Inlägget Join the watch party on October 16th! dök först upp på VATI of Sweden.

For that occasion, on September 4th, we gathered some of our clients and employees (or simply friends, as we like to say) to celebrate together at Medicon Village in Lund. And it was all about “Be the change you wish to see in the world!”

From a small group of friends gathered around Eva Vati in 2019 to brainstorm the best way to be the change we wish to see around us, the conversation led to running the first Sustainability Mastermind course. From there on, we have transformed more than 300 companies, trained 300 change leaders, became the first company in the world to get certified to verify ESG statements, and have a foot in new markets, such as Spain and Hungary…

Not bad for a five-year-old!

Guided by Johan Wester, the master of ceremony in charge of keeping the good vibes, and Jonas Engström, the Choir Leader, the event underlined the two of the essences of Vati of Sweden:

Collaboration and power of co-creation. 

It was a perfect atmosphere to introduce the presentations and panel discussion with some of our first clients. Sarah Lidé, Deputy CEO of Medicon Village Innovation, and Anna Johansson, Head of Sustainability in Blentagruppen manifested what Vati of Sweden is all about:

We are constantly learning to be able to help our clients increase their competitiveness by integrating sustainability into their business strategy – through education and business consulting.

It was a great September day full of good vibes and inspiration. After all, our mission is to unify people, businesses, and societies in a mutual effort to create a better world by doing good business.

What makes the day even better is remembering that it all started with a dream Eva Vati had five years ago. So, here it is: Dreams do come true!… if you dare to believe and have friends to share them with.

Inlägget OUR FIFTH ANNIVERSARY! dök först upp på VATI of Sweden.

Since its beginning, Vati of Sweden has been guided by a global vision. Over the past five years, we have transformed more than 250 companies and prepared nearly one thousand people from fifteen countries for sustainability challenges. However, this year was particularly marked by the internationalization of our activities.

With the help of the European Regional Development Fund (Regional Fund) and the Just Transition Fund, provided by the European Union, Vati of Sweden has initiated the next phase of its internationalization process. While aiming to achieve 50% of our portfolio outside Sweden and establish ourselves in three new markets within the next two years, we have taken a significant step forward this year.

We are now established in Barcelona. Throughout the first part of the year, we have organized several Inner Development Goals with our partners IKEA, ESADE Business School, Impact Hub Barcelona and United Partners. These gatherings have become woven into the fabric of Barcelona’s sustainability agenda and have constantly increased the number of sustainability leaders to attend.

Promoting transparency and integrating it into the business culture is essential to our work. Therefore, verifying sustainability claims and reports is one of the pillars of our internalization. In that sense, we have successfully launched our Certified Impact Auditor course in Spanish. This new edition’s first batch of students is already working on pilot projects with companies from Barcelona and the region. At the same time, we expect to conduct the first ISO 260000 self-declaration verification processes with Spanish companies.

We are proud to be the first company to introduce the independent third-party verification of ISO 26000 self-declaration as a basis for sustainability reports and claims. It places transparency central to doing business and, as such, it is a milestone for our expansion and the Green Transition that is fast reshaping the Spanish market. These are very exciting times, full of challenges that require new types of leadership in all sectors and industries.

Therefore, we have also initiated the training of Sant Pau Hospital sustainability leaders. The initial phase started in May with a lecture and training provided to the Board of Directors. The participants were introduced to the new sustainability landscapes governed by the new EU directives, such as CSRD, Green Claims, and CSDDD. The training, facilitated by Vati of Sweden’s team, provided new insights into the close ties between health, innovation, and transparency and emphasized the potential of sustainability to boost collaboration, well-being, and trust.

It is a true pleasure for us to see Vati of Sweden grow internationally. These are the first steps in what we hope to be a long journey. We see it as a learning opportunity to explore and develop more effective ways to manage risks and opportunities that arise from sustainability challenges. With transparency becoming central to doing business, more and more companies and organizations are looking for help navigating the complexity of the sustainability transition. Vati of Sweden and its international network of like-minded professionals committed to the Agenda 2030 have the knowledge, ability, and tools to provide them with solutions (¡En castellano!).

Inlägget Vati International dök först upp på VATI of Sweden.

Medicon Village Group is the largest value-driven research park in Scandinavia, with a focus on life science. It offers a dynamic environment where world-class research, innovation, and social development meet to benefit people’s lives, health, and society.

Today, Medicon Village’s sustainability work includes developing an innovative energy system and coordinating purchases to reduce transport to and from the area. The group also has high ambitions to reduce its climate footprint by developing a sharing economy between the operations.

And it all started in 2021, when the group decided to embark on a sustainable journey and chose Vati of Sweden to guide them through the impacts, risks, and opportunities to be encountered. From the definition of its value chain and the identification of all the stakeholders affected to the definition of priorities and the structuring of their action plan, Vati of Sweden has been instrumental in facilitating Medicon Village’s sustainability strategy development. As a result, the innovation park is working systematically with five SDGs identified as being particularly important and where the group can make a positive contribution in the coming years.

But the journey did not end there. In May 2023, Medicon Village was verified according to ISO 26000 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SIS TS2:2021). Thus, it became the first science park in Sweden to achieve this ESG verification, setting a groundbreaking precedent for others to follow.

The Medicon Village group considers and actively works with the principles of social responsibility both internally with its employees and externally with customers, suppliers, and other prioritized interest organizations. For the group, social responsibility also means that all surplus goes back to research for human health, as stated in the verification issued by Verify Agency.

Following the verification expedition, Erik Jagesten, CEO at Medicon Village Fastighets AB, reaffirmed the importance of this endeavor: “Sustainability is natural for us as a research park. And the ISO26000 verification is an important tool for us in our continued work with sustainability.”

This milestone marked a significant achievement and propelled the group towards their ambitious future goals of leading the way in sustainable innovation and inspiring a global movement. As a result, the group was awarded the Energy Transition Change Maker title at COP28, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in the UAE. The innovative heating system, Medicon Village E.ON Ectogrid connects 15 commercial properties and several residential buildings with different heating and cooling needs, and it has drastically changed the research park’s energy consumption.

This year, 2024, Medicon Village’s ISO 26000 self-declaration has been re-verified. Their journey continues, and as Petter Hartman, CEO at Medicon Village Innovation AB, says, Medicon Village will continue finding new sustainable solutions for the future because “it is a matter of innovation and wanting to see opportunities.”

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ISO 26000 VERIFICATION

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE SUSTAINABILITY JOURNEY WITH VATI OF SWEDEN

Inlägget ”Sustainability is natural for us” – Medicon Village dök först upp på VATI of Sweden.

This is a consequence of the fact that many of today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions.” It is the first law of Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline and is very much aligned with the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency’s notion that cleaning up is just compensation for the outcome of flawed designs.

We no longer have time to clean up the consequences of flawed designs and yesterday’s “solutions.” 

Today’s solutions require action based on responsibility, honesty, accountability, and commitment that goes beyond short-term economic gains. These require relationships based on a new currency: more transparency.  

The European Union has taken the lead in structuring and integrating these new relationships into its socio-economic fabrics. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), Green Claims, and many other legislations that are already in place are just the first among many examples of governments seeking to align private sector contributions to national priorities.

Price is an expression of scarcity and does not reflect intrinsic value. However, markets should communicate correctly all kinds of scarcities, including scarcities of public goods. Unfortunately, they haven’t been doing so, and what is even worse, there has been a great deal of greenwashing. According to the data provided by the European Commission, 53% of green claims give vague, misleading, or unfounded information, and nearly half of these provide no supporting evidence.

There are many reasons why they haven’t. Greed and the wrong idea of increasing profit being the sole social responsibility of business are certainly among the reasons. But so is the fact that there were no effective instruments for companies and organizations to report on the true impact of their activities. Another important part of this malpractice is related to the fact that half of all green labels have not been independently verified and offer weak or non-existent evidence.

Environmental public goods, such as biosphere and ecosystem stability, clean air and water, healthy topsoil, or biodiversity, have been considered externalities for far too long. Together with social public goods, such as welfare and health, rural vitality, food security, and social capital, these have been excluded from the information on the gains from doing business. Rising temperatures, floods, droughts, pandemics, natural disasters, and other climate change-induced threats are the price we are paying for the flawed design and the lack of accountability.

The time has come to account for the true cost of doing business. However, it is not all to be blamed on industry and markets for wanting to see their profits grow. As consumers, we are responsible for choosing the products and services we want to use. We also get to choose what we want to make grow.

After all, there is no shame in pursuing success. The trouble lies in how it is pursued.

Yes, companies can indeed do a lot better. But let’s not forget our responsibility as consumers. According to the study by Hertwich and Peters, personal choices drive 72% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. These are directly tied to household consumption, while the remaining 10% and 18%, respectively, are linked to government consumption and global investments. This only shows that, as consumers, we have the ability to make smarter and more sustainable choices, and in doing so, we can drive the change we want to see in the world.

The new Directive on Green Claims, which has recently been voted by the ample majority in the EU parliament, will make our choices easier. Companies must submit product marketing claims such as “biodegradable” or “less polluting” for verification before using them. This new directive, aimed to stop companies from making misleading claims about the environmental merits of their products and services, will set the standard for more transparency in doing business.

After all, more transparency gives companies committed to sustainability opportunities to step forward and get closer to consumers. This is where transparency proves its value, and our job as Impact Auditors is to verify and account for the true cost of doing business.

______

Sources:

Public goods for economic development, Compendium of Background Papers, United Nations Industrial Development Organization: UNIDO, https://www.unido.org/sites/default/files/2009-02/Public%20goods%20for%20economic%20development_sale_0.pdf

Green claims, European Commission, https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/circular-economy/green-claims_en

Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global, Trade-Linked Analysis, (Hertwich & Peters, 2009, Env Sci Tech), https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es803496a

Inlägget The power of transparency dök först upp på VATI of Sweden.

For anyone working on improving management and organizational practices, these findings come in handy for addressing the elephant in the room. It may not come as news that a manager’s psychological health is constantly exposed to stress and other factors that affect not only their well-being but the entire organization’s culture. However, it is still often not considered something to talk about openly. The evidence of this comes through the confession of managers who participated in the study and highlighted that they lacked the opportunity to talk and reflect on their feelings. Instead, the common way for the conversations to be steered towards is about employees and the needs of the business.

This excludes the managers health from the conversations, and although it might seem that it leaves them out of the system boundaries, what it does is contaminate the entire system. A change in one part affects the entire system. It is one of the main systemic features present in any type of social system. Still, this was not something to discuss within the linear relationships with clear vertical hierarchies inherited from the military-type organization.

Within the military-type chain of command, managers entrusted with greater responsibility must demonstrate having the ‘stomach’ to deal with stress—or at least pretend to have it and suffer privately, far from the eyes of their bosses and subordinates.

Some time ago, when the complexity of business, social, and environmental interactions was lower, this linear approach gave results. The chain was easier to analyze and dissemble so the broken parts could easily be replaced. Easy fix? But this proved to be an example of ‘today’s solutions creating tomorrow’s problems’, as Peter Senge nicely put it. We learned by now that there are no easy fixes.

So, what do we do about it? We can start by using the Lund University research findings which point out that the need for conversation and reflection between managers about their feelings is in high demand. By creating forums for reflection, managers can collectively attend to the emotional side of leadership that rarely or never gets priority. In this way, they can find new and different paths to sustainable leadership, states the article.

All around us, we are witnessing a paradigm shift that affects not only our preconceived ways of thinking but also our values, and most of all; it includes the shift in social organization from hierarchies to networks. The shift brings forward the need for more integrative, intuitive cooperation based on nonlinear relationships. It brings forward the need for life science and managers whose human qualities can show personal vulnerability to strengthen the entire system.

Introducing the reflective conversation into the organizational culture is a way of reinforcing the strength of the entire system. At the same time, the findings of the research point out that the reflective conversation with others within the management collective increases the individual manager’s abilities and resilience – and, by extension also the organization’s.

Although it is not their main purpose, the Inner Development Goals (IDG) meetings and community are among the forums where these qualities are discussed and brought forward. While having the opportunity to meet many of their peers, managers share thoughts and feelings through Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, and Acting, which are the five dimensions of the IDG framework. At the same time, they are learning from the science-based skills and qualities that help us live purposeful, sustainable, and productive lives.

The times have changed. The paradigm shift is reality. We no longer need managers who can only (pretend) to ‘have the stomach for it’. We need emotionally and cognitively intelligent human beings. We need managers with high moral virtues, empathy, and values committed to increasing positive while minimizing negative impacts the organization causes on society and the environment.

The Inner Development Goals meet a pressing need to increase our collective abilities to face and effectively work with complex challenges. As a forum, it provides a foundational shift in human values and leadership capacities as part of an essential roadmap that can assist us in navigating and developing our inner lives to catalyze outer change.

Therefore, I wish to encourage all managers and organizational leaders willing to engage in the shift from hierarchies to networks to reach out to one of more than 500 Hubs & Networks in 80 countries worldwide. The network of more than 35,000 community members will provide you with many inspiring, reflective conversations.

PS. If you are living/working near Barcelona, Malmo, or Goteborg, we recommend joining the IDG Hubs established there. DM if you wish more info and agenda.

JOIN THE IDG HUB:

IDG Barcelona

IDG Göteborg

IDG Malmö

Links:

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Inlägget Inner Development Goals for better mental health among managers dök först upp på VATI of Sweden.

Welcome to the IDG BARCELONA BUSINESS HUB event at Impact Hub Barcelona! Get ready to network and connect with like-minded professionals in the industry. This edition’s theme is “RELATING”. The event will be officially opened by Leadership Coach Sava Riaskoff in English , and Keynote speech will be held in Spanish by Dalia Silberstein, Manager of ESADE Social Impact Lab & Impact Community. Join us on Tue Apr 09 2024 at 18:30 for an evening filled with insightful discussions, workshops, and opportunities to expand your network. Don’t miss out on this chance to learn, share, and connect with the best in the business!

Impact Hub Barcelona

94 Carrer de Pujades #96 08005 Barcelona Spain

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Inlägget Relating – IDG Barcelona Business Hub dök först upp på VATI of Sweden.