Sharpening the focus: Business through a new lens

We’ve explored the thinking of over 1,400 CEOs from our 19th Annual Global CEO Survey to uncover their approach to today’s sustainability issues. If your first thought about sustainability takes you to the environment, that’s only part of the story. Sustainability is about business longevity – it’s about those behaviours, processes and technologies that will keep you in business for longer, your reputation intact, and your customers happy. Engaging with society and government to understand expectations and demands, and to put a value on your own impacts (positive and negative) and the future implications of your strategy, are all key.

‘Business through a new lens’ discusses the relationship between business, and society, the environment and government. All are interconnected, exerting an impact on and having dependencies on each other. It suggests that business models are changing, moving away from shareholder centric models to encompass wider stakeholder needs too, and discusses the potential increase in influence of governments as the Sustainable Development Goals are embedded. It also talks about decision making – it’s changing too, moving from a reliance on financial data alone to now include non-financials, with impact measurement becoming more important.