We are increasingly faced with the disruptive and destructive forces of climate change: floods, drought, fires, tornadoes, heat domes, ice storms are all alarming signals of what the future holds. The human toll and actual cost are becoming all too clear.
The need to build a more sustainable world is becoming more evident and increasingly complicated. We have the wisdom and means to make critical progress – but it will take the collective power of government, citizens, and organizations across the globe to protect our planet, our economy, and our way of life.
We are in the early days of sustainability programs – programs that must now address a set of regulations designed to accelerate (and publicly disclose) progress on environmental goals while still delivering financial performance.
The challenge is that many sustainability programs are only just starting to address the scale, complexity, cost and entangled nature of sustainability. An IBM Institute for Business Value report stated that, although 95% of respondents have ESG goals, only 10% have made significant progress towards them. They are confronting insufficient practices and knowledge base as well, data and systems that need more time to be ready to guide a coordinated program or meet emerging reporting requirements. To complicate matters, most organizations are uncovering a large, complex web of ongoing tactical projects that are dispersed across the organization, and recognizing the interdependencies they have with other, external organizations to deliver sustainability targets.
In other words, most organizations are in a discover, learn and build phase: forging new ways of working, new coalitions of supply chain and ecosystem partners, and new ways of creating value.
And they are doing so against the ticking clock of climate change. We can address the challenge of a lifetime, but we will need systems change to foster true impact. We must create new methods to manage and measure complex, nuanced programs that must constantly adapt to changing regulations and standards, economic conditions, political realities, technological advances, and consumer sentiment and behavior. We need new capabilities to harness our collective power to create impact velocity at scale.
Explore the new era of sustainability: How productive transparency builds trust and drives efficient, impactful programs.
Because delivering on sustainability goals is a highly interdependent endeavor, organizations profoundly benefit from forging formal coalitions.
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