The rebirth of operational sustainability
Topic: Sustainability
Sustainability delivers the strongest results when it is treated as part of how a company competes and performs. When it guides decisions about costs, resilience, supply chains, and customers, it becomes a direct contributor to growth and stability. This renewed focus on the operational side is a well-timed way to push business transformation forward.
Sustainability has been one of the strongest forces shaping corporate decision-making over the past decade. Companies, institutions, and lawmakers finally recognised the scale of the global challenge and began steering towards a more responsible future. In line with the political habit of tightening control, this shift came with an extensive wave of regulation intended to hold both private and public actors accountable. The compliance requirements, however, became so dominant that they (for some) undermined the very purpose of working with sustainability. It drove the “sustainability compliance fatigue” that a lot of companies are still working their way out of.
To reset the sustainability-equals-compliance-only mindset, perhaps we should stop phrasing this important agenda as “sustainability”. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the reframing exercise helps us focus on what should be the true driver of a shift towards more sustainable practices: decisions made at the heart of the business, driven by clear commercial upside, that give companies the chance to do things better and smarter.
The revitalization of operational sustainability
A shift is needed in sustainability rhetoric, away from compliance-heavy dialogue and towards operational sustainability. Operational sustainability marks the moment where sustainability stops living in its own silo and becomes part of the organisation’s decisions. Whilst this perspective is far from new, it seems like it could benefit from a revitalization.
We need to make sustainability show up where it truly matters for businesses – securing access to raw materials, protecting margins when costs fluctuate, designing resilient and adaptable operating models, and delivering what customers expect.
If sustainability is anchored in the business in a practical, operational way, companies can address the core challenges they face and still protect their key priorities, even as environmental and societal pressures on resources increase.
Tie sustainability to your transformation agenda
We are seeing a wave of companies running major digital and data transformations, with new systems, new platforms, new ways of using data, and new technologies (hint, AI). If you are already rebuilding the digital backbone of the company, this is the moment to weave sustainability in.
Composable architecture is essentially about breaking a company’s digital setup into modules that can be connected, adapted, and expanded as the business changes. When you map that digital architecture and add sustainability requirements such as batch traceability, product data, supply-chain visibility, energy use, and repairability, you make sustainability part of everyday processes. Instead of adding new compliance layers on top of old systems, you build the ability to work sustainably directly into operations, product design, material flows, decision making, and data management.
Do not get me wrong. I am not at all against compliance and regulations. Both are important vehicles when it comes to driving lasting change. But the way we work should be about rebalancing, revitalizing and reigniting one of the most important agendas to address this huge societal challenge with every available driver.
My final message to any decision-maker is simple. Whatever KPI you are chasing – cost, resilience, growth, efficiency, or brand – you stand a far better chance of hitting it when you start treating sustainability as a business lever and integrate it into the decisions that shape performance.
