How responsibly daring leadership will drive sustainable action

Sustainability transformation is therefore rapidly becoming a business imperative. However, despite an upsurge in the number of sustainability pledges and heightened interest in ESG reporting as new regulations come into force,⁵ ⁶ ⁷ business leaders are struggling to deliver on commitments and meaningfully transform their companies.⁸ As IBM’s annual CEO study shows, 48% of CEOs report increasing sustainability to be one of their highest priorities for their organisation in the next two to three years, but 51% also cite sustainability as among their greatest challenges.⁹

At a high level, sustainability transformation is hard to realise because it’s complex. Whilst sustainability is often perceived as synonymous with environmental action, sustainability goals are wide ranging, impacting multiple parts of an organisation. Consequently, the range of choices, priorities, and possible actions available to business leaders can paralyse decision-making. Simplifying and prioritising where and how your specific business can have the most impact on sustainable issues is therefore critical to get right.¹⁰

Progress on sustainability is also inconsistent because it requires a fundamental recalibration of leadership thinking and behaviour. As Albert Einstein is quoted to have said, “we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. Micro-changes are needed at the leadership level to enable macro-changes to occur.

In this article, we explore how adopting a ‘responsibly daring’ mindset will help senior leaders tackle the harsh realities of sustainable business transformation. Specifically, addressing the key barriers business leaders need to overcome and how a responsibly daring approach can expand thinking and drive meaningful change.

A ‘responsibly daring’ mindset 

Leaders with a responsibly daring mindset drive innovation and sustainable business transformation via a blend of pragmatic idealism. They dream big, pursue ambitious sustainability goals, whilst staying focussed on the tangible actions necessary to deliver on commitments and create long-term value.¹¹

Specifically, on the ‘responsible’ side of the mindset, leaders take responsibility for two things: 

1. Making a difference – creating long-term value not just for investors, but for multiple stakeholders, including employees, customers, shareholders, people within their supply chain, the environment, society, and future generations to come.

    

2. Safeguarding the business – protecting people’s jobs and livelihoods by ensuring the business stays successful, profitable and runs smoothly.

Simultaneously, on the ‘daring’ side of the mindset, leaders embrace an entrepreneurial ‘anything’s possible spirit’, have the courage to back audacious missions and ideas, maintain optimism in the face of adversity, take calculated risks and embrace experimentation.  

Only by leaders embracing this paradoxical blend of thinking will ambitious pledges and sustainable transformations come to fruition. 

To illustrate how a ‘responsibly daring’ approach can be applied in practice, below we explore three practical barriers that are currently getting in the way of sustainability progress. For each we provide a top tip on how to embrace a responsibly daring approach and some reflective questions to help recalibrate thinking.

Barrier 1: leaders having a mindset of compliance, with responsibility for sustainable action shifted onto governments and individuals

EY Seren’s “Human Signals” report highlights how consumers are increasingly pushing for businesses leaders to drive the sustainability agenda and take responsibility for tackling global challenges like climate change.¹² However, in various domains of sustainability, many business leaders still rely too heavily on following regulatory compliance or (consciously or unconsciously) subtly shift responsibility onto the consumer or individual employee. This is problematic.

In the instance of climate change, for example, implementing all the climate and energy policies currently in place will not be enough to mitigate the worst effects; they put us on track for warming of 2.5°C – 2.9°C by 2100.¹³ Following the regulatory minimum therefore a) doesn’t effectively tackle the issue, and b) pushes responsibility for action on climate change onto the government (with the business leaders' role being to simple follow what’s mandated – even though their actions and decisions have a massive impact, for better or worse). 

Similarly, whilst the sustainability issue of employee wellbeing is on the agenda for many companies, often the sole solution is to upskill individuals to manage their wellbeing better, rather than to also invest in exploring the systemic factors that may be hampering and impacting workforce wellbeing. Here again, whilst wellbeing is being acknowledged as important, responsibility for action is mainly being pushed ‘somewhere else’ (i.e., onto individuals). 

Certainly, everyone can make a difference, with each individual in their everyday choices able to play an important role in shaping the future of our political, social, economic and environmental conditions.¹⁴ But, those in corporate leadership positions have a greater share of the responsibility, because they have the power and resources to do more. Senior leaders can make decisions and influence systems in a way that has a substantial direct impact on sustainability goals and/or triggers a large ripple effect of change.

Responsibly daring mindset top tip: embrace ‘forward-facing’ responsibility

Leaders operating with a ‘responsible’ mindset embrace what’s known as ‘forward facing responsibility’. They proactively make the most of their position of power and take responsibility for what will happen in the future, seeing themselves as accountable to future generations, future employees and future leaders of the business.