Leading with a sustainable purpose

The report presents leaders' insights that can help support the development, alignment and integration of a sustainable corporate purpose. 

As companies are facing the COVID-19 crisis, they also need to tackle other systemic challenges, for instance, the climate emergency and growing inequality. Companies have an opportunity to align their corporate purpose and strategy with the transition to a sustainable economy. 

In the report, ten principles that any company should consider in the process of aligning and integrating its corporate purpose and strategy to the transition to a sustainable economy are put forward. A menu of corporate practices is introduced that can be customised to operationalise the ten principles. Practical guidance is also offered to enable leaders to adopt the principles in an effective way. 

The ten principles presented in the report are:

• Take an ‘outside-in’ view that engages external stakeholders 
• Take an ‘inside-out’ view that engages employees 
• Engage the Board to align purpose and strategy and broaden ownership
• Integrate the purpose into strategies and objective-setting
• Align rewards and incentives
• Integrate the purpose into core business practices
• Build the capacity and capability of employees 
• Select and build external partnerships and advocacy 
• Integrate the purpose into metrics and external disclosure
• Integrate the purpose into corporate positioning and communications strategy.