Strategy Advisory

Research has demonstrated that sustainability leadership can directly translate into an increased access to capital and markets, improved attraction and retention of employees and customers, better risk management, more partnership opportunities, and greater social license.

In a globally unstable political environment spurred on by an unprecedented rise in nationalist movements and populist sentiments, handicapping international integration despite globalizations’ recent and unprecedented successes worldwide in health, wealth, education, and life expectancy, business must lead the way.

Businesses must embrace new and innovative strategies that are not only environmentally and socially responsible but also address peoples and communities previously left behind. Pursuing a sustainable development philosophy inclusive of partnerships with government and civil society can and will lead to greater, more widely shared prosperity for all. Businesses adopting these approaches will transform their own prospects and could outperform those stuck in a dated economic game.

This is about Return on Capital, not only responsibility.

Businesses must regain public trust and demonstrate a capacity for social, economic, and environmental welfare and contribute to a more just economy to attract investment in today’s world.

Furthermore, a leading sustainability organization must excel at both performance and communications. Both require strategy, planning, resources, stakeholder engagement, and analytics. Leading sustainability organizations optimize limited resources, and use widely accepted standards where possible. They frequently use management systems standards and industry standards to drive performance, and reporting standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to drive communications and progress. Few of the current sustainability-related standards identify specific goals and targets. They recognize the importance of goals and targets, and provide guidance for prioritizing and identifying the most relevant issues to the organization and its stakeholders. Furthermore, opportunities for organizations to collaborate on shared goals are frequently missed.

Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the UN play two critical roles for organizations:

1. They provide a set of common goals and targets for organizations (though not all will be relevant) - companies, nonprofits, and governments on which to collaborate to improve their sustainability performance within a shared region.
2. They provide a common language and vocabulary for discussing issues, solutions, and performance progress, and communicating with stakeholders, ultimately clarifying the messaging and making progress more tangibly measureable.

Using this common framework, organizations must evaluate the relative priority of sustainable development goals to target, based on synergies with their core competencies and business objectives. Higher priority objectives are those directly and strongly related to an organization’s core objectives and should form the the basis for evaluation of programs and partnerships, resource allocations, target setting and performance measurement beyond normal compliance requirements, and with a special emphasis on supporting business objectives.

We work with organizations to develop an awareness and understanding of strategic sustainaiblity goals, consistent with the organization's core competencies, mandate, and resources, incorporating sustainable development targets into corporate strategy, communications, and reporting. Our approach will transform your organization.