Sustainable product management drives business success

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TLDR

Sustainable product management integrates environmental considerations into the entire product lifecycle, creating value for businesses, customers, and the planet. Kaila Byrzgalski’s experience at Steelcase demonstrates how a dedicated sustainability role can bridge the gap between corporate environmental goals and product innovation. By approaching sustainability as a core business strategy rather than a separate initiative, product managers can discover opportunities to reduce costs, attract environmentally conscious customers, and build more resilient products.

Key Topics

• Cross-functional integration is essential – sustainability connects portfolio management, marketing, design, and operations
• Three layers of sustainability exist in organizations: corporate reporting, product stories, and detailed product data
• Lifecycle assessments help identify environmental hotspots and improvement opportunities in products
• Sustainable materials innovation can simultaneously reduce costs and environmental impact
• Business benefits include cost optimization, market expansion, and strengthened customer relationships
• Getting started requires overcoming analysis paralysis by taking small, meaningful steps
• Every role can be a sustainability role, with product managers uniquely positioned to drive meaningful change

Introduction

We’re diving deep into a topic that scarcely existed a decade ago: sustainable product management. Sustainability is no longer a buzzword—it’s a core strategy for product leaders like Kaila Bryzgalski at Steelcase. If you’ve ever wondered how sustainability improves product innovation and business success, this discussion is for you. You’ll gain insights into real-world practices from Kaila, a leader who’s created her role from scratch, making a tangible impact at Steelcase. Together, we’ll learn why sustainability is not only vital but also how to integrate it into product strategy.  

Creating a Sustainable Product Management Role

Steelcase has approached sustainability as part of its corporate DNA for over 100 years. The company has long valued “people and planet” alongside profit. This foundation made it possible for Kaila to create a specialized role focused on product sustainability marketing.

The company employs what Kaila called a hub-and-spoke sustainability model:

• The Hub: A central sustainability team of subject matter experts
• The Spokes: Specialized sustainability roles in different departments:
  • Marketing
  • Operations
  • Supply management
  • Design

Understanding a Portfolio Manager for Product Sustainability Role

The portfolio manager for product sustainability position at Steelcase sits at the intersection of multiple departments. This cross-functional role connects brand communications, marketing, portfolio management, and product development with the sustainability hub and corporate ESG impact team.

Kaila described managing what she called “the layers of sustainability”:

As a portfolio manager for product sustainability, Kaila manages both:

1. The green product portfolio (products with differentiated sustainability features like the carbon neutral product line)
2. Sustainability attributes for Steelcase’s broader catalog of 500+ global products

For product managers looking to enhance their sustainability skills, understanding this layered approach helps create a comprehensive strategy rather than isolated initiatives.

How to Create a Similar Role in Your Organization

If you’re interested in creating a similar sustainable product management position in your company, Kaila identified three key factors that enabled the role at Steelcase:

1. Company values aligned with sustainability (research and insight-focused culture)
2. Leadership support for the position
3. Customer demand creating market pull for sustainable products

Practical Steps for Creating a Sustainability Role

For product managers looking to establish a similar role, Kaila recommended these actionable steps:

1. Research your company’s impact report and materiality assessment

• Consider using AI tools to help summarize lengthy reports
• Look for mentions of product design or sustainability in the materiality spectrum

2. Gather evidence of customer demand

• Collect data points from sales teams about customer requests
• Research market trends in sustainability for your product category

3. Make a business case to leadership

• Present findings on company values and customer demand
• Show how a dedicated sustainability role could address both

Creating a sustainability-focused product role has become easier over the past five years as more customers prioritize environmental attributes. The role has gone through what Kaila described as a “storming, forming, norming” evolution, becoming increasingly integrated into standard product development processes.

Practical Steps for Improving Sustainability in Product Management

One of the most valuable aspects of Kaila’s role is her collaboration with other product managers to integrate sustainability into their work. She described her function as that of a guide or consultant, helping product teams understand environmental considerations alongside traditional product attributes like quality and durability.

For product managers looking to improve sustainability in their own products, Kaila shared three key action items:

1. Study Your Company’s Impact Report

• Use Ctrl+F to quickly find mentions of product design and sustainability
• Understand what sustainability aspects matter most to your organization
• Identify how product development connects to broader company sustainability goals

2. Learn About Lifecycle Assessments (LCA)

• Determine if your products already have lifecycle assessments
• If not, find assessments for similar products or categories
• Identify environmental “hotspots” in your product lifecycle
• Use this data to guide material selection and design decisions

3. Know Your Sustainability-Conscious Customers

• Research which customer segments value sustainability
• Understand what specific environmental attributes matter to them
• Target these segments with appropriate sustainability messaging

By incorporating these practices, product managers can make sustainability a core consideration in product development rather than an afterthought or add-on feature.

Practical Examples of Sustainable Product Innovation

To illustrate how sustainable product management works in practice, Kaila shared a case study from Steelcase’s Sustainable Materials Summit. This event brought together cross-functional teams including quality, safety, engineering, and marketing professionals to address environmental hotspots in their products.

The summit focused on sustainability in material selection, one of the most impactful areas for environmental product design. Participants developed several innovative solutions:

These examples demonstrate three core approaches to sustainable product development:

1. Eliminating materials where possible
2. Using less material through design optimization
3. Finding alternative materials with lower environmental impact

What makes these approaches particularly valuable is that they often result in both environmental benefits and business advantages, creating a win-win for sustainability and profitability.

The Business Case for Sustainability

A common misconception about sustainable product management is that it always increases costs. Kaila explained that sustainability and business success are “truly symbiotic” rather than at odds.

Many sustainability initiatives actually reduce costs through:

• Manufacturing optimization that eliminates waste
• Consolidation of product lines reducing inventory and complexity
• Packaging optimization saving materials and shipping costs

Product managers sometimes miss opportunities by failing to communicate the sustainability benefits of cost-saving measures they’ve already implemented. This highlights the importance of connecting product development and marketing to tell a complete sustainability story.

The business value extends beyond direct cost savings. Sustainability literally means “enduring into the future”—exactly what most businesses want. By helping customers understand the value of durable, sustainable products, companies build stronger brands and customer relationships.

Implementing Sustainability at the Product Level

At Steelcase, sustainability has become increasingly integrated into standard product development processes. They’ve added a “sustainability intention” section to their product charters, requiring product managers to consider environmental impacts even if sustainability isn’t a primary focus for a particular product.

This systematic approach ensures that:

1. Product managers consciously evaluate sustainability for every product
2. Teams conduct competitive research on sustainability features in similar products
3. Sustainability considerations carry through the entire product development lifecycle

Even when a product team decides that their target customers don’t prioritize sustainability, the process still creates awareness and may identify opportunity areas for future improvements.

Getting Started with Sustainability in Product Management

For product managers interested in enhancing sustainability but unsure where to begin, Kaila shared a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “Nothing worth having comes easy.” She acknowledged that sustainability can be “wild and wicked” with many complex considerations, leading many to experience analysis paralysis.

To overcome this, she offered several practical approaches:

Reframing Sustainability for Skeptics

If you encounter resistance within your organization, try these alternative framings:

• Business endurance: Positioning sustainability as ensuring the company’s long-term viability
• Cost optimization: Highlighting waste reduction and efficiency improvements
• Market expansion: Identifying new customer segments attracted by sustainable offerings

Value Chain Collaboration

One of the most valuable approaches is to look beyond your own company:

• Connect with suppliers about their sustainability initiatives
• Learn from customers about their environmental priorities
• Form partnerships that strengthen relationships throughout the value chain

The key message here is to start somewhere rather than waiting for perfect information or conditions. By taking even small steps toward sustainable product management, you create momentum that can lead to more significant changes over time.

Conclusion

The conversation with Kaila reinforced the importance of the triple bottom line approach to product management—balancing people, planet, and profit. All three elements are necessary for long-term business success. Without profits, companies can’t take care of employees or customers. Without considering people, there are no employees or customers to serve. And without respecting planetary boundaries, companies face increasing risks and missed opportunities.

Increasingly, sustainability is a business imperative. By integrating sustainability into product strategy, you can:

• Create products that meet evolving customer expectations
• Identify cost-saving opportunities through more efficient designs
• Build more resilient products and business models
• Appeal to growing segments of environmentally conscious consumers

Product managers have a unique opportunity to influence both what products are made and how they’re created, placing them at the center of corporate sustainability efforts.

While creating truly sustainable products takes work, the benefits for your customers, your company, and your career make it well worth the effort.

Useful Links

• Check out examples of Steelcase’s sustainable products
• Connect with Kaila on LinkedIn

Innovation Quote

“Nothing worth having, comes easy.” – Teddy Roosevelt

Application Questions

1. How could you assess the current state of sustainability in your product portfolio? Consider what environmental product declarations or lifecycle assessments might reveal about your products’ environmental hotspots and improvement opportunities.
2. How could your team integrate sustainability considerations into your existing product development process? What specific checkpoints or documentation (like Steelcase’s sustainability intentions in product charters) might you add to ensure environmental impacts are considered?
3. What sustainability stories might already exist within your product development work that haven’t been communicated to marketing? How could you better connect cost-saving measures with their environmental benefits?
4. How could you identify which customer segments in your market most value sustainability features? What research methods would help you understand their specific environmental priorities?
5. If you were to organize a sustainable materials summit like Steelcase did, which cross-functional teams would you invite, and what specific sustainability challenges would you focus on solving?

Bio

With background experience ranging from product management, customer service management, marketing to supply chain, the common thread for Kaila has been the belief that better business is a sustainable business. She is responsible for the development and implementation of product sustainability marketing cross-category and globally at Steelcase; most recently leading the strategy to expand Circular by Steelcase capabilities in the Americas. Her education includes an MBA with a concentration in sustainable business from the University of Colorado and B.S. in Natural Resources and Environmental Science from Purdue University.  

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