How resilient is your business plan?

Most companies accept they must reshape their business models to cope with climate change, nature loss, geopolitics and disruption — but few are moving at the pace needed. The barriers are mostly about how organizations behave, not technical or scientific limits.

How companies are actually doing

•    Of nearly 25,000 companies (67% of global market value), only about 10% are taking real action, and only 35% are on track to meet their own targets.

•    Of the 2,000 largest firms listed, 58% have set a target but only a fifth meet a basic quality bar; just 40% of the 100 largest private firms have climate targets.

•    Yet 98% of CEOs say making their business sustainable is part of their job.

•    The commercial case exists: green pledges lift share prices, and upstream supply-chain opportunities could be worth ~$165bn for ~$19.7bn in cost — but only 30% of companies even look at upstream risk.

Three things that make a transition work

1.    Internal drive and alignment. Transitions succeed when they are board-led, written into company-wide strategy, and backed by the CEO and CFO. That means clear public targets (with progress reported even when missed, and increasingly tied to senior pay), ruthless prioritization, and building sustainability into the culture rather than running it as a side project.

2.       External alignment. No company transitions alone. You can be best in class at managing risk and still be only as safe as the weakest link in the systems you belong to — so hitting targets, especially on Scope 3 emissions, depends on others. This requires understanding the wider context and collaborating with suppliers, industry peers and “unlikely allies,” seeking influence rather than control.

3.       Dynamic planning. Fixed plans are often out of date before they are used. Make the transition plan the business plan, link it directly to resilience and new revenue opportunities, and adapt as technology, practice and conditions change.

The bottom line

The problems are bigger than any single company can solve. Acting alone is like writing your own fire-prevention plan while no one else does anything — when the fire comes, every house burns regardless. The way through is collaboration: across teams inside the company, along the supply chain, and with industry partners, customers and unexpected allies.

Read the full paper, here.