Terry F. Yosie

Thought Leader on Sustainable Business Practice

BIG IDEAS

• Sustainable Development as a Platform for Innovation and Value Creation
  Leaders of business, government, and other organizations must demonstrate increasing resilience in adapting to the fundamental changes underway across the global economy and society. The framework of sustainable development provides a strategic platform for: identifying the implications of these changes upon organizational strategy and day-to-day operations; organizing innovation opportunities; and generating added value with key customers and stakeholders. Tangible outcomes of this approach include: branding differentiation; partnerships that extend core competencies; market access; cost reductions from reduced materials use, energy and water consumption, building maintenance and packaging across the value chain; and the design and use of products that increase business value while addressing a corresponding societal need. At a time when sustainable development is becoming a competitive differentiator in a growing number of markets, the smart CEO and executive leadership team need to master the fundamentals of integrating this leading idea into their organization’s strategy and operations.
• Building Effective Strategies to Manage and Benefit from 21st Century Drivers
  A newer and more disruptive set of technological, market and societal drivers has emerged that is challenging current organizational strategies, core competencies, products and relationships. These drivers can either confound and debilitate the focus of senior management or they can create major new opportunities to redesign products, develop new technologies, and achieve larger scale system changes. Responding to 21st century drivers involves the development of new skills sets, business models and services, innovation processes, and customer value propositions.  These cannot be created solely within a single organization. Rather, they must emerge from a dialogue of top-down and bottom-up and external-internal processes that encourage learning and adaption as part of a continuous effort to engage employees, value chain partners, customers and influential groups that shape the opportunities for success. While some organizations have achieved early successes in responding to 21st century drivers, the nature of these profound changes is only beginning to be realized.
• The Changing Landscape of Business, Government and NGO Relationships
  Empowered by the Internet, disrupted by global economic, technological and societal change, and incentivized by new opportunities, business, government and NGOs are in the process of fundamentally realigning their historic roles and relationships.  In response to global scale problems and challenges to their institutional authority and credibility, they are forming new patterns of collaboration designed to achieve their individual objectives that, in the process, are transforming their capabilities and impacts.  The manifestations of such collaboration are underway in such areas as public policy initiatives, product development and marketing, supply chain management and the creation of new performance metrics and governance processes.  These and other interactions are, in turn, changing the terms of market competition and stimulating a broader debate about consumer priorities and lifestyles and who can best serve them in the future.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Terry Yosie joined the World Environment Center in October 2006 as the President & CEO. In this capacity, he develops and implements strategies to achieve this global non-profit organization’s mission to implement sustainable development through the business strategies and operations of global companies in partnership with government agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities and other stakeholders.  WEC’s principal areas of focus have included climate change and energy efficiency, enterprise development, greening the supply chain and technological innovation.  Dr. Yosie leads WEC’s global initiatives and frequently meets with business, government and other leaders to develop solutions to a variety of environmental, economic and social issues.

Dr. Yosie has held senior-level management positions in government, corporate and consulting organizations. He served as Vice President at the American Chemistry Council from 1999-2005, providing leadership to upgrade the chemical industry’s environmental, health, safety and security performance. He managed a global CEO Task Force in 2004-2005 to develop the Responsible Care Global Charter to improve chemical industry performance in 52 countries.  He represented the industry as a delegate to the 2002 U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

As the Executive Vice President of Ruder Finn Washington from 1992-1999, Dr. Yosie led the environmental management and communications practices of the firm for a wide range of clients such as BASF, British Petroleum, Pfizer, and Philips Electronics. At BP, he advised the company on climate change issues that led to a new strategy announced in 1997 by the CEO John Browne.

Dr. Yosie served as Vice President for Health and Environment at the American Petroleum Institute from 1988-1992. In this capacity, he successfully led the industry’s effort to negotiate cleaner fuel standards with EPA, state and local agencies and environmental organizations that impacted over $40 billion dollars in refining investments.

From 1978-1988, Dr. Yosie was employed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board where he also served as Director from 1981-1988, In this role, he advised EPA Administrators and the U.S. Congress on the scientific basis of public health and environmental decisions, and he instituted policies and procedures to improve the technical basis for EPA-wide policy decisions and risk assessments.  He was a member of the U.S. delegation for the bilateral environmental program with the Soviet Union and negotiated diverse agreements with that country.

Dr. Yosie has recently served as a member of the National Research Council Committee that published a major study, Science and Decisions (December 2008).  He is the author of more than sixty professional publications and co-editor of a book entitled, Sustainable Environmental Management.  He received his doctorate degree in Humanities and Social Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University in 1981 and has been designated by the University as one of its Most Notable Alumni.

A Closer Look at Terry

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Terry's current research agenda?

• Examining why large institutions frequently lack authenticity and credibility in local communities or with specific groups of stakeholders.
• The relationship between sustainable development and national security policy.
• Sustainable consumption.
• The role of science in sustainable development.

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Terry's expertise, and what's ahead on his schedule?

• Terry will be leading a discussion with CEOs, national environmental ministers, and leading NGOs on “Climate Change and Water Vulnerability” at the UN Copenhagen climate change negotiating summit on December 12.
• Assisting Central American suppliers to Wal-Mart’s food businesses improve their performance in achieving the company’s sustainable development goals.
• Implementing a strategic initiative for a major Chinese auto manufacturer to green its supply chain.
• Facilitating the development of expanded recycling goals across the value chain of beverage container companies.
• Implementing a U.S. Department of Statement program to build sustainable enterprises in Latin America.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Terry's thinking and inspires his work?

• Daniel Yergin
• Arie De Geus
• C.K. Prahalad
• Fareed Zakaria
• Clayton Christensen
• Alfred Chandler
• Timothy Garton Ash
• Ian Buruma
• Joel Tarr

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Terry's must-read list?

• The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan. Most CEO books, like most memoirs by professional politicians, are exercises in self-justification and some score settling. Lafley, until recently the CEO of Procter & Gamble (now Chairman) leads us through the process by which P&G introduced and implemented its innovation strategy. Lafley and Charan are very focused on practical issues and fess up to various mistakes and missed opportunities. The book is accessible not merely to a consumer products scenario but to a variety of leaders of business, governmental and NGO organizations. The discussion of how P&G learns from its customers to design new products is a particular nugget.
• In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong by Amin Maalouf. First published in France in 1996, this highly insightful book analyzes the multiple sources of a person’s identity—family, community, country, religion, race, profession—and its relationship to violence and other behaviors across various cultures.  Maalouf probes a number of central questions—why do people feel marginalized and alienated from globalization? How can non-Westerners not feel that their traditional identities are not threatened? What constitutes a minimal obligation of members of cultural majorities to respect the identity of minority groups, and what should be the minimal adaptation of cultural minorities to the prevailing rules and values? Can there be mutual recognition and respect between presently dominant and minority groups in the world?
• The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World by Dominique Moisi.  A founder of the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales and columnist for the Financial Times, Moisi evaluates how fear, humiliation and hope are reshaping global politics. What may on the surface appear to be an expanding global proliferation of emotional outbursts is deconstructed by Moisi through his analysis of the very rational forces that give rise to both hopeful and destructive behaviors. Moisi provides an important perspective for anyone leading global organizations.
• The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by Aaron David Miller.  A former senior U.S. Middle East peace negotiator for over twenty years, Miller is honest about his own mistakes and those of others.  Especially insightful are his observations about how the lack of personal knowledge, relationships and authenticity with various national cultures and decision makers hampers success at the negotiating table. His views about how large countries have difficulty in understanding the dynamics and needs of smaller nations parallel the challenges of global companies seeking to invest and sell products in emerging markets where they have little direct knowledge or experience.

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Terry tap into to feed his mind and fuel his creativity?

• McKinsey & Company (www.mckinsey.com)
• Harvard Business Review (http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/)
• Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy magazines
• GreenBiz.com: Business Voice of the Green Economy (www.greenbiz.com)
• Ethical Corporation (www.ethicalcorp.com)
• Delhi Sustainable Development Summit—held each year in February in New Delhi

OUTREACH
What are Terry's pressing questions, and on which topics does he seek your feedback?

• What institutions are credible, and what do they do to achieve and sustain their effectiveness and reputation?
• How can the upsides of global change be realized and the downsides better managed?
• What is the value from implementing sustainable development?
• What does the senior leadership team need to know about sustainability, and how can it be integrated within the organizational mission?
• How has the social role of business evolved, and what are civil society’s expectations for business going forward?