Lucion Group Explores Sustainable Futures

Lucion Group’s Leadership team got together last week to explore how we can contribute towards a sustainable future, with support from the Cranfield University School of Management Sustainability Team. 

The event was not only an engaging and interactive workshop for our team, but also a beneficial training exercise in upskilling our senior management team on the core concepts of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) responsibility and ensuring that we gain advantage as a Group from understanding how our business resilience and influence is impacted by ESG.

What is the Exploring Sustainable Futures Game? 

The game was first presented externally at COP26 in Glasgow having been used by Cranfield University to help Masters students practice strategic decision-making in the context of sustainability. 

Teams take on characters ranging from policy makers to charities, large corporate entities and small businesses. Each “character” has to react to changes in the economy, technology and society as we move forward through time to 2050. The winning team is the one not to only have accumulated the most resources, but also to have achieved their purpose. 

Lucion Group Management Meeting

Lucion’s senior managers and leaders get together every 6 months over two days to discuss business strategy, our values, and performance towards our annual targets and wider five year vision. The meeting is always a mix of presentations and workshops from our various stakeholders, of which ESG is a core theme as it is key to our business purpose; protecting people and planet. 

Having seen the Exploring Sustainable Futures Game in 2021 at the Edie conference, our Internal ESG Lead, Hazel Gillings approached the organisers to bring the event to Lucion, knowing how the game’s objectives aligned with the core purpose of our Group Management Meeting. 

Cranfield University School of Management Sustainability Group

Cranfield’s School of Management have a dedicated Sustainable Business Group, whose objective is to “ensure business leaders develop the knowledge and skills to embed sustainability in core business to reduce risk and cost and increase trust and drive growth”. 

Project Lead, Dr Rosina Watson is Head of the Sustainable Business group at Cranfield School of Management. Her research centres on sustainable innovation in business, and she is passionate in how collaboration can enhance sustainable innovation. 

Rosina was joined by Creative Lead, Gemma Adams, who developed the holistic learning experience of the Exploring Sustainable Futures game into an immersive experience that challenges mindsets and assumptions. 

Key Learnings from the Experience

The objective of the exercise for Lucion Group was to embed ESG as a factor into the decision making of all our leaders present at the Group Management Meeting. By making all our day to day decisions align to our group purpose; Protecting People & Planet, and our ESG goals, we will make a huge step forward. This was picked up throughout all departments of our shared services function; 

“It really bought it home that we need to act now and have an ESG angle to all our business decisions, but it also reminded me that at home we can also play a part it helping to change.” - Amanda Simmons, Group HR Director. 

“I enjoyed it! I found it quite thought-provoking. In particular I liked how it became clear that if everyone acted in isolation we were heading for a bad outcome, even if we thought we were doing the right thing. I came away from the day realising we need way more co-operation to succeed.” Paul Hayball, NexGen Development Manager.

“The game was a truly immersive experience. It was thought-provoking and insightful and absolutely helped everyone who participated understand the scale of the challenges we face.  Importantly, it helped us all to consider what we could do within the community of Lucion Group to reduce our dependency on Carbon.  The message was clear, we must take action to hit and exceed carbon reduction targets by 2050 in order to safeguard our planet for the generations that follow.” 

“In my role it is incumbent on me to drive through our ESG initiatives, to support the aim of the Group ensuring our ‘beyond carbon neutral’ objectives are met.  I am committed to embedding ESG in everything we do as a business. Led by the ESG principles, the combined Lucion Group is passionate about making a difference, and the ESG Game really underlined the importance of our purpose, embodied within our values to protect people and planet.” - Jeremy Meredith, Lucion Services Managing Director.  

Next Steps

We are delighted to see that the game had an immediate impact on those who were involved on the day. We also conducted pre and post surveys with all participants and will be doing a follow up workshop for feedback and actions shortly. In 6 months, when we get together again for our next Group Management Meeting, we’ll be bringing the team from Cranfield’s sustainable business group back into the fold to see how the game has impacted our decision making on the whole and to remind ourselves of the pledges we’ve made as individuals and as a leadership team.