Finance Monthly. 29 Business the importance of diversity and the benefits it brings through different viewpoints and challenges, I encouraged the client to augment the team with a broader range of ethnicities, gender identifications and neuro-diversity. The larger range of experiences and backgrounds necessitated additional team meetings and engagements, but the outcome was a much richer insight into the problem, with the resulting solutions being more widely accepted and easily adopted. What are executives’ most common challenges when integrating ESG principles into their strategic transformation agendas? Most corporate decision-making processes and decision-makers are almost totally based on financial criteria. Their decisions lack consideration of environmental and social issues. This is exacerbated by the lack of understanding (at both an organisational and individual level) of the importance of environmental and social issues in the outcome of longer-term strategy and planning. The significant obstacle is the lack of executives taking up leadership positions to move the organisations forward towards a more environmentally and socially responsible operating model. However, as noted above, most do not have a functional understanding of the issues and how they would positively benefit the organisation. So, the central challenge that needs to be addressed is the upskilling of executive decision-makers on the opportunities that ESG has to offer while simultaneously revising decision-making processes to include sustainability considerations. These two changes will fundamentally transform an organisation. Conversely, where do you see the most credible opportunities for companies to leverage ESG principles as catalysts for change and transformation? Besides changing decision-making processes to include non-financial criteria, organisations should consider three other fundamental changes. The first is to include sustainability considerations in the procurement of all goods and services. Responsible procurement will have an impact up the supply chain that will benefit organisations directly and indirectly. The second is to include sustainable culture and values in the recruitment process. This will have twin benefits of signalling to prospective candidates that sustainability is a core value, and it will enable the organisation to have the human capital necessary to meet and address the coming economic and societal changes. The third area for action is to ensure that anything that leaves your organisation be it
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