The challenge
Making sustainable impact tangible through industry collaboration, mutual learnings, and a can-do attitude.
Our approach
Far away from offices and meeting rooms, we bring together a culturally diverse group of executives from De Heus and a team of different value chain partners each time. The goal is to connect with each other at a human level, learn from different realities and experiences, and get immersed in the context of a strategic business challenge to advance the industry’s sustainability ambitions. The impact question and value chain partner invited by De Heus define where in the world we meet: Indonesia, Vietnam, or Germany, for example.
The connection starts beyond their business card: what is your story and why do you do what you do? People from all parts of the world, sometimes struggling to communicate in a common language. Yet new connections easily emerge guided by curiosity and the openness to listen, question their own assumptions, and learn from each other’s perspectives. And above all: daring to think and act beyond yourself and your own interests.
Supported by this mindset, we bring the business challenge to life. We deep-dive into the world of the value chain partner through site-visits to the very heart of their operations and targeted interviews with clients, suppliers and experts. With the leading question: how can we improve this business and impact case together? In a pressure cooker they arrive at concrete solutions together. Experienced, supported and daring. Because when the value-chain works together, there are more opportunities for both profit and impact overall.
The continued work we do with this client through leadership development and connecting business strategy with sustainability ambitions in the value-chain propels De Heus to be at the forefront of leading change in the industry.
The result
- Strengthened collaboration throughout the value-chain, with innovative and concrete ideas that connect commercial power to sustainability ambitions.
- Sustainability vision and strategy shaped and supported from the bottom-up. No top-down, abstract vision, but very concrete examples that show it can be done.
- Learning with and from each other, beyond the boundaries of organizations.
Wichard Bieze
De Heus
We were looking for a partner that could help us to break out of the mold of doing “more of the same” type of leadership journeys. In Better Future we met a partner that “disrupts” in a positive and meaningful way. During the designing process with Better Future we discovered that we could move the needle on multiple fronts: create lasting impact on our (future) leaders, strengthening (commercial) relations with partners in our value chain, and together building impactful business cases that help us drive our sustainability goals.
What’s the bigger impact?
Bringing together sustainability goals, HR/leadership (attract, develop and retain good people) and business success: win-win-win
