Practices That Take Businesses’ Impact Beyond Profit

  Organizational Culture   Strategy   Sustainability  

Sustainability has moved from a hot buzzword to an imperative. Despite growing awareness and the best of intentions, we are still far away from reaching the United Nations’ SDGs (sustainable development goals) and the climate targets from the Paris Agreement. Organizations can and must make a difference, but they need to do it with speed and urgency. While many organizations fully recognize the importance of sustainability, implementing responsible sustainability initiatives remains a significant challenge.

One of the biggest business challenges is to understand where to start. Should it be carbon footprint reduction? Social issues? Actually, what is urgently needed is a deep analysis of the impact of operations on the environment and society while trying to balance all business needs at the same time.

Another frequent challenge is how to fund these programs, given already scarce resources. In many instances, sustainability efforts demand huge investments upfront, like technology upgrades or supply chain transformation, making ROI not that easy. 

Additionally, sustainability tends to be the first budget that gets cut when things start to go wrong. All of this brings us back to a need for making sustainability part of core business strategy, to ensure it is perceived as vital to long-term success, rather than a “nice to have.”

Measuring the …

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