Leading the Climate Transition in the Greenhush era

Differentiation is the lifeblood of business success. Standing out, with a clear and distinctive proposition, is an imperative as much for product marketing and investor appeal as it is for employer attractiveness. It is no surprise then that many for businesses, managing sustainability is often a vexing affair.

Not only is sustainability an ever-evolving agenda, often less familiar to senior leaders, and one that gets defined in forums that the business has little influence over. For businesses accustomed to seeking differentiation, adopting sustainability strategies that parrot those of peers and simply align with the constraints of third-party frameworks feels like a frustrating compromise. How do I get a significant business return and brand uplift from my investment in, say, renewable energy, if the results look the same across my competitors, if not for almost every other business?

It’s a fair question. With the advent of new regulatory guidance and disclosure frameworks, business sustainability goals and strategies are in some ways more standardized than ever. And existing standards create only limited incentives for companies to think about how they innovate to bring sustainability into core business. These increased disclosure and compliance pressures mean we see many a company more hesitant to invest time in defining leadership ambitions.

In practice, though, delivering on most 2030 corporate commitments on climate, packaging and more will almost certainly require scaling up solutions, taking systemic action across value chains. There is not only room for focused, differentiated leadership in sustainability, there is a need for it.

We see this in Stripe’s investments in carbon removals, Target’s initiatives in supplier diversity or Google’s eco-routing initiative in Maps. We see this in the Climate Transition Plans published by sustainability leaders who articulate the market and policy dependencies that stand in the way of them achieving their goals and therefore call for action beyond their own operations.

At Futerra, we’ve spent the last two years working with our clients to hone a process that helps them identify enablers and obstacles for their strategic priorities and then define the most transformative role they can take to address those. Looking at how different companies take transformative action, we recognized six distinct archetypes, each suited to different stages of market maturity and corporate strengths. We call this our Leadership Archetype tool.

We start with an analysis of the needs and maturity of the “solutions spaces” related to your key material issues, be that nature-based carbon solutions, recycling infrastructure or supply chain traceability. Together, we examine what broader market/technology/regulatory shifts are critical to delivering on your goals and then map these to your unique strengths and organizational points of leverage. From there, we can set a role and roadmap for your business that will deliver internal and industry- or society-wide progress.

This, by definition, is all about differentiation. Your organization’s structure, culture, strengths and resources are the decisive factors in defining your key role. And it’s all about impact, with sharp targeted outcomes and success metrics.

For this era of more focused, business-aligned sustainability, when pressures to deliver more combine with pressures to claim less, clear visions of change backed by aligned leadership teams can help companies create a renewed incentive to lead. Being business resilient in a world transforming to net-zero takes bold action. With that comes plentiful opportunity for businesses to do what they’ve always done best—bring a unique, impactful response to a challenge that markets will value.