May 3, 2022 | less than a minute read

Making ESG Profitable -- an important perspective

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David Crass

Managing Partner, D.C. Office, Management Committee Member, Industry Group Co-Chair, Agribusiness, Food & Beverage

Get in touch

David Crass

Managing Partner, D.C. Office, Management Committee Member, Industry Group Co-Chair, Agribusiness, Food & Beverage

Interesting on-line article from Fortune recently (linked below) makes the case for "Authentic ESG" and is worth the read wherever you are in your business' ESG process. Those of us advising clients on ESG cannot shy away from pointing out that as the issues permeate the consumer-brand-vendor supply chain and the public and private investment community, it is not a dirty word to include profit and scale into program design, as you would set and evaluate other business goals, relationships and objectives. Aligning ESG with profit, scale and innovation inevitably advances the development of result "purpose" around the issues that the authors advocate. Our ESG team can help!

"One of the most critical mindset shifts for leaders is to move away from the idea of ESG as altruism. The mechanics of running a business mean that if you’re losing money on your ESG effort long term, you won’t stick with it. If ESG is a cost center, there will always be pressure to manage it down. But when ESG shifts to be a profit pool, a scalability enabler, an innovation engine—that’s when its impact truly compounds."