Two different jobs
Disclosure is a reporting problem: collect the data, verify it, present it against a framework, defend it. It is exacting work and it has a clear finish line.
Strategy is a different job. It asks which sustainability exposures could change the economics of the business, over what horizon, and what the organization would do differently if it believed that. Building the first capability well does not produce the second, and in some organizations it quietly substitutes for it.
Materiality that moves money
A materiality assessment that ends in a matrix and a stakeholder survey has produced a document. One that ends with a changed capital plan has produced a decision.
The difference is usually whether finance was in the room. Sustainability questions that stay inside a sustainability function tend to stay descriptive.
Sustainability questions that stay inside a sustainability function tend to stay descriptive.
Tanvir Islam, Chief Operating Officer
A simple diagnostic
Ask when a sustainability finding last changed an investment decision: delayed a project, redirected capital, or altered a supplier choice. If the answer is never, the function is reporting, whatever it is called.
That is not a failure. It is just a smaller job than the one most boards think they have commissioned.
