MB#3 Why Organizations Need to Stop Putting Lipstick (i.e. ESG Goals) on a Pig

How to Create Authentic ESG Goals From Inside Your Strategy, And Not Because of Blame, Shame or Guilt

You want to do the right thing by the planet, to make sure your business isn’t doing more harm than good. That means you want to run it in a sustainable way.

But the suggestions you hear seem difficult to implement. They won’t fit easily into your business and it would be hard to convince stakeholders that this is a priority.

In fact, a lot of the language around Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) seems “preachy” to you. In other words, people are trying to tell you, an organizational leader, what you should be doing. But these arguments rub you the wrong way. They appear to blame you ever-so-slightly for doing bad things.

They complain that ethically, you should do the right thing. It’s what they judge to be correct, upstanding and not sinful. They appeal to extrinsic factors, and assume you are a sinner due to a lack of character. Fix this flaw, and everything will be alright.

You don’t buy it. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Why?

There are deeper, more meaningful reasons to be concerned about sustainability impacts that do affect your organization. It’s just that they can’t be determined by outsiders. To understand what this means, let’s go back to 2008…a time when economies around the world were doing relatively well.

The Impact of a Recession + a Pandemic

The 2008-11 recession was the most sustained economic downturn since the Great Depression. It eventually passed, but the psychological toll it took on executive thinking was substantial and still endures. How so?

Many C-Suiters fled from long-term thinking.