Building sustainability strategy

Sustainability should not be a constraint on business and should instead be viewed as a major value opportunity.

However, companies are falling behind by not following through on the targets. Anna argues that this is due to a conflict of interest with other business goals, which should instead be combined into a fully integrated business plan.

“ The conviction that sustainability is a priority or a business value opportunity is not the problem,” Anna says.“ The problem is the design failure. And this is because the way sustainability has been organised and integrated into business decisions and performance management— currently as an afterthought and a siloed function— means that whenever targets conflict, sustainability loses. Not because of intent, but because of how value itself has

been defined in that company.” Anna defines a three-bucket structure of financial value, resilience value and growth option value, which is central to Accenture’ s strategic point of view.

Accenture’ s work with Tetra Pak

Accenture has supported Tetra Pak in designing and embedding a sustainability performance framework into its strategy and performance management process. This defines how sustainability targets flow from corporate level to business units with the same rigour as financial targets.

Anna says:“ Tetra Pak is a very sizable, significant global business with complex value chains and their sustainability ambition is very high.“ We need to make the priority clear from the start, so we helped them to redefine the corporate strategy performance management process.