By Liam Walsh, Partner, Chief Commercial Officer
Corporate sustainability is at a crossroads. Do current geopolitical, technological, and societal headwinds justify taking a step back from sustainability as a core component of corporate strategy? Or do business leaders perceive that all these issues are intertwined, and that embedding sustainability solutions into their organizations is key to mitigating risks and securing competitive advantage?
The corporate sustainability agenda is being reshaped by cascading technological breakthroughs, policy changes, political polarization, new disclosure rules, mounting data demands, shifting societal expectations, and more. This is generating debate around the role of Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) and their teams, and how they might evolve to demonstrate the value and impact that come from sustainability initiatives.
The evidence that corporate sustainability strategies are evolving rather than eroding is mixed. A November 2025 analysis found that the role of Chief Sustainability Officers at 220 U.S. companies has been downgraded since the start of 2025 amidst backlash against the sustainability agenda. Global banks such as HSBC, Standard Chartered, Barclays, and Wells Fargo have followed the same path. At the same time, according to this year’s Weinreb Group CSO Report, CSOs continue to drive progress, with 90 percent saying they are not changing their business strategies, despite the changing external landscape.
The discussion sometimes seems binary, with some arguing that the CSO role is becoming obsolete, while others believe it is more critical than ever. The reality is more nuanced. While integrating the sustainability department with other functions might be interpreted as de-prioritization, it can also be a sign of improving strategic integration. The business implications of ignoring sustainability-related issues are real, and most clients I speak to highly value CSOs who can look at sustainability-related risks and opportunities through an objective operational resiliency or enterprise value creation lens.
Having spent most of my career driving enterprise transformation programs in response to systemic market shifts, I have learned that organization structures often change to reflect evolving enterprise priorities. For example, I think we all recognize the importance of technology as a driver of business performance and catalyst of change. However, as functional priorities have shifted from Y2K to information security, to data and now AI, the role of Chief Information Officer and the alignment of the IT function within an organization has generally changed in line with the team’s evolving accountabilities. Similarly, in the context of the sustainability agenda, I believe this moment is not a crisis but a call to evolve— there is still a need to lead organizations through a low-carbon, nature-positive, and just transition, but it requires a different type of leadership and a different approach. So, the role of the CSO needs to change just as the roles of other C-suite leaders have over time.
Building on the conclusions of the Sustainability at a Crossroads research ERM published with GlobeScan and Volans in July 2025, where over 800 global sustainability experts concluded that the sustainability agenda is entering a new phase and should be radically revised, this article maps five ways sustainability leaders can transform how they lead and help their organizations thrive.
To maximize impact and expedite transformation, sustainability leaders must pivot the role they play from portfolio owner to strategic orchestrator. Rather than managing standalone sustainability initiatives themselves, CSOs need to coordinate sustainability as a unifying theme across all strategic initiatives. This shift may mean leading from behind and not the front—enabling other leaders to progress the sustainability agenda through their programs while ensuring strategic alignment and coordination across workstreams.
To succeed, CSOs and their teams will need to strengthen the facilitation, influence, and cross-functional collaboration skills required to navigate and guide complex organizational dynamics. Schneider Electric launched its Sustainability Leadership Programme to develop its next generation of sustainability leaders in Asia. The two-year rotational program provides development activities, leadership exposure, and on-the-job training, enabling participants to co-innovate and implement sustainability programs for organizations.
A key enabler of successful orchestration is to ensure that sustainability is embedded into core strategy so that it is reflected in every major decision and enterprise priority. This helps transform sustainability teams from siloed functions into catalysts for systemic change.
The truth is that not all sustainability initiatives over the last number of years have delivered the expected benefits. That isn’t necessarily bad, no organization has a 100 percent success rate, but sustainability leaders must acknowledge failures or risk losing credibility and influence. Key here is to objectively assess past work, acknowledge which past activities have failed and which current initiatives may not be as relevant, then to apply those lessons to shape future initiative prioritization and design. Such reflection also supports setting better-aligned, more impactful sustainability targets and highlighting where past goals may have been unrealistic.
Leaders must also balance global ambitions and local realities by framing tailored solutions for geographic regions and cultures rather than imposing one-size-fits-all solutions. For example, Starbucks pursues environmental goals differently across different regions of the U.S. Its reusable cup programs in Seattle aim to shift customer behavior, while in the Midwest the company partners with Mercedes to bring electric vehicle charging to more than 100 stores and powers cafes in Illinois via solar projects. Globally, the company applies its Greener Stores Framework. The framework has been used to certify over 9,000 cafe locations to rigorous, verified environmental standards across eight key impact areas, including energy efficiency, water stewardship, and waste reduction. All these efforts have environmental benefits, but each is designed for its unique context.
Transparency has always been central to sustainability performance assessment and disclosure. It remains so, but it needs to be practiced more broadly than previously. Leaders need to share what has and has not worked to strengthen trust with stakeholders. Honesty builds credibility and positions sustainability organizations as leaders committed to continuous improvement.
True leadership in this era means evolving with purpose. When you demonstrate the ability to learn from past experience, customize regional solutions, and share openly, you build momentum for transformation.
3. Compliance manager to value creator
In many organizations, sustainability initiatives were launched in the context of an external mandate or compliance need without the broader context and potential impact for the organization being fully framed. As the compliance agenda has evolved, this has made the value of those initiatives therefore less clear. Setting meaningful sustainability targets begins with understanding the current business context, operational needs, historical performance, and the areas where a company can generate the greatest impact. These actions also help leaders to develop credible and impactful sustainability initiatives, with clear tangible goals anchored in measurable business value. Setting clear, quantifiable KPIs that tie sustainability goals to financial outcomes and business performance, such as cost savings, risk reduction, and revenue growth, is essential to broad buy-in.
The easiest sustainability gains can come from initiatives that cut costs, such as reducing energy, water, and waste, because they deliver both environmental benefits and a clear return on investment. For instance, in 2019, droughts at Anglo American’s Los Bronces copper mine led to a nine percent drop in production, underscoring the financial impact of climate-related water challenges. In response, Anglo American has invested heavily in water management across its operations, delivering $80 million in water savings across its portfolio. Beyond cost reduction, sustainability initiatives are becoming a significant source of value creation for companies. An S&P Global article analysis highlights that 53 percent of the income for the top 500 U.S. corporations and 49 percent of the earnings for the largest 1,200 companies worldwide come from business operations that contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), highlighting the importance of corporate sustainability to the value creation agenda.
The language used to communicate goals with stakeholders is just as important. I believe it is most effective to frame sustainability initiatives in terms of growth, resilience, and value creation—using business language and avoiding technical or specialist jargon. Unilever consistently frames its sustainability goals in terms of business growth and resilience—the company’s Sustainable Living Plan is positioned as a strategy to drive long-term value creation by reducing costs, mitigating risks, and unlocking new market opportunities rather than focusing on technical details, such as carbon intensity or water metrics.
By anchoring sustainability goals to enterprise-wide priorities and outcomes, CSOs can ensure that sustainability initiatives earn executive-level support and deliver tangible returns.
Sustainability leaders must move beyond isolated efforts and engage the entire organization, turning each employee into a stakeholder in the transformation journey. The way to begin this is by educating broadly, for example by developing awareness programs that make sustainability accessible and relevant to every employee, from the boardroom to the front line.
Broadening ownership helps ensure sustainability responsibilities are integrated across all department priorities, making sustainability a shared commitment rather than a standalone function. Bayer provides a strong example of how to increase shared accountability for sustainability across the organization. By integrating sustainability into departmental performance metrics and decision-making, Bayer transformed it from a centralized function into a shared responsibility, reinforcing its role as a driver of long-term business success.
Finally, sustainability leaders need to build coalitions connecting leaders across functions – from finance and legal to operations and marketing – to weave sustainability into everyday decision-making. Through such collaboration, sustainability becomes a foundational pillar of defining enterprise success.
Successful transformation programs always focus on delivering and celebrating quick wins. This helps build momentum and retain support by generating incremental gains and establishing proof points. It therefore helps to break broad sustainability commitments into smaller targets that deliver immediate and tangible impact. Additionally, CSOs must communicate and recognize achievements in ways that help build enthusiasm, momentum, and long-term commitment.
Sustainability leaders can leverage early successes to maintain momentum, secure buy-in for larger transformation initiatives, and build external coalitions to drive faster progress. For instance, during a severe water crisis in Mexico, leading materials company Cemex took action to eliminate freshwater use across its entire operations, ensuring it did not compete with human or agricultural needs. Through partnerships with the local utility, food companies, and beverage companies, Cemex achieved 100 percent zero freshwater use across 15 ready-mix plants in just one year. This not only successfully addressed an urgent local challenge but became the foundation for broader global initiatives, proving how external collaboration can accelerate sustainability progress.
As the debate around the role of sustainability leaders continues, one thing is clear— standing still is not an option. Today’s volatile markets demand new approaches that are adaptive, integrated, and deeply connected to business value.
By responding to the changed landscape, rooting goals in measurable outcomes, engaging the entire organization, building momentum through visible progress, and pivoting from doer to enabler, sustainability leaders can transform the degree of influence they have across their organization. This evolution requires a mindset shift, from owning siloed projects to orchestrating company-wide change, supported by new skills to drive collaboration, foster strategic alignment, and robustly quantify the financial upside of corporate action on sustainability-related risks and opportunities.
Those who embrace this transformation will not only successfully navigate today’s complex business environment but also position their organizations to transition to a low-carbon, nature-positive, and equitable future. The question is not whether the CSO role should evolve but how quickly leaders can rise to the challenge.
