About this episode
How can a sustainability consultant bridge the gap between corporate bottom lines and climate action? In this episode of Climate Swings, Jonathan Taylor shares his fascinating journey from political science major writing about hybrid cars to renewable energy developer, utility specialist, head of sustainability strategy at Gap Inc, and up to his current role as global sustainability director at consultancy Kearney. Drawing on 15 years of experience across consulting and industry roles, Jonathan offers practical insights on how businesses can make sustainability profitable, why climate initiatives need strong business cases to succeed, and what it takes to translate technical sustainability goals into language that resonates with CFOs. Whether you’re a climate professional looking to drive change from within corporations or simply curious about how major companies approach their climate commitments, Jonathan’s balanced perspective on being both operator and advisor provides valuable lessons for navigating climate careers in today’s business world.
Notes and resources
- Jonathan Taylor’s LinkedIn
- Kearney’s sustainability practice
- Gap Inc.’s sustainability strategy
- 9Zero Climate Innovation Hub
Full transcript
Michael Gold (00:01)
Jonathan Taylor, welcome to Climate Swings. It’s so great to have you here.
Jonathan Taylor (00:06)
I’m really happy to be here, Michael.
Michael Gold (00:08)
So the way I like to start with all my guests is to have you just kind of give a brief self-introduction, a little bit of background on your professional life and what brought you to your current role at Kearney.
Jonathan Taylor (00:22)
Yeah. So again, thanks for having me. So, you know, I’ve been in the industry for about 15 years now. It’s been a mix of consulting roles and roles in industry. And I’ve found just over that time period, I like to do a bit of both. You know, I find myself very kind of in the middle in terms of whether or not I’m an operator or I’m an advisor, I really enjoy doing both roles.
I started out my career in industry. I was developing renewable energy projects for a small shop up in San Francisco, built a pretty large solar and wind project portfolio. And over time ended up shifting over to PG&E where I helped integrate renewables onto the California electric grid. I went to business school, spent a lot of time learning how to coach and mentor folks, which was particularly attractive at the time since I was in a utility, which is an industry where people stay in the same roles for, or will stay at the same company for many years. And coming out of business school, that’s when I made the shift into consulting. Got to serve a lot of different clients across industries, largely focused on clients in the utility space and the energy transition.
But over time started to shift towards helping companies that were not in the energy space think about the energy transition. I spent a little bit of time after that at Gap Inc. as the head of sustainability strategy, helping the organization build first enterprise-wide sustainability strategy, do some work around communications and culture. And then I shifted back into consulting, where I’ve spent a bit of my time focused on helping companies on sustainability again, but then also increasingly serving utility clients and energy companies on the energy transition as well. So it’s come a bit full circle. But again, like I said, I like to do both industry and consulting work when it comes to climate and the energy transition.
Michael Gold (02:15)
So considering this is a podcast about people’s climate journeys and their climate careers and what got them into it, let’s go back even further and let’s talk about your emergence into your sense of what needed to be done around climate when you first started hearing about it. Did those messages start to seep in when you were a kid? Just if you could give us some color and some texture about those early exposures to climate in your life, that’d be great.
Jonathan Taylor (02:42)
Yeah, you know, so I remember starting to hear about climate in high school. It was probably, you know, the early 2000s. And just starting to hear a little bit about climate change, we’re starting to see some of the first solar and wind projects popping up. And then I went to college. Yeah, I’m from the Bay Area. So, you know, this isn’t a new thing around here. So it’s been around for a while. But then, you know—
Michael Gold (03:00)
You are from the Bay Area, you’re from the Bay Area, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, same as me.
Jonathan Taylor (03:11)
—the audience doesn’t know, but Michael and I, we’re at Yale at college together. And I think my formative experience just with regards to climate change was during college, a couple of years after we met and you had graduated, but my parents bought a Prius. And so it was really my first time of being able to see energy usage impacting, you know, kind of the environment around us with the, with the live dashboard there with miles per gallon, you know, ever. And, know, I’d always been somebody that was really passionate about leaving the planet a better place than, the planet and our community is a better place than, than when I was born. And so, you know, that combined with, you know, seeing the Prius for the first time. I coincidentally, you know, I think the semester after my parents bought the Prius, I’d already signed up for a class environmental politics and the law.
So it just all kind of came together at that point in time. That’s really where that passion took off.
Michael Gold (04:14)
And what did you major in in college?
Jonathan Taylor (04:17)
Yeah, so I ended up majoring in political science with a bit of a focus on environmental studies. We had to write senior theses in college, and so mine ended up focusing on kind of the market and the kind of the regulatory regimen that was enabling Priuses to accelerate in terms of sales.
Michael Gold (04:38)
You got a little deeper into the car area in those very early.
Jonathan Taylor (04:43)
Yeah, yeah. I went into electric vehicles at the time and, you know, it was interesting. You know, I wrote the senior thesis and then I think there was another class that I ended up taking the semester after the thesis was due. And I did a little bit of a follow-up around customer preferences around hybrid vehicles because, you know, at the time the Prius looked really out of place just on the road back in, you know, again, the 2000s. So there was a lot of commentary after I wrote my thesis and I was talking to friends and family about, well, you should actually do, you know, do an analysis of how customers, you know, like the look of the car and how it sounds and how it feels. And so that was a nice little addendum that was, that was pretty interesting.
Michael Gold (05:24)
And so were you more focused, it sounded like you kind of wanted to bridge both the energy aspect of it, given that you said this is the first time you could see your sort of, know, the sort of the car was displaying for you its energy consumption as the first time you sort of able to see that, but also kind of from a consumer perspective, like why people would want to drive this kind of thing, which we actually see. I mean, I’m a Prius driver. You see a lot of Prius drivers nowadays. So was that kind of the sort of sort of had that
Jonathan Taylor (05:49)
Yeah.
Michael Gold (05:53)
those dual interests that you wanted to pursue at that time.
Jonathan Taylor (05:56)
Yeah, well, I’ve always had this lens of just, you know, how do we actually, you know, make things happen? And certainly there’s ways for regulations to make things happen, but I think it can be even more natural if you’re able to create products that customers want to buy. And so that’s both a combination of making things, you know, cost effective, but then also just making the end product something that customers are traditionally interested in. that manifests both, you know,
with my work and trying to figure out, how do Priuses come down in cost to mirror equivalent vehicles in the non-hybrid space? But then also, how do you make a hybrid that looks interesting, maybe feels like a traditional car that wore the engine that people really like? And so really just trying to bring it together and making the business case for sustainability has really been what a lot of my work has been, whether or not it’s in sustainability or an energy transition or other topics.
Michael Gold (06:55)
But you, as a political science major, I’m curious how that sort of came into it because obviously I guess around the time you graduated, you were three years below me and that was with like Waxman-Markey era. And I guess there was, you know, a decent amount of optimism around it, even though that did build and go anywhere, but it was the Obama era and people were pretty forward thinking about things. How did you think about the political science element of it at the time? And do you kind of still look at it from a political perspective in any way?
Jonathan Taylor (07:03)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, so we’re definitely looking at a lot of the political implications as it comes to climate change and sustainability. We’ve obviously just had an election and there will certainly be some implications on the sustainability space from that. know, certainly when I was looking at, you know, hybrid cars as well in the thesis was doing the same thing. So, you know, at the time, California and other states had allowed Priuses to go on the HOV lane, or had offered significant tax credits for buying hybrid cars. So that was, you know, to some extent the angle from the regulatory side. And then at the same time, you had the, you know, the 2008, 2009 economic crisis where gas prices also spiked up really high. And so the Prius having higher miles per gallon than your traditional vehicle was, you know, from that customer lens, not just the policy lens, but the customer product lens, something that made the Prius more attractive. So, I can’t remember the exact analysis that I did because it’s been so long, but I think I looked at both of those in concert because they both played an impact on customer sales and purchases.
Michael Gold (08:33)
And then you, as many of us Yalies are want to do, went into consulting and you worked at McKinsey for several years, if I’m not mistaken. How did you sort of craft a sustainability career in a place like McKinsey? What was that like?
Jonathan Taylor (08:38)
Okay.
Yeah, so, you know, it, I fortunately had had some industry experience at PG &E. so the so McKinsey’s electric power and natural gas practice, which is where a significant chunk of the climate and energy work was was being done, you know, was really excited to have me serve utilities. And so, you know, the sustainability space is very attractive at McKinsey. A lot of people wanted to get into it. My, my experience working at a utility, being familiar with utility operations and the energy space from an operating standpoint really kind of gave me that leg up to jump into the electric power and natural gas space. And so once I joined, I served a couple of utilities at the outset. And then I was really able to position myself as an expert on renewable energy, both from the work that I had done at McKinsey, but then also just because of some of my understanding of how things actually get done in utilities and in the renewable energy space from my time at PG &E and then also developing renewable energy projects prior to that.
Michael Gold (09:59)
So from my understanding of the utility space and I don’t know what it was like back when you did your internship and when you were kind of working sort of adjacent to it, it seems like a fairly conservative space. It’s obviously heavily constrained by regulation. Their chief mandates are to keep the lights on and keep the bills relatively reasonable. How did the ideas that you had around sustainability
Jonathan Taylor (10:22)
Yeah.
Michael Gold (10:28)
And those sort of bigger ideas and climate that you were, you know, dealing with in your thesis and in your studies. How did those kind of manifest in your earliest work that you were doing? Was it a bit of a culture shock maybe?
Jonathan Taylor (10:40)
Massive culture shock. You know, going back, you know, before I joined consulting, but to my early days at PG &E, you know, I was, you know, when I left the renewable energy company, I was, you know, a hundred percent renewables do it tomorrow, you know, absolutely need to make it happen. And I still think there’s, you know, lots of ways to go, you know, a hundred percent clean energy, but there were certainly some challenges once I got to PG &E, just with understanding that you can’t put a hundred percent, you know, intermittent renewables on the electric grid and still keep the lights on. You know, now that seems so obvious, but you know, as a young, fresh out of college person that only worked in the renewable space, wasn’t as clear to me then. And so, you know, just from thinking about, from having been somebody who responded to policy proposals up at the California ISO or provided input on California Public Utility Commission, materials just around renewable procurement strategy. It got a lot complicated a lot faster. And so just kind of understanding that there’s more to it than just the technology that’s on the grid. It’s also how you’re using it and when you’re procuring and how much it costs that all factors into some pretty important decision making.
Michael Gold (12:00)
Yeah, I mean, in climate, a lot of times there’s often like an outsider insider dichotomy where you have like activists and advocates trying to push for certain solutions. And oftentimes the rhetoric can be very big and very grandiose and existential in a lot of ways. But then obviously you have people on the inside, as you were saying, like ISOs and regulators and people actually working on utilities where climate might be a third, fourth concern, not a concern at all. How did you see those, like that kind of dichotomy between the big picture existential way that a lot of, you know, sort of outsider climate practitioners think about climate versus what you were seeing on the inside?
Jonathan Taylor (12:31)
Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, we’re not going to be able to solve the climate problem without both groups of folks. They are today working together to solve these challenges and tomorrow they’ll be doing the same thing. So what I found was when you have some of the more aspirational activist type folks, if they are more grounded in what is happening on the grid. So understand power flows, understand procurement decisions, understand operations. They’re able to have a lot more influence in actually getting things done than somebody that just writes a strong letter or makes vague pronouncements about, need to do X, Y, and Z. So if you’re actually able to take that and show what it might look like. The utility space is very big on simulations and scenarios and forecasts. So, you know, I’m not saying that, you know, every single person needs to be able to do that, but it’s more credible, you know, from, you know, activists actually being successful in getting things done if there’s some component of what they are articulating that is based in that. And then on the flip side, you’ve certainly got people at ISOs and utilities that are very excited about some of the new technologies that are coming out. They are very interested to understand what the latest type of hydrogen is that people are talking about, or the latest new addition to solar or wind, or the different types of batteries that are coming out. We always talk about within ion batteries, but you can also store power by charging a train up a mountain and then discharging it when you need it just for some kinetic power. So just thinking about some of those things that are a little bit outside the box, a lot of those more traditional energy practitioners are really interested in those technologies. And so I know that they’re eager to learn about it too. So there’s certainly a meeting of the minds that can happen and a lot of it just comes down to what will work on the grid and what’s cost effective to get it to make it happen.
Michael Gold (15:02)
Yeah, and as a consultant, obviously for many sectors of management consultancy, your mission is essentially to help your clients bottom line, right? To help them grow, to help them overcome their business related challenges, grow profit, grow revenue, etc. etc. In the sustainability space, how do you balance those kinds of different imperatives, right? Because you are still hired by the client—
Jonathan Taylor (15:12)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gold (15:30)
—to help with that first imperative, but you are also looking at things from a sustainability perspective too in terms of lowering carbon emissions, addressing climate change, et cetera, et How did you balance that in your role?
Jonathan Taylor (15:31)
Yeah, so I mean, there’s a couple of different ways, but a lot of it comes down to putting the customer first in a lot of cases, or if you’re serving utilities, it’s making sure that you’re thinking about cost or your rate payers. And so as we think about renewables, there’s a large amount of new generating facilities that need to be put down. There’s large amounts of new transmission, transmission lines that need to be built to supply that power. And so a lot of it thinks about, you know, looking at getting those projects, those renewable projects online and a lot of the surrounding infrastructure to make that happen versus alternatives. And, you know, and those alternatives could be gas. There’s not a lot of coal plants being built these days, but just other technologies as well. Gas is the most common alternative here in the U.S.
And so once you kind of weigh those things and then you also think about well, what do our actual customers want here in California? Customers do actually want Renewable energy that’s not true everywhere in the US and so you want to make sure as a utility that you are managing costs But you’re also making sure that you are pleasing or you’re providing power to your customers In a way that is attracted to them in California in particular. We’ve had these things called community choice aggregation, which has allowed smaller communities to elect to disconnect from the grid and provide power in a way for themselves. those communities that have done that have largely opted to try and go procure more renewable power. And there are some downsides to utilities when communities do this, just in terms of risk and risk management. And so one way that utilities have hoped to try and get ahead of some of those has been trying to provide more renewable power to those customers on a more localized level. So, at the end of the day, I think that utilities and non-utility businesses that are trying to do sustainability have a similar goal. I think a lot of them want to provide things to their customers that they want, but it really does become that trade-off between cost and what customers want.
You know, organizations that are able to thread that needle the right way, I think, have a lot of growth opportunities ahead for them.
Michael Gold (18:11)
Yeah, and so on the one hand, you’re sort of embedding yourself in the client space. Obviously, you’re a utility expert as much as anybody, but you’re also a consultant and you have that title first and foremost. Within the consultancy space, how are sustainability concerns and sustainability consulting looked upon? Is this something that you see as a major growth area? Is it something that—
Jonathan Taylor (18:20)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gold (18:39)
—sort of still needs to be cultivated in certain aspects. How do you see kind of sustainability consulting as a career?
Jonathan Taylor (18:46)
You know, I think it’s been really interesting over the last five, 10 years. I think that 10 years ago, it was really new. You had a lot of organizations that were trying to set their initial targets. They were trying to learn about electricity procurement. And so today you see a lot of major organizations that have set their goals and their biggest challenges are around trying to make it happen.
You know, over the last 10 years, I think a lot of people have probably already and not everybody started 10 years ago. Some, you know, started more recently, some still haven’t started. but for those that started a while ago, a lot of what they’re trying to do is now execute on those goals and figure out how do actually make things happen? And so for a consulting firm like Carney, which is where, you know, I am, we have a lot of great operational expertise around how to, you know, bring together stakeholders, how to do things in supply chains, how to do things in operations, to try and go and execute on things. So from a sustainability standpoint, it’s less just sustainability strategy and more how do you embed something, a new process and your technology, new product across your organization to make something happen. And so it doesn’t necessarily need to be a sustainability initiative that made that happen. could be you’re actually trying to lower costs and for some reason, or you guys were able to look at packaging, find something around your packaging that you could take out some plastic and actually save some money. So you’re both reducing your waste, but also saving money. And so then it’s not, well, how do you do sustainability? It’s how do you actually drive impact within the organization? So I think that that has been a great opportunity to just for consulting. think if you’ve got organizations that are a little bit newer to the sustainability space, maybe they’ve just set their goals or they’re starting today. It is a little bit more of a sustainability strategy element. And so then, chances are you’re helping sustainability colleagues that are in organizations run a strategy process. so when I was at McKinsey, was something that McKinsey is very well known for, running strategy processes.
It’s something that CARNI is increasingly focusing on with some of our new platforms that we’ve been developing. And so I think that a lot of consulting firms can help organizations really think about the things that they need to do to build a strategy. I think that sustainability professionals tend to be have, a lot of them are from a nonprofit background. A lot of them have deep technical expertise in the sustainability field that they are in.
But they may not necessarily have the experience running a strategy process for a major, large organization. And so that’s certainly been a space where consultants have been able to help sustainability professionals do that.
Michael Gold (21:45)
Yeah, mean, McKinsey has long been considered, you know, one of the top tier general management consultancies. How has sustainability, how did you see it evolve within McKinsey from when you joined? Was there already kind of like a robust practice? Were you kind of on the ground floor? Like how, can you talk a little bit about that?
Jonathan Taylor (22:04)
Yeah, you I was a little bit on the ground floor there. So, you know, it had been in, you know, various stages, you know, while I got there and before. But I, you know, while I was there, I was one of the earlier classes of sustainability fellows that McKinsey had, I think had been going for several years before I got there, but not too long. So in my second or third year at McKinsey, was a sustainability fellow. spent, you know, I think the majority of that year just focused on sustainability projects. So that meant helping build out the sustainability investing practice. It meant serving clients on energy topics, on electric vehicles, and just helping develop new content for the firm on those topics. so, yeah, it’s certainly matured over the years. don’t know where McKinsey is presently on it just because I’m not there, but I imagine I think that they’ve probably got a dedicated practice of some form of various professionals from across the organization working on it. And that’s very similar to what we have at Kearney today. We’ve got sustainability professionals embedded within our industry practices and our different functions to make sure that when a client has a question, there’s somebody who knows that industry or that business well that can hop on the phone and quickly talk to them and start thinking about how, how they can improve their sustainability or their energy or their circularity or their operational performance or what have you.
Michael Gold (23:39)
Was there a kind of unified theory of change around sustainability at McKinsey at the time when you joined? there a sense of this is what sustainability is and this is how we want to try to achieve it? Was it mostly like around climate and clean energy or sort of what you mentioned things like circularity and plastics, like where there are sort of different buckets or different mind shares that got more or less attention?
Jonathan Taylor (23:55)
Yeah.
You know, I’d say both in both the work that I did and probably during my time at McKinsey, climate and energy was the popular topic. You know, I think that over the last 10 years, climate has just been the thing that is mostly on people’s minds. And I don’t think that’ll change. energy, renewables, other clean energy sources, you know, will remain probably really popular, but I think increasingly, you know, a lot of the organizations that I’m working with are looking at things like circularity and water. They’re very complicated as well. Circularity just, you know, by itself thinking about all aspects of, you know, how a product is designed, used, disposed of, that’s a big problem. And so to some extent, you know, energy, you know, energy is very complicated as well, but it was that thing that kind of rang the doorbell of a lot of people just in terms of reducing the amount of emissions that are going into the air. But I think people are increasingly looking at these other technologies.
Michael Gold (25:08)
And then after spending several years at McKinsey, you went in-house to the Gap. Can you talk about just initially just what sparked that shift?
Jonathan Taylor (25:13)
Yeah.
Yeah, so definitely. So, you know, the GAP role was pretty interesting to me. know, GAP was doing pretty well and what they wanted to do was think about how sustainability could be used to grow the business. so, you know, GAP had made a lot of different sustainability commitments. You know, I’d certainly say that they’ve, that they’re one of the companies on the forefront when it comes to sustainability. And so what they wanted to do was just make sure that there was an appropriate approach and just execution plan to go deliver on all of those different goals. And so that included both coming up with a strategic plan, thinking about communications around it, as well as just figuring out what the organizational structure should be to really unlock the organization’s ability to go deliver. So it was a pretty exciting role, pretty large team. So, you know, it was, you know, pretty cool, you know, as something to leave, to leave McKinsey for. And so, yeah, I was really excited by it. You know, I also had some considerations. my, my, my oldest, who’s now three years old, she was on the way at the time that we were thinking about making that move. We also moved homes that year. So was a lot of change that year for us.
Michael Gold (26:41)
Wow.
Jonathan Taylor (26:42)
But I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do consulting with a newborn or a young one. And since then, I’ve obviously changed my mind since I’m back in consulting. But that was something else that did factor into my thinking at the time.
Michael Gold (26:57)
So you talked about the fact that Gab had been already making commitments, but then when you came in, you mentioned earlier that you were essentially tasked to sort of put those commitments into action in the sense that I the plan together and you were really given the title as basically the first head of Sustainable. What was the exact title?
Jonathan Taylor (27:14)
So I was the head of sustainability strategy. We had a head of sustainability as well. And so, yeah, so I was basically tasked with, know, we had a lot of goals. were acting towards, we were working on each one of those goals, but we hadn’t necessarily come up with an integrated approach for how to do that. So we spent a little bit of time developing that strategy, coming up with—
Michael Gold (27:21)
I see.
Jonathan Taylor (27:43)
—business cases for various initiatives that we were working on.
Michael Gold (27:48)
What was kind of like your day one sort of task? like, how did you sort of start to shape that right from the, from the outset? Cause GAP is obviously a humongous company with a gigantic supply chain. How did you even get your mind around it?
Jonathan Taylor (28:01)
Yeah, mean, so day one was just learning about the business. The supply chain is very complex. A lot of different steps in it, as well as just learning about the apparel and fashion process. I was not a fashion and apparel person before, or retail person before I had gone to GAP. So that was a big learning curve for me. And then obviously there were GAP elements of it as well.
You know, it always really comes down to people and just kind of meeting people and understanding what they’re doing and how you can, you know, help them achieve their, their objectives while also trying to figure out what you need to get done when you, when you start. And so that’s really what I did. You know, I met folks, figured out what was going on and started to try and, you know, wrap my, wrap my hands around, you know, what were the goals that, you know, we’d already set and, know, what’s the timelines? What have we already done?
And just kind of start to think about, you know, what should this strategic process look like and how do we get going on it.
Michael Gold (29:05)
And a lot of times climate goals can be 10 years in the future, 30 years in the future. How did you operationalize that to make them day to day, month to month, quarter to quarter? How do you start to break them down into digestible chunks that people can actually action on?
Jonathan Taylor (29:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, so I think, you know, one of the important things is just making sure that leadership teams are on the same page. And so, you know, what that typically looks like is some kind of workshop or get together for the C-suite and it could be for, you know, the entire organization or for, you know, the various brands, but getting them together to make sure that they’re on board with, you know, 40%, 50%, 100%, you know, reduction in emissions by X-State.
Sometimes it’s further out than you’d like and the executive team wants to push it out further because it gives them more cover for various fluctuations in the business. Others want a really short timeline because it compresses it, makes them take action and sustainability is really important to them and they want to be viewed as a leader. Any approach is fine. I think it’s just great when you actually have made those decisions on what you want your sustainability strategy to be and it’s well aligned to your business. So that’s the purpose of that workshop or get together. It’s not just to set the sustainability story, but to make sure that it is embedded with how you’re operating and your broader enterprise-wide strategy. And so then once you figure out that strategy, then you start to think about those operational changes. Obviously, when you set the strategy, you want to have thought about, well, here’s different options of how this could look like. But once you make that decision, you start to chart out what those specific milestones are. And particularly when it comes to climate, one of the important things is over the last 15 years, you’ve typically seen renewable prices coming down very quickly. So there’s always this choice of, well, do I buy this year and potentially achieve my sustainability target earlier, or do I wait and capture some of those cost savings. so that’s been, historically a lot of the tension that people have faced as they’ve thought about procuring renewables along with some issues just around timing and other elements just around cost and permitting. there’s a whole element just around, you gonna accept the risk? And then will that project actually be available in two years? Because there’s a lot of other people that are trying to play in the corporate renewable space. And so there’s just a whole lot of different variables that you need to think about as you’re making those decisions and setting those goals and trying to drive that change.
Michael Gold (32:00)
And as kind of the first in this type of role, what were your KPIs like? mean, you are obviously not going to be at GAP in the, you know, 10 years or 30 years when those climate targets are supposed to be, you’re not there now. So how did you, did you kind of like get to set your own KPIs? Like how did your, how did you make that role actionable for yourself?
Jonathan Taylor (32:21)
Yeah, I mean, so it really came with deciding what that roadmap or strategy process was going to look like. So, you know, it was setting some key milestones that we were going to look at and evaluate coming up with deliverables and making sure that we were prioritizing the right things. so part of that was having conversations within the sustainability team. Some of that was having, you know, conversations outside the sustainability team with other key business leaders, but just making sure that a lot of the key stakeholders were involved, that we were aligned on the plan and then just marching towards it. And then of course, just because as things happen, things come up and things slip and you fall behind here, you catch up in another place. But ultimately, when you do add those new elements of scope, it’s really important that you stick to the timeline, you’re delivering what you said that you’ll do.
Because even when you add new things to the scope and maybe it causes the timeline to shift a little bit, one of the biggest challenges, like I said at the start, is for sustainability folks just in terms of execution and getting things done for a lot of the organizations that have established their sustainability goals already. And so it’s just really important that as you’re adding new elements, even if the timeline slips a little bit, you again get everybody on the same page, align on, you know, that shift why it’s happening or why it can’t happen and why you need to catch up and then you keep marching on from there.
Michael Gold (33:55)
And so you were obviously back in consulting now and you must have taken a lot of lessons and learnings from your time at GAP, even though the apparel sector is obviously a unique space with its own massive challenges and its own sort of supply chain issues, which a lot of other organizations might not need to face. But how much when you left GAP, how much did you think that you could sort of copy paste over your experience and how much in reality?
Now you’re dealing with other clients. Have you realized that Gap was quite unique.
Jonathan Taylor (34:27)
Yeah, mean, Gap certainly was unique. It’s a unique business, so that certainly played in. But I do think that there’s a lot of elements just around people and just stakeholders that is very similar just across organizations. It takes effort to get people on the same page. You’ve got to help people understand why you’re doing sustainability or what the business case is or what the impact on operations is.
You know, no business is gonna be the same. Everybody’s gonna have their own unique operations, but understanding that, you know, that’s not an easy lift that takes time. Here are the kinds of things that you should be highlighting when you go into those conversations. think those are not copy paste, because again, the businesses are different, but they’re learnings that are really helpful as you go into those conversations.
Michael Gold (35:21)
And the Gap being a San Francisco based organization, it’s in the Bay Area, presumably the mindset and the attitude was very proactive. It was a sense at least that climate change is a problem and we need to do something about it, even if you could differ on the actual tactics. But when you’re looking at organizations which might be in different places, might be at different trajectories in terms of their own climate awareness, how do you take those, how do you shape an attitude, right? I mean, or can you shape an attitude as a consultant?
Jonathan Taylor (35:42)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Gold (35:50)
What is your role in the cultural aspect of sustainability attitudes at organizations?
Jonathan Taylor (35:58)
Yeah, mean, ultimately, you know, every organization is going to have their own different reason for why they’re doing sustainability. For GAP, you know, it’s something that they wanted to do. It was, you know, how they wanted to position themselves in the market. Other organizations, you know, it could be because customer, because that’s what customers want. And in other places, it’s going to be because that’s what regulators are demanding them to do. And so then what you end up doing is you end up sustainability initiatives, the conversations, the overall aspiration is then aligned to whatever that is. If it’s how you want to position yourself and your values, like the gap kind of set out to do, then they’re going to want to be much more on the front foot on sustainability. Same thing if it’s something that your customers are demanding, whether or not it’s B2B customers and customers like you and me, organizations are going to have to position themselves.
I think if you’ve got naysayers at a company that is selling to a large Fortune 500 company, a lot of these companies now have the supply requirements that make people do certain things when it comes to human rights, or they have to be disclosing certain things around their emissions. so even if you as your organization aren’t really positioning yourself strongly on sustainability, if the only way you’re going to sell something to you know, somebody that, you know, is 80% of your sales is if you do something on sustainability, then, you know, you got to do something on sustainability. So, and, know, hopefully, you know, the business case can then be made on that. And frankly, if you’re just doing it for regulations, that’s again, you know, that’s a license to operate because if you don’t, if you don’t do it, you’ll either be facing huge fines or maybe you just won’t be able to sell your product. So there’s a lot of different rationales and, know, whatever people are doing on sustainability just needs to be aligned with whatever is critical to make the business happen.
Michael Gold (37:53)
So just backing up a little bit, when you were at McKinsey, were you mostly working with utilities? Had you worked on apparel sustainability consulting before or in generally other industries or was it mostly utilities?
Jonathan Taylor (38:05)
You know, it was mostly utilities. I did some things in technology and hospitality. I’m sure there were a couple other industries, manufacturing, which maybe is a little bit similar to fashion and apparel, but no, I really had not done much in clothing.
Michael Gold (38:26)
And now are you, what’s your remit at Kearney? Are you kind of looking at a broader set of companies or is it still mostly utilities, energy, et cetera?
Jonathan Taylor (38:35)
You know, it’s mostly utilities and energy. I’d say, you know, energy transition work is my primary focus and things that are adjacent to that via, you know, just general utility operations, asset management, know, operational excellence type things. But then, you know, I am also serving, you know, companies across industries on sustainability. So it can be a company, you know, like the GAP that, you know, obviously sustainability isn’t their primary.
It can be companies that are doing sustainability or energy transition work as their primary function, can be tech companies, beverage companies. Anything is essentially fair game.
Michael Gold (39:17)
And the remit still again is to help them improve their sustainability performance kind of on these both climate and maybe other sorts of metrics like circularity plastics, et cetera, et cetera. That’s still kind of in your current role where you’re sitting.
Jonathan Taylor (39:32)
Yeah, I mean, that’s the remit. would maybe broaden it to say it’s more to improve their business performance and hopefully sustainability by unlocking sustainability, they can improve their business performance as well. But if somebody tells me that they just want to improve their sustainability and they don’t care how it impacts business, yes, we can have that conversation. But I’d still try and push them to identify opportunities that are going to sync with the business well, because again, I’ve found that—
Michael Gold (39:44)
Right, right, right. So bringing the business.
That’s great, right, right, right.
Jonathan Taylor (40:02)
—sustainability initiatives that have the most staying power are ones that improve the business and have a strong business case.
Michael Gold (40:07)
Sustainability of sustainability needs to be pro-business basically, pro-bottom line. Right, exactly. Why did you decide to go back into consulting actually at that time?
Jonathan Taylor (40:10)
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So, you know, I had been at Gap for a little while. And I think that one of the things that was really exciting to me at McKinsey that I hadn’t really internalized at the time was just the impact of being able to serve different clients at the same time, be able to tackle a lot of different problems in kind of unique ways, opposed to kind of just focusing on one thing. And so, you know, like I said at the start, you know, I’m, you know, both an operator and can be an advisor. So, you know, I’m probably 50-50 and, I imagine I’ll go back into industry at some point after consulting. But, you know, for me at the time, you know, I really like just, I really like the idea of being able to serve multiple companies and helping them achieve, you know, various, you know, objectives around business and sustainability.
Michael Gold (41:06)
So I think that sort of brings us to, I guess, the present day. And there are a couple of questions that I like to ask my guests that are just kind of general kind of thought starters in terms of the way you see working in climate. And I guess the first question is, what do you consider to be working in climate? Your career arc has been fairly climate centric. Some people I speak with, kind of do a real hard pivot, like a real swing into it. But you’ve kind of had climate in your byline—
Jonathan Taylor (41:26)
Thank
Michael Gold (41:34)
—kind of since the beginning, what does working in climate mean to you?
Jonathan Taylor (41:37)
Yeah, you know, it’s an interesting question. I, I usually like to think that, you anybody can have impact in climate, you know, be it somebody that is, you know, working in operations and can figure out how to have a utility role fewer trucks to go repair power lines or go make repairs. Because, you know, that truck is then going to be making fewer emissions out in…
But I think maybe a narrower definition, you know, might be somebody who, you know, is either working in advisory role, you know, for a company that has sustainability topics as their core business. So it could be a company that’s making solar panels or developing solar projects, or somebody in one of those broader non sustainability companies, but whose role is sustainability. So that’s probably the narrower definition, but I do think that there’s a lot more people and frankly, anyone, any business that can be having an impact on climate.
Michael Gold (42:44)
Yeah, I mean, what can people do who are in disparate parts of business, finance or legal or HR, but they care, you know, and they and maybe they feel like their company is not necessarily doing enough. It’s all it can be a hard conversation to have with senior executives, you know, when you’ve got actual business to run, right?
Jonathan Taylor (42:55)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the easiest thing is, you know, whenever organizations are doing their annual satisfaction survey, it can be as simple as just filling out the form and saying, you I wish we had recycling in this office or compost or, you know, what have you in the office, know, more, you know, lights that automatically turn off in the evening so that we’re not running our lights overnight, you know, all day. So that’s probably the simplest way that people can get involved.
I think the much harder thing is potentially trying to approach your boss or again, senior leadership with some of the ideas that could actually improve the business. So if you’re in finance and you happen to see that our utility bills are really high, you can actually go think about, are there ways to actually procure electricity on a cheaper basis? And maybe you’re not the expert on renewable energy procurement.
Maybe that’s when you call somebody like me or somebody else in consulting who knows electricity procurement better. But being able to look up online, well, hey, you can get solar energy for X dollars a megawatt hour, but we’re paying this amount to our utility. There’s reasons why you might be paying that amount to your utility, but if they look similar, like the renewables are cheaper, yeah, trying to have that conversation with your boss.
If you’re in finance would be great. If you’re in operations, again, we mentioned the thing about like truck roles or maybe adding an energy management system to your manufacturing facility. There’s lots of different options.
Michael Gold (44:43)
And have you seen any role for like employee resource groups or ways to bring like minded people who care about climate together, even if it’s not necessarily in their byline or in their job description? Have you seen that kind of play out in your space?
Jonathan Taylor (44:59)
Yeah, I mean, we’ve even got that here at Kearney. We’ve got a sustainability affinity group for folks that maybe are traditionally more focused on whatever topic, you name it, under the sun that a consultant is working on. But we’ve got a broader community beyond folks that are experts in sustainability to try and get them interested in opportunities in the field and also just help them stay energized and think about opportunities that that Kearney and clients can try and improve on their sustainability. So, you know, we’re doing it here at Carney and yes, have definitely seen clients doing that as well.
Michael Gold (45:36)
And you’ve discussed, you mentioned mentoring. Can you talk about kind of how you see mentoring playing out, at least maybe just from your own perspective, but also how you think about how mentoring can play a bigger role in sort of sustainability, helping advance sustainability and helping advance climate goals?
Jonathan Taylor (45:54)
Yeah, I think it’s really huge. Like I mentioned, there’s some skill sets that sustainability professionals tend to have. And there’s other skill sets that in general folks can work on. And that’s not to say that every person fits into that same bucket, but mentoring is a huge way to try and level out those skill sets. And so for me, it’s been when folks have reached out to me, sometimes even randomly on LinkedIn, but more often from the organizations that I’ve been working at, either clients who are interested in chatting with me or people at Kearney that are interested in learning about sustainability. It’s having those conversations and asking them, what are your skillsets? What do you want to improve on? How do you want to get involved in sustainability? What topics are you really passionate?
And then, know, digging in on those things and, you know, feedback is really important. One of the things I learned at Stanford for Business School is that, you know, feedback is a gift. It’s one of the mantras of one of our courses, touchy feely. And so, you know, it is really important to get feedback because that’s how we all grow from a professional standpoint. And so, you know, it’s really encouraging consulting to ask for feedback. So I would just encourage all sustainability professionals to ask for that feedback when you can.
Michael Gold (47:25)
And you’ve obviously, I presume, have been mentored yourself. Can you talk about any experiences or any lessons that you took away from your kind of early mentorship moments when you were kind of getting your feet wet in the space?
Jonathan Taylor (47:38)
Yeah, mean, honestly, sometimes it is as simple as getting guidance around, have you seen this new regulation that’s coming out? Or have you seen what this one company is doing? I think that you should incorporate this into your work. That’s very content driven. Other times it’s been when I didn’t quite present something to an executive as well as I could have. Instead, it’s like, hey, next time maybe frame it this way.
And so, you know, that’s really helpful because, you know, everybody is going to have their own way of, you know, kind of digesting information. And so, you know, if that mentor, that person that you’re working with happens to know that, that person prefers something that’s more visual or something that’s more data oriented or something that’s more narrative oriented, from a writing standpoint, you want to make sure that you’re tailoring your message to whoever that person is. So it’s important to take that feedback and those are all kind of examples of things that I’ve gotten feedback on either in consulting or in industry. And it’s, I think part of everybody’s growth.
Michael Gold (48:46)
And a lot of climate practitioners, kind of broadly defined, really feel a sense of mission and a sense of purpose in what they do. And you have kind of described it, at least in this conversation, as, well, my initial remit is to help the business performance and, you know, the kind of building the business case around sustainability. But presumably those things will come into tension, right? Like, how do you kind of like keep that sense of mission, that sense of purpose, even when there’s a clear tension for the kind of sustainability or the climate aim.
Jonathan Taylor (49:18)
Yeah, I mean, I think if you are the sustainability professional, when those tensions happen, your job is to nudge a little bit further on the sustainability lens, then maybe your colleague or peer would naturally be inclined to do, or at least remind people of sustainability commitments. But at the same time, think grounding that conversation in the business will help you be able to get done what you want to be done just because you’re speaking that other colleague who maybe is the decision maker’s language instead of you speaking in your own language and asking them to make a decision based on something that they don’t quite understand. it’s not always natural, it’s not always easy, but that’s I think it just helps just in terms of getting things done.
Michael Gold (50:09)
And thinking back, sort of to your, again, back to your early days and these kind of lessons around kind of keeping up the mission and the purpose, is there something, anything you kind of wish you’d done differently kind of in a career perspective or anything you might have even just gone back and changed kind of about, I don’t know, being able to kind of have your cake and eat it too, so to speak.
Jonathan Taylor (50:31)
You know, I think…
You know, there’s not a ton. I think that in some cases, though, a lot of times sustainability professionals report to a head of finance. Sometimes it’s a head of legal. Every once in while it’s a head of ops. But you see a lot of finance and legal and increasing. I guess you’re seeing sustainability reporting to the CEO. And I think it’s just making sure, again, that things are kind of grounded in that language that folks are speaking to. I remember having a conversation with the CFO once and, you know, coming out of the meeting, was like, should have brought a lot more numbers around what the implications for the, for the business were. know, I thought, you know, it was, I mean, it was all, it was already the most, numbers heavy document that we had. Yeah. The most quantitative document, that we had pulled together. you know, some of my colleagues were, you know, already pretty uncomfortable with it because, you know, it was, it was more math and they had done more implications for the business than they had done. But—
Michael Gold (51:22)
Always with the CFO, right?
quantitative.
Jonathan Taylor (51:43)
—the CFO wanted even more. so, and since I hadn’t met the person before, I didn’t know to expect that. It was a new person and we just needed to be, we should have been ready. And the next time we certainly were ready, but that’s maybe one we could have had back.
Michael Gold (52:01)
So always try to speak the language of the person you’re talking to. Try to meet them where they are, right? Not expect them to just all of a sudden be on your level. Right, right. And I guess last question, if you could look back now and just think of what your individual contribution has been. I know we’re all just sort of little specks of dust on this gigantic planet, but if you could think of, or maybe even if you just were to project forward and think what would you want your epitaph to be, of course.
Jonathan Taylor (52:05)
Definitely. Yep.
Definitely, definitely.
I’m
Michael Gold (52:28)
That’s not until a long way away, hopefully, knock wood of course, but if you could just think about that in a sentence or two.
Jonathan Taylor (52:29)
Yeah.
Yeah, I I think for me, the…
you know, hopefully it starts with me being a good husband and a good father, first of all. But, you I think, you know, from a professional standpoint, you know, really want to be a driver in the energy transition space, really want to have made a difference in terms of making new technologies, be able to be adopted, basically, you know, being able to change some public opinion around technologies, as well as having been able to make them cost effective so that they’re
Michael Gold (52:46)
Nice, nice.
Jonathan Taylor (53:11)
Something that consumers are really excited by. So yeah, think that’s, if I was able to do that, I’d be pretty happy with my professional career.
Michael Gold (53:22)
Well, I think that’s a wonderful place to end. Jonathan Taylor, thank you so much. This was wonderful.
Jonathan Taylor (53:28)
Awesome. Thanks so much, Michael.