Unilever’s Super Stretch Goal for 2020

Abstract

Unilever introduced the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan in 2010, with an extremely ambitious strategic goal of doubling growth while greatly reducing environmental externalities and increasing the company's positive social impacts by 2020. Unilever's CEO, Paul Polman felt strongly that there was no alternative to making sustainability central to the corporate strategy. As the world faces huge challenges, his view was that companies have responsibilities to act, particularly if, like Unilever, they are also doing business in some of the poorest countries in the world. So Unilever set off on a journey that made the company not only look at lifecycle impacts, but also at changing consumer behaviors. But what of the internal organizational behaviors? Companies may have a unique strategy, but if the culture does not provide fertile ground to match that uniqueness, then the strategy will not get traction. Unilever has been challenging the Human Resources Department on what its role is in trying to embed the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan within the organization. This case focuses on that challenge.