How do you do?

‘How’ your business tackles its sustainability goals, is as important as ‘where’ you are heading.

If you haven’t already adopted sustainability goals for your business, now is the time to do so. Customers, partners and investors expect your business to help safeguard our collective future.

Pick a target: net zero by 2030. Or 2040. Carbon emissions reduced 50% by 2025. Choose carefully.

But don’t stop there. It’s one thing saying you’ll reduce your carbon footprint. It’s another to explain how this will happen. Scrutiny of net-zero plans has already increased. Many assume carbon offsets are a way to reach targets and are rightfully challenged. Similarly, it’s best not to rely on technologies that haven’t yet been invented, tested and commercialised.

Instead, define a sustainability strategy rooted in today’s technologies and your company’s current capabilities and resources. Stakeholders need a clear explanation of how you’ll become more sustainable. They want to understand the actions you plan to take right here, right now, to meet your targets.

Adopt more renewable sources of power. Engage your suppliers as key stakeholders in your sustainability targets. Encourage employees to use low-carbon travel. Reduce the number of flights executives take. Audit company governance. Review potential pay gaps ahead of regulation.

It will take some time to quantify the impact of these actions. Action today may throw tomorrow’s goal into sharp contrast. Future targets may need to be reassessed when tested by the realities of business. But iterative learning still works best.

Better to commit to immediate action today and interim targets – however flawed or incomplete - than delegate sustainability responsibility to those who’ll follow in the decades to come.