As we put in motion our visions, strategies and implementation roadmaps for the year ahead, it is becoming more critical to be driven by an organisational purpose built around an environmental and social framework — not just for the short term, but for the long term.
We need to reduce emissions and aim for carbon neutrality across our supply chains as well as our user experience. We need to build green frameworks for our organisations' futures. We need to stop and reverse deforestation and aim for more sustainable means of production — reducing it, making it more effective, on demand, or shared. We need to redefine what growth means and how we achieve it without relying on old extractionary models. We can instead rely on innovation to redefine our understanding of materials — especially from what we have previously discarded as waste.
In most conversations around ESG, there is a recurring pattern that tends to ignore the human element of the equation.
We therefore need a sharp focus on the social and human dimension — both at the individual and the collective level. We need to make our organisations more equitable internally and externally: from the talent we have, to the users who engage with us, to the supply chain and the regulators. We need to understand the complete stakeholder ecosystem, their drivers and their needs — because it is their behaviours that drive our organisations, public and private alike, the consumption models we have adopted, and the systems that feed them.
We can only change those patterns and systems by understanding the stakeholder ecosystem in its entirety, and how it moves — so that we can together build sustainable frameworks that adapt and enable the adoption of more inclusive and sustainable behaviours.
We need to focus on ESG as the foundation of our strategic frameworks, without forgetting the governance that gives it accountability — and we need to place the S as its beating heart. Only then can we move collectively from a consumer shareholder capitalism to an effective, sustainable stakeholder capitalism.
How do you think we can achieve that balance so that organisations are ready to shape an ESG-led future?