You are Annika Rehberg, Head of Sustainability at Hanseatic Naturkost in Hamburg. Seventy-one percent of the company's 1,900 people say they care about sustainability; only 22% have changed anything about how they work. By the board's June review you must take that second figure to 50%, with EUR 600,000 and no line authority over anyone. First, you have to say what stands in the way.
The situation
Hanseatic makes dairy alternatives, cereals and frozen ready meals for supermarkets in Germany, Austria and the Benelux: EUR 480 million of revenue in 2025, two plants, in Hamburg and Bremen, and a reputation for clean origin built over three decades. In 2025 the chief executive told the press that the company would cut its operational emissions by 42% by 2030. Year one closed at 3%, against the 6% the company had set itself.
The engineering is largely specified. The delivery is not: it runs through refrigeration set points, line changeovers, waste sorting, commuting and supplier choices, thousands of daily decisions by people who do not report to you. Your team is two people, and on the executive committee you have a seat but no vote.
The two previous staff surveys found 21% and 22% of people had changed something, with an information campaign running throughout. In late February a memo that said "efficiency measures" nine times and never mentioned jobs leaked onto the Bremen packing floor: today 48% of production staff believe cutting emissions means automation and layoffs. 34% of office staff say they stopped listening to climate messages years ago. Two of the three works-council representatives are on record as sceptical; they cannot stop the programme, but they can slow any change to a line for as long as they keep negotiating. The Hamburg town hall is on 19 March, fourteen days away.