The Five Questions Every CEO Must Answer About Sustainability
31 August 2023
The future of business is green. As a CEO, the ball is in your court to make sustainability an integral part of your corporate strategy. The intersection of business and environmental concerns presents a tapestry of challenges and opportunities. To navigate this evolving landscape, here are five pivotal questions about sustainability every leader should be contemplating.
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How Does Sustainability Align With Your Business Strategy?
Your business's mission should be inextricably linked to its impact on the world. Take Patagonia as an exemplar. Their raison d'être is not just to sell products, but to make a tangible difference. "Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis." This isn’t just a tagline—it’s a model for businesses looking to embed sustainability in their DNA.
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How Do You Measure and Report Your Sustainability Performance?
Transparency isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the cornerstone of trust. Leaders must be open about their sustainability endeavors, triumphs, and tribulations alike. Unilever has set the bar with its Sustainable Living Plan, offering a panoramic view of their efforts, from carbon footprint reduction to championing societal well-being.
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How Are You Involving Stakeholders in Your Sustainability Journey?
Sustainability is a collective endeavor. It requires involving everyone, from employees to suppliers, customers to investors. Interface, a trailblazer in sustainable flooring, exemplifies this participatory approach. Their 'Mission Zero' commitment isn't a solitary journey; it’s a collaborative initiative, with regular stakeholder engagements and an open platform for green innovations from employees.
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How Are You Fostering Innovation for Sustainability?
True innovation lies at the nexus of necessity and novelty. And what’s more necessary than ensuring a green future? Tesla is the poster child for this paradigm, pushing the envelope with electric cars and renewable technologies that not only redefine industries but also propel the global shift towards sustainable energy.
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How Are You Preparing for Sustainability Risks and Opportunities?
Change is inevitable, but how we respond to it differentiates the leaders from the followers. IKEA has transformed potential climate threats into avenues for innovation. Their strategy to become 'climate positive' by 2030 isn't just about mitigating risks; it's about seizing the myriad opportunities presented by the green transition.
Sustainability isn't a mere footnote in a corporate report or a fleeting trend. It’s a clarion call for CEOs to envision, strategize, and operationalize a future that’s not just profitable, but also sustainable. It's a moral imperative and a business strategy all rolled into one—a roadmap for resilience, innovation, and prosperity. CEOs, the onus is on you: to ask these questions, seek their answers, and lead your organizations into a greener tomorrow.
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Bernard Marr is a world-renowned futurist, influencer and thought leader in the fields of business and technology, with a passion for using technology for the good of humanity.
He is a best-selling author of over 20 books, writes a regular column for Forbes and advises and coaches many of the world’s best-known organisations.
He has a combined following of 4 million people across his social media channels and newsletters and was ranked by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 business influencers in the world.
Bernard’s latest book is ‘Generative AI in Practice’.
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