Sundberg Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders

Design and implement sustainable IT practices and unlock sustainable business opportunities
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-80324-197-5
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 418 Seiten

We are at a critical point in human history. Humanity is under threat, but all is not lost. We can take action! But how?
Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders will show you how. It will walk you through the construction and implementation of a sustainable IT strategy and enable you to do your bit for the future of mankind.
The book is split into three parts. Part I details the 'why' and the clear and present danger that humanity faces today: the climate crisis. How did we get here, what are the immediate threats, what are the planetary boundaries that we need to peel back to safe levels, and what impact does IT have on society at large? Part II will focus on the 'what.' It examines the nitty-gritty details of what we can do to unlock significant returns on sustainable investments toward a more sustainable future. Part III, the final part of the book, focuses on the 'how.' How do you turn your ideas into action? What do you need to do to establish your baseline and your direction of travel towards your objective? This part provides tangible case studies and explains how you can start your journey today to begin delivering global and impactful objectives.
By the end of this book, you'll be able to plan, implement, and communicate a sustainable IT strategy and set yourself apart as a progressive technology leader.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sundberg, Niklas

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Medien-, Informations und Kommunikationswirtschaft Informationstechnik, IT-Industrie

Leseproben

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders

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To my mother, Agneta, my father, Jerry, and my sister, Malin, for being my inspiration, catalyst, and North Star. To my wife, Michela, thank you for being my loving and devoted companion throughout our shared life adventure. To my children, Wilgot and Harald, who inspired me to write this book so that they and generations to come can live on a habitable planet tomorrow.

- Niklas Sundberg

Foreword

After a summer of record-breaking heatwaves, raging wildfires, and droughts, it probably should not have surprised anyone that the climate crisis is as imminent as ever. There is an acute awareness, at least in Europe, that now that we feel the consequences of global warming, it will not stop at a few warm summer days in the middle of July. Unfortunately, we have not seen the end of this. Instead of the news flow being filled with the acute climate crisis, the anxiety in the media is primarily dominated by inflation, recession, and the war in Ukraine. I have much higher anxiety about the climate than the current financial situation. For me, climate anxiety is increasing by the day. We are extremely late on the ball and have lived in denial for too long. It is a very distinctly uncomfortable feeling.

A few nights ago, I spoke to a young 17-year-old boy in London who was having trouble sleeping due to the dramatic events of climate change. As a young boy growing up in London, he has witnessed the dramatic change in nature where the wetlands in South London have dried up, and he sees the whole ecosystem being completely disrupted outside his window. This is, unfortunately, the reality for our future generations unless we get on the right course to curb the climate and ecological crisis unraveling in front of our eyes.

For years, scientific research has tried to tell us that we have an immediate and present danger in front of us where we have pushed the planetary boundaries too far. The concentration of greenhouse gas emissions getting trapped in the atmosphere causes the earth’s temperature to rise; we experience a deficit in fresh water, and waste streams, especially electronic waste, are continuing to rise at an unprecedented scale. These catastrophic outcomes are consequences of failure to take the bold and necessary steps to manage the climate and ecological crisis over the past decades.

To me, however, sustainability is a holistic word that spans much more comprehensively than just the environment. It is not only about fostering a healthy planet but creating a promising future for everyone. First and foremost, taking care of our most basic needs in food security, global health, energy security, water scarcity, and empowering women. Beyond our basic needs, we must create educational opportunities, equal workplace opportunities, and a more equitable and inclusive society for everyone. One of my north starts throughout my career has been to have a more gender-equal management team going out than before I got there. I firmly believe that diverse and equitable teams are much more intelligent than homogenous ones.

We need leaders to dream big, paint a vision, set a common direction for travel, and lead sustainably. If we do not have leaders who do their tasks sustainably, I do not think we can create a promising future for anyone. We cannot only focus on people and the planet, but a fundamental piece is having a long-term prospering economy and a sound macroeconomic system.

My leadership roots stem from football growing up playing but also coaching in the southern parts of Sweden in Skåne. Over this summer, although my heart was rooting for the Swedish women’s team, I watched with great interest how Sarina Wiegman, the England women’s head coach, transformed a team of 11 players into a collective and collaborative unit with a common belief that the Women’s Euro 2022 Championship was within their reach. They reached that goal by beating Germany in overtime 2-1 in front of a crowd of 87,000 at Wembley Stadium in London. Sarina made her team dream big, see the vision, and made them believe in what they could accomplish together. Amazing things can happen when you have a team that is completely switched on. It is not the best players that win, but the players with the best team, and England’s women’s team are no exception. The leadership lessons on the field and in the locker room are entirely translatable for the corporate world, whether you are a school teacher, public servant, software engineer in a tech company, or politician. Building high-performing teams is about welding together a diverse team, leveraging each other’s strengths and weaknesses, yet investing in relationships with your teammates. It is ju’t as important what you do on the field as it is off it. As leaders, we are responsible for fostering our talents, lifting them, and encouraging them. We need to visualize storytelling, talk about the direction inspirationally, and connect it to the team, the culture, and how you operate to get people to believe in that. If we lead through people instead of looking down on them, the team will elevate themselves, exuberate self-leadership, and take responsibility for their journey. To me, this taps into being sustainable when the team is connected and switched on because instead of pushing, pushing, pushing, you are inspiring, and the team owns the outcome and results. It goes well beyond delivering on the financial targets.

Having spent the better part of my professional career within the tech sector, I have experienced what technology advancement can do to democratize and fundamentally change the fabric of our society. Modern leadership requires a strong purpose and being value-driven on one side of the spectrum. On the other side of the spectrum is technology. Technology is essential to solving business problems, and we need more robust convergence between the two spectrums. We need technology leaders such as CIOs and CTOs at the CEO and chairman levels to advance the technology agenda in every aspect of our business environment.

Being part of a giant tech company when the Covid-19 pandemic transcended, I have seen how companies that were not prepared for remote working quickly scrambled and, within a few weeks, were fully up and running in a remote working setting. It was a defining digitalization moment that propelled technology adoption in weeks and months, which generally would have taken years to get there. Although the Covid-19 pandemic propelled digitalization forward in many ways, transforming the work setting into a hybrid workplace, cultivating diversity, equity, and inclusion, we also learned how much the human connection does for us, at least when we talk about driving innovation and building culture. We cannot replace physical meetings and connections with virtual ones. In the future, we need to find the best out of the two worlds.

The vast opportunities that exist with technology make me optimistic about the future. Without technology, it is almost impossible to make the advancements we need in all industries. We need industrial decarbonization solutions at speed and scale to deliver carbon-free steel and cement, transform our transportation fleet into electric vehicles, overhaul our agricultural practice, provide clean energy with giant battery storage, and develop carbon capture solutions. It all starts with innovation, technology, and sustainable business practices.

Although we can achieve tremendous sustainability advancements, we cannot forget to build our digital infrastructure sustainably. IT is starting to have an increased impact on the environment. Our data centers worldwide emit 2-3 percent of the world’s emissions, which is on par with the entire aviation industry. Another major concern is our electronic waste, which has become the most...