What challenges and strategies are top of mind for you in sustainable business?
For all that we discuss and debate the state of sustainable business in the second half of the 2020s – the upending of the supposed consensus, the abandonment of sustainability goals widely treated as settled, self-evident, a foregone conclusion, the uncoupling of financial markets from past ‘rational’ behaviour – it’s my view that what we see today is a lot more consistent with history than we like to believe.
CEOs come and go (yes, even you); political regimes, popular opinion, investor priorities, global markets: these all reflect events in the real world. If business leaders depend on consistent signals from these channels to drive their approach to sustainability (or anything else), they will find they cannot sustain a coherent strategy.
It’s my view that sustainable businesses can only succeed if their business strategy is consciously aligned with the way their activities create impacts on people and planet – this is where answers can be found that will resonate deeply and stay the course. (Easier said than done.)
What should we be doing differently today?
Businesses often deploy sustainability thinking as risk management, to spread their exposures to hazards related to environmental and social change, and to build in greater resilience. This is fine when the systems themselves are fundamentally robust. The trouble is, they are not.
The instinct to tweak the existing mechanisms when faced with challenges is understandable, but unlikely to succeed in the long run, because even an unprecedented challenge today – think Strait of Hormuz – is tomorrow’s business as usual. So the question that businesses need to ask is not ‘how do we mitigate this risk,’ but: ‘in what future circumstances would we not encounter this risk at all?’
The answer to these questions takes us into very different strategic territory – which used to be considered radical, but, in my view, is becoming much less revolutionary, much more obviously sensible than the traditional methods.
IF YOU COULD RESET SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS, WHAT WOULD YOU EMPHASIZE?
I want to encourage companies to reject the complexity scare-mongering that equates sustainable business strategy with regulatory requirements, investor questionnaires, supply chain access, or other external factors. Business has always been a complex endeavour, but complexity itself is the enemy of agency, and stands in the way of good decision-making. Companies are among the most consequential inventions in modern human history – they hold unmatched potential and capability to remake the world for the better, regardless of global events or market upheaval. People – empowered people inside business – have real power!
WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?
I have been enormously privileged to have had the experiences I have had in my career, and to have had a hand in collaborative work with global impacts, most importantly my involvement with the Global Reporting Initiative, in which I played several early, formative roles, and later led the stewardship of the GRI sustainability reporting standards as it became the most-used framework for sustainability reporting in the world.
Above all, I am proud of the trust that clients have placed in me, my advice and my leadership over the years.
I never forget that when I am working with a client, I am not just working with the company – the brand, the logo, the stock market ticker, the household name – I am working with real people, and it is an honour to be invited into a position of mutual respect and shared endeavour.