It's up to YOU to take the innitiative
A sustainable business embraces long-term value and growth in the widest sense. To do this, it usually has a long-term strategy with a broad range of objectives, including both financial and non-financial goals. It also measures its progress against those goals.
Looking at value creation beyond the financial aspect is difficult, but necessary if you are serious about achieving sustainable, long-term value creation for all your stakeholders. Critically, you must be willing to transform aspects of your business and potentially take bold action in areas of your operations that are not currently aligned with your purpose-led strategy – before you get pushed to do so by investors. To instill change, you need to ensure that all stakeholder groups – including customers, employees, investors, partners, and suppliers – understand the reasons why change is necessary, the benefits of doing so and how their actions are aligned to the purpose of the business.
A long-term value orientation has significant implications for how corporates communicate performance. On the one hand this is about being authentic and accountable.
Effective and credible reporting against long-term value metrics is also key to accountability – establishing where there has been progress or lack of progress.
Of course, being authentic and accountable will not happen if organizations are still heavily dependent on conventional reporting frameworks. Focusing on the long term requires that organizations shift from a narrow focus on backward-looking financial reporting to forward-looking insight based on financial and nonfinancial disclosures, including ESG disclosures.