What systems thinking really means
Interview with Graham Mollison, Head of Sustainability at Southeastern.
Graham MollisonHead of Sustainability, Southeastern Railway
What’s your background, and how did you come to your current position in rail?
I’m a chartered environmentalist, motivated to improve sustainability outcomes, whether that’s environmental, social or economic sustainability.
I joined Southeastern 10 years ago, from the public sector, where I was delivering, and exposed to, a wide range of environmental and social sustainability programmes. I started at Southeastern as their Environmental Specialist, then I became an Environmental Manager. As the work and team have grown, I’ve become Southeastern’s Head of Sustainability.
How Southeastern's sustainability work grown?
Several factors have combined to drive increasing action on sustainability at Southeastern. We’ve become part of a new commercial group of companies, the DOHL Group, there’s been different projects and programmes set up by the Department for Transport, and there's been some regulatory change too. Of course, there is so much more to do!
Why is sustainability important for rail?
I believe sustainability underpins our purpose. It’s truly mass transit for everyone, with an expectation that sustainability is an inherent part of our offering. People expect us to run businesses where sustainability is at the core of what we do.
The reality is that we do that, in many different ways. Rail connects people to jobs, helping to support social mobility, and offers amazing careers opportunities for our colleagues while we strive to reduce our environmental impacts.
Although our sustainability purpose is not written down, rail helps realise incredible social and environmental value. Rail is such a big industry; together we deliver some really exciting outcomes. Embedding sustainability into our thinking helps to demonstrate this social and environmental value.
Do you think colleagues within rail are changing their perception of sustainability?
Southeastern’s Sustainability Strategy is based on RSSB's Sustainable Rail Blueprint, which has really helped our people connect with what sustainability means. The Blueprint is the industry’s first credible and comprehensive sustainability strategy, developed with industry by RSSB.
Over many years Southeastern has focused on great work that supports sustainability: improving health and wellbeing, providing good quality apprenticeships, community projects, and improving our environmental performance. The Blueprint gave us an excellent way to connect our sustainability agenda, helping colleagues understand how seemingly different initiatives support a much wider programme of change.
In a way, it has enabled the penny drop so people say, ‘Oh! Actually, I’m contributing to that as well.’ People are starting to see sustainability as a tangible thing related to what they already do at work.
At Southeastern we pioneered change with our Procurement Social Value Charter to help create additional value in the supply chain in 2022, then seen as quite cutting edge. There are opportunities to create social value throughout the supply chain, a huge and important lever of businesses like Southeastern.
We want to do the same with our sustainability strategy, which shows how we have applied the Blueprint to make it real.
You’ve said you’re a big fan of systems thinking. Why is this important for sustainability in rail?
In rail everyone is part of an intricate system that that enables us to provide services that attract people to use our trains. We all play vital roles in making that happen, every day, working and collaborating within and across diverse businesses and organisations that are part of the railway ecosystem.
I believe that we can use this same systems thinking to accelerate positive change to help the industry achieve the ambitions of the Blueprint. By thinking in this way, we can help everybody see how their work creates and supports a more sustainable railway. I see sustainability is the common glue that connects everybody in rail.
If I were to be very tongue-in-cheek, I would challenge anyone in rail to say their work has no connection with sustainability. At first glance some people might not be sure, but I really don’t think it would take too long to uncover these connections. There are so many examples to share. It’s my pet subject.
What is rail’s biggest sustainability challenge?
Our biggest sustainability challenge may be realising how sustainable we really are. If everybody listed all the things that they do, I think you would be surprised at how much is already delivered. The trick now is to rapidly accelerate change, and then celebrate and talk about our achievements.
How can we improve sustainability performance?
We need more collaboration, with new people and teams, not only those we currently work with. This might feel like a bit of a challenge, but I think a systems-thinking mindset helps us to visualise how we all connect and then helps us join hands and actively seek opportunities for collaboration.
A good example is the weather and climate resilience conference that Southeastern ran in November 2023. One hundred and forty people joined us at that event including: union representatives, frontline managers, senior managers, directors, some of our supply chain partners, RSSB, the University of Birmingham, speakers from TfL, and Network Rail. They all came together to create a new, different, group of people to explore emerging challenges and solutions. We even had Amtrak’s Director of Sustainability join us from Philadelphia via video link talking about how they are managing the impacts of climate change. Weather and climate resilience are a shared problem, and working together with new people and teams will help find solutions that we may never have found on our own.
For emerging areas of work like sustainability, individually we might not have all of the answers. Here I believe we just need to rewire how we work to connect new pieces of the jigsaw together. That likely requires new perspectives and new ways of working together, wherever your organisation is on the sustainability journey. I am sure we already we have many of the answers or experience we can build on to drive new programmes forward. Doing this at an industry level will simply accelerate change.
How does the Sustainable Rail Blueprint help rail?
The Blueprint is really very simple. In Southeastern, the Blueprint has helped us embed systems thinking so we’re connecting all the strands of work that support our sustainability actions under one programme. It shows how the social and environmental sustainability agendas interrelate and connect. There’s a real power in that. It’s energised our conversations and given people confidence to talk about sustainability.
Within rail we can all focus on the same 11 areas set out in the Blueprint, creating opportunities to collaborate and drive change where is it most important.
What is rail’s biggest underappreciated strength?
Our resilience and adaptability. You see that day in, day out. Every day there’s a new challenge behind which there’s a very powerful mindset and can-do attitude to serve and improve.
Why should others choose a career in rail?
I think it’s a great sector. There’re so many different areas people can work in: driving trains, finance, passenger services, engineering, planning, and all the modernisation changes too. There are all sorts of opportunities to progress your career.
What’s your parting message to industry?
I truly believe everybody has a role in progressing our sustainability agenda. By collaborating we will create meaningful and long-lasting change.
Rail continues to be relevant to our customers and society. As we adapt and change, we will continue to deliver great services in ways that create social, environmental, and economic sustainability. It’s the same exciting thing we’ve always done but looked at through a slightly different lens.
Want to know more?For more on sustainability and rail, read Horizon's December supplement, Horizon explores: Sustainability.
Read more
Visit our website for more on the Sustainable Rail Blueprint.
View page
Designed by Definition (thisisdefinition.com)