability professionals can sometimes be overly optimistic – we don't fully interrogate the flip side and ask, ‘OK, this is a great idea, but why wouldn't it work?’

We also need to recognise the value of good over perfect. Sometimes specialists think something has to be perfect. But often, we can't wait for perfect.

My innate drive for outcome and achievement means I'm not often intimidated because I recognise I don't know everything. I love learning from what other people know and testing things. This learning process inevitably creates some mistakes, and more ‘cringey’ moments, and I'm very open about that – it’s about continuing that cycle and not being perturbed by that.

From environmental engineering and environmental science through CSR and triple bottom line to where we are today, what are your reflections on the space that you’ve been working in?

I think this space is broadening out as a discipline or as a motivation. It’s really interesting because there used to be the pure bloods, the ones who started in those environmental roles and grew up to be the sustainability person. We used to feel like a very select group of people but now there's an appreciation that everyone across a company needs to contribute.

“Organisationally, we now know that each discipline or business area is essential to driving the overall sustainability effort so rather than expanding the sustainability team, I’m more likely to say to people that we need their specific expertise at different times in the sustainability process, from where they are in the team, rather than joining any specific sustainability ‘department’. In that way, we’re drawing from the broader skill sets, vantage points and backgrounds to have a more ‘loop-like’ discussion at a collective level.”

The flip side is that I’ll scream if I see one more job ad that says: ‘Don't need expertise, just need to have a passion for climate change.’ This vastly undercooks what it takes to create change. Appreciating the expertise that many have built over time, in all disciplines, and entering into new spheres with humility and integrity are paramount. Organisational sustainability isn’t a hobby like macrame where you do it because it’s lovely and you’re really into it. This is actually quite serious and we need people with a range of strong technical backgrounds who respect and appreciate the skills and expertise of one another, and who are united around a north star of positive and sustained impact.

What does a typical day look like for you?

My role at Edge is making sure we are set up for our growth trajectory, getting all the governance in place, maturing the team, maturing the business, the processes, the efficiency. I know enough about what each team does to help advise or contribute to the discussion on the best way of approaching a project or a client, and to know when to be guided by our deep subject matter experts. Basically, I’m there to make sure the business is humming.

The way we assess impact and put it materially at the heart of our decision making is really extraordinary. There was a moment early on when I was in a meeting with our CEO Jonas Bengtsson, where I said, ‘I just need a minute.’ He gave me one of his quizzical looks and kind of nodded asking me if I was ok. I said, ‘Yep, I’ve just realised that you actually care about what we do, the whole finance meets purpose piece.’ It was quite the illuminating moment. We are a commercial enterprise, no bones about it, but we're constantly grappling with how we do this in a way that keeps everyone happy and actually does something.

Our team is significantly motivated by the work they’re doing, the impact side as much as the financial side. And that can be really tough because you’re looking at all sorts of things when you make a decision about the work you’re engaging in.

When I started just over a year ago, we had around 40 consultants. Now, we have about 65 consultants in our region. And that growth has probably been one of the most surprising things. But I'm working with an entire tribe of like-minded people, whereas usually inhouse sustainability people are their own little collective, like solo operators.

Our team is really open and challenges me as a leader. They'll tell me when they don't agree with something and then we go back and work out how to solve it together. That kind of access and decisioning isn’t the norm in a corporate environment.

Are you seeing any change in the work you’re being asked to do?

In the past year that I’ve been with Edge, large scale corporate clients have gone from asking if they should engage on net zero to asking how they do that. And we’re also starting to have conversations about how that fits in with their broader purpose, rather than being a tick-and-flick exercise.

We’re also really strong on doing due diligence to understand the motivations of a client. For clients in harder to transition sectors, we assess our risk appetite and then, on a case-by-case basis, look at the authenticity of the client. Greenwashing is a risk that we are very aware of.

Having worked in responsible sourcing with suppliers, my motto was always, ‘stick and fix’. If you leave, you can't change anything. It's the same goal as working on the inside while maintaining an awareness of the practicality of helping client’s transition.

What do you hope the future holds, for you and the sector more broadly?

Professionally, I would love to see all businesses operate like a B Corp. So much so that B Corp isn’t a thing. For example, it would be amazing to see companies releasing their sustainability report with as little fanfare as them releasing their P&L statements.

Personally, and at an individual level, I would like people to be making decisions more comprehensively, more expansively and in those loops. I also hope to see new products and services that are built or based on the regenerative mindset.

I think having a conscious and robust discourse about how we’re doing things and creating a more enlightened or educated way of working would make for a fabulous future.