Actualizing Sustainability: Turning Your Plans into Action
Katrina Kroeze
October 3, 2024
The GHD Sustainability Monitor 2024 underscores this shift, revealing a concerning gap between business executives’ ambitions and what is getting done. Despite substantial efforts to incorporate sustainability into overall business strategies, many of these plans fail to pass the viability test. The core challenge isn’t a lack of strategy or understanding of the value of sustainability, but rather a deficiency in practical implementation and action.
From blueprints to breakthroughs
Identifying a way forward that equally prioritizes strategy, planning and delivery is critical. Focusing on one aspect without the other risks widening the gap. Leaders need to move from strategy and target-setting to building credible roadmaps that make implementation and execution possible. This starts with asking frank questions — “How do we actually do this?” “What is the full cost of our plans to make it happen?” — and continuing to ask them along the way.Designing and implementing what’s needed to drive transformative change
In our current financial climate, there’s no denying that securing the investment or budget needed for sustainability initiatives is challenging. Companies need to view sustainable development as an opportunity for innovation and improvement — and do things differently to achieve organizational and broader sustainability goals.When done right, sustainability drives new value, growth and efficiency. It’s more than ticking the corporate sustainability box: It’s a whole-of-business change representing big leaps forward. Many leaders realize they must find entirely new ways of doing business.
Connecting strategy and planning with technical delivery
A sustainability strategy has longevity when it considers not just the “what” but the “how” of implementation. Companies are increasingly achieving real sustainability impact and success through better-connected teams working across strategies, planning and delivery. Consistency across these areas makes it possible for a sustainability strategy to extend beyond a mission statement and be actualized through projects with meaningful change.Questions leaders can ask to actualize their sustainability strategy
Getting future-state ready means having organizational goals validated by scientific, economic and financial principles and feasibility. Working through the following questions guides outcome-orientated conversations within organizations and helps prioritize efforts.1. Do you understand the full cost of implementing your sustainability strategy?
Understanding the year three, five and ten costs of capital and resources, as well as the financial impacts and downtime losses, will help leaders make informed decisions and identify opportunities. Consider more than just expenditure to include potential cost savings that may be realized from implementation.
2. What is the financial impact of not meeting your sustainability targets?
Depending on your jurisdiction, failing to meet sustainability targets may include regulatory penalties including fines and legal costs. There’s also the long-term risk of increased operating costs through inefficient resource use. Reputational damage, investor withdrawal and supply chain disruption may also impact your bottom line.
3. Is your organization impacted by mandatory regulatory changes?
Your sustainability strategy may inevitably become a non-negotiable as ESG disclosures become further standardized and mandatory. Organizations could face penalties for not adhering and aligning to corporate responsibility and transparency in this space.
4. Do you need to re-evaluate your ambitions based on what’s possible?
Realistic strategies are more likely to be feasible, achievable and successfully implemented. That doesn’t mean you scale back, but rather focus on actionable strategies while balancing resources in a way that contributes to ongoing business success and resilience.
5. Are your goals founded on an achievable reality for your cost structure?
Sustainability strategies that are well-integrated with the cost structure are more likely to be viable over the longer term and get done. Stakeholder and investor confidence stems from goals that are founded in a realistic understanding of the organization’s opportunities and limitations.
6. Do your targets factor in the ability to operationalize the changes needed to measure and verify your sustainability performance?
Your sustainability strategy becomes effective and credible when it’s grounded in your ability to implement, measure and verify impact. The approach transforms efforts from theoretical ambitions into transparent and feasible outcomes.
7. How can you use digital technology to influence your entire workforce to enable your sustainability strategy?
Many organizations have existing technology and platforms that can be applied to further sustainability efforts and projects. Conduct a digital stocktake to understand what you have versus what you need will help.
8. Is there a mindset shift that needs to happen across the organization before you can proceed?
A significant internal stakeholder engagement effort is needed to educate and inform your people to bring them along on the journey, Clear planning and change management tools will help your organization build resilience, adapt and benefit from sustainability efforts.
9. Do you have the resources to act fast, ask more questions and test assumptions?
There’s a growing need for a new breed of sustainability professionals who can talk the language of business and commerciality while also grasping the technical complexities of sustainability.
10. How will you actually do this? This is a new and complex territory.
We are in uncharted waters, and while the challenges are complex, the way forward does not have to be. Adopting a structured framework along the way that provides ample opportunity to learn and investigate, test concepts, refine, deploy and review will clear the path for fresh thinking, new ideas and, most importantly, actionable steps.
Discover more: GHD Sustainability Monitor 2024
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About the Author
Katrina Kroeze
GHD
Katrina is an experienced communication, stakeholder engagement, and facilitation consultant, focused on all things ESG with a commitment to developing and leading mutually beneficial programs. For her clients, Katrina focuses on the big-picture strategy to ensure that interested stakeholders are engaged at the right time, using the right tools and techniques, using concepts and terminology that is plain-language. Ultimately, Katrina's goal is to lead engagement programs that result in better outcomes that are more accepted by all stakeholders involved. With strong organizational, planning, communications, and project management skills, Katrina has successfully designed, implemented, and facilitated over 80 stakeholder engagement events, workshops, and information sessions.