Key notes: 3 things shaping Goodyear's sustainability perspective

AKRON—Goodyear's sustainability journey, in many ways, is just beginning.

Because sustainability is just that, a journey. And for Goodyear, it is one that Ellis Jones, the tire maker's chief sustainability officer, is helping to chart. Think of Jones as the one holding the company's sustainability compass. He is the one helping to navigate Goodyear through the tire industry's biggest challenges as it works to define what sustainability means, what it can be and what impacts it can really have.

During a keynote presentation on the first day of the International Tire Exhibition & Conference, Jones shared a bit about Goodyear's sustainability journey and offered practical advice for rubber industry companies of all sizes looking to embark on sustainability journeys of their own.

Here are three key points from the presentation.
 

In many ways, Goodyear is well on its way to defining what sustainability means to the company. In others, however, there is still a long way to go.

The tire maker still is working out how sustainability looks in everyday operations and how that sustainable vision is shaping its products and impacting the lives of employees and stakeholders.

But the journey, Jones said, is a thoughtful one, following three critical road signs. Those road signs—environment, structure and capability—are keeping Goodyear focused and allowing it to implement goals, visions and ideas that can have meaningful change.

"I use these three pillars to really influence and drive the change through an organization. I'll start with the environment; it's the culture. Are you building a sustainable culture? Are you building a culture that really believes in this? That is where we started."

Goodyear did this by building sustainability into its "company road map," making it a central part of the company's vision moving forward. Because of that, sustainability became prioritized to the point that it was woven into every aspect of the business.

With sustainability as a North Star, Jones said, Goodyear began building a system that empowered every employee to move the company forward to its broader sustainability goals.

"You start building the foundation or the structure," Jones said. "You start putting the systems and processes in place. You start connecting sustainability, and we started connecting sustainability with critical business processes. When we look at our capital plan, we think about sustainability. Product development. How do we think about sustainability?"

From there, Goodyear focused on capability. It worked to ensure that the right tools, processes and resources were in place for the company to begin—and continue—executing its overarching vision for sustainability.

"You can have all the capability in the world, but if you don't have those first two, the capability will struggle. So then we started building the capability through our organization," Jones said. "It's about creating structure, environment and capability throughout the organization."

Sustainability, Jones said, is the right thing to do. From a social perspective, from an environmental perspective and from a business perspective.

But sustainability, he said, isn't about your company.

"I remind my team of this all the time," Jones said, "because, you know, we do want to go out and talk about the great things that we do. Every organization wants to do that, you know, talk about: 'Hey this is what we have done, what we did.'"

And while there is nothing wrong with being proud of the strides your company has made or the success you are continuing to see, the focus of the sustainability work can't be on those laurels. Sustainability, Jones said, is a story continually unfolding. And it's a story that should be told—with the proper perspective.

For that perspective, Jones pointed to a quote from Shane Meeker, an author and corporate historian whose career includes 25 years with Procter & Gamble. "A good sustainability story is like a movie," Meeker wrote in his book titled Story Mythos. "There's a hero trying to get over an obstacle to reach a treasure, but as a company and an individual, you must realize that you are not the hero."

"When I first read this," Jones said, "I thought, 'Oh, this is impactful.' … It's not about you, it's about your hero.

"Who's the hero? Who is really going to benefit from the advances we make as an industry and the advances we make in our individual companies?

"Again, as I said earlier, we know we have to make money. We know we have to do that because we will not survive if we don't make money. But as we think about the big challenges we are trying to solve for, it is about: 'Man, who are we solving it for?"

That question has many answers. Every company has a responsibility to do right by its shareholders, its employees and the communities it is in. But when it comes to sustainability plans and goals, the focus has to be those individuals who are most impacted by the big changes your company is making.

"We started to really think about the stakeholders and that value spectrum and who the heroes are that we are really trying to impact," Jones said. "As you think about your companies and how you want to do that, I think you really have to look at that value spectrum and where you have those impacts."

There's nothing fluffy about sustainability. At least, not at Goodyear.

Sustainability is a gritty, get-it-done kind of innovation rolled into products and operations. It's an idea made stronger every day thanks to the commitment of employees at all levels of the business.

That's why it's written into the DNA of the company—the strategy road map that guides every aspect of the business.

"People will see this as a piece of paper, but when you talk about the strategy road map in our company, and this is—I call it—an artifact. And the language in this artifact, it's critical. … It talks about how we win, how we work and where our focus is."

Goodyear, he said, is focused on the future. It's focused on building the kinds of products and operations that not only impact the environment for the better, it develops a company culture that works for people.

And when Goodyear defines sustainability, it puts profitability at the heart of its vision.

"I am going to talk about it a lot," Jones said, "but that's a critical element of being a sustainable business. If you don't make money, you are not going to be in business very long."

Goodyear, which is poised to celebrate its 125th anniversary next year, has plans to be in business for a long time. So as it works to build itself into a more sustainable company, it seeks the best possible solutions from its supply chain, its partners, its material science and its product technology.

"It's all about doing business today and, again, you have to look at the environmental impacts those social impacts and those financial impacts, and you have to balance those," Jones said. "But you can't jeopardize future generations. You have to ensure that future generations can do business and can sustain business and make money.

"You have to think about that, think years out. It is not about what is happening today, it is about what is happening in the future."