What Good Sustainability Strategy Actually Looks Like
Five Lessons on Outcomes, Anti-fragility, Prioritisation, Habits, and Influence
Most sustainability strategies fail to deliver measurable value. Post-mortems reveal glossy reports, CEO platitudes, and reams of ESG data buried in spreadsheets that are never read.
The problem is often conceptual: most strategies see sustainability as a compliance exercise rather than what it should be – building long-term organisational value and resilience in an uncertain world.
Drawing from real-world client engagements across four continents, we’ve distilled five lessons that distinguish effective sustainability strategies from initiatives that quietly disappear when economic pressures mount.
1. Actions Aren't Outcomes
Most sustainability strategies mistake activity for achievement.
A recycling initiative might feel virtuous. Solar panels photograph well. A Reconciliation Action Plan is a signal of respect and intent. But without measurable outcomes that benefit stakeholders or strengthen the business, these efforts will be quietly shelved when margins tighten or priorities shift.
Good sustainability strategy answers three questions: What specific business or stakeholder value will be created? How will success be measured? Does the initiative enhance long-term competitive positioning?
Interface Inc. provides an instructive example. The carpet manufacturer’s Mission Zero strategy, implemented between 1994 and 2020, delivered a 96% reduction in carbon intensity and an 88% reduction in water usage per unit of production. Sixty percent of the company's revenue growth during this period came from products positioned as sustainable.
The strategy succeeded through disciplined execution: quantifiable targets, integrated product innovation, and systematic stakeholder engagement that created new market opportunities rather than merely reducing operational costs.
Takeaway: Tie every sustainability action to a tangible outcome. If you can't identify a financial or stakeholder benefit, it’s not strategy.
2. Anti-fragility is Your Unique Competitive Advantage
While all executives focus on value creation, the best sustainability leaders demonstrate how long-term strategic thinking enables organisations to adapt faster, identify emerging opportunities, and capitalise on disruption rather than merely surviving it. This approach transcends traditional resilience – the ability to withstand shocks – toward what Nassim Nicholas Taleb terms “anti-fragility”: systems that grow stronger under stress.
In volatile business environments, sustainability thinking provides crucial advantages in detecting weak signals, reframing constraints as innovation catalysts, and discovering value where competitors see only risk.
Consider Tesla in its glory days. While established automakers essentially saw electric vehicles as a compliance burden, Tesla recognised the potential for batteries to transform the economics of transportation. Systems thinking allowed the company to see interconnections between renewable energy, battery technology, and mobility that legacy manufacturers missed. When disruption came – in the form of changing consumer preferences and tightening regulations – Tesla didn't just survive, it thrived. At one point, it was more valuable than all 42 other car manufacturers combined.
Another crisis is always coming. Your job is helping leadership build a business that gains strength from shocks, not just survives them.
Takeaway: Build a strategy that becomes more valuable when tested by disruption.
3. Good Strategy Means Saying No
Strategy is as much about subtraction as ambition. Even with a robust materiality assessment in hand – clear on what matters most and why – many executives struggle to let go of pet projects or accept that their area may not be a top priority.
Not everything can be strategically important. A sound materiality assessment and resulting strategy elevates no more than six (ideally fewer) core priorities, providing sufficient focus for meaningful progress while avoiding the paralysis that comes from trying to address every possible issue simultaneously.
One practical tip: ask executives to allocate limited ‘strategy tokens’ across priorities. This forces explicit trade-offs and surfaces disagreement early. In your strategic positioning, use four levels of ambition:
Comply: Meet regulatory requirements
Perform: Maintain pace with competitors
Lead: Achieve industry best practice
Shape: Drive whole-of-industry change
Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk exemplifies this approach. The company concentrated on three sustainability priorities directly linked to business strategy: achieving net zero emissions in its own operations and transport by 2030, circular product design (including a target to reduce plastic footprint per patient by 30% by 2033), and health system partnerships (expanding market access). This focus has enabled the company to maintain double-digit revenue growth while advancing its sustainability objectives.
Takeaway: If your strategy doesn’t disappoint someone, it’s not a strategy.
4. Automation Trumps Persuasion
Most sustainability strategies fail because they focus on the wrong levers. Training programs and awareness campaigns may generate initial enthusiasm, but rarely produce lasting change.
A 2024 meta-analysis by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that information-based approaches in workplaces produced negligible long-term impact. But strategies that removed friction and automated preferred choices delivered results.
Rather than expecting people to care more or try harder, design systems that make optimal choices effortless. This could include developing energy management systems that automatically adjust consumption based on occupancy, for example, or standardising procurement policies that default to lower-carbon suppliers.
IKEA’s approach to packaging redesign illustrates this principle. Rather than simply encouraging customers to recycle, the company has focused on phasing out plastic packaging and optimising its designs for more efficient shipping. For example, IKEA reduced plastic packaging in consumer goods by 47% over two years and now uses less than 10% plastic in its packaging overall. By prioritising operational improvements — such as flat-pack designs and fibre-based materials — IKEA has advanced its sustainability objectives while also achieving greater efficiency in logistics and shipping.
Change sticks when it’s embedded in the routine, not when it competes with it.
Takeaway: People don’t need to care more. They need systems that make the right choice automatic.
5. Ignore the Haters, Win the Middle
In any organisation, some people will oppose transformation. Some identify genuine implementation challenges. Others lose status or resources from proposed changes. Some reflexively resist change.
Most of us naturally seek consensus. We want to be liked, so we focus on negotiating with opponents, trying to win them over through compromise. This approach wastes time and political capital while often producing watered-down strategies that satisfy no one. Meanwhile, supporters already backing the effort don’t require additional attention – they’re already on side.
Instead, concentrate on the undecided middle – stakeholders who are neither supporters nor opponents. These people represent the largest group in most organisations and are most responsive to hard evidence. Once you win over the middle, detractors tend to follow, driven by a hard-wired desire to align with the emerging majority.
Takeaway: Map stakeholders into three categories – supporters, opponents, and undecided. Invest 70% of your political capital in moving the middle.
Conclusion: Strategy as Competitive Discipline
Sustainability isn’t about satisfying every stakeholder or addressing every possible issue. It’s about disciplined choices that build anti-fragility – the ability to sense shifts earlier, adapt faster, and convert uncertainty into competitive advantage.
This requires treating sustainability as a core strategic discipline – anchored in measurable outcomes, anti-fragile thinking, focused prioritisation, behaviour change, and emotionally intelligent influence.
The alternative is watching your strategy join the quiet graveyard of well-intentioned initiatives that never moved the needle.
Luke Heilbuth is CEO of sustainability strategy consultancy BWD Strategic, and a former Australian diplomat. Connect with Luke on LinkedIn or at luke@bwdstrategic.com