In corporate sustainability, we cannot let the cosy be the enemy of doing what counts

“Don’t let perfect get in the way of good enough,” has become a mantra used (by sustainability aficionados) to comfort businesses and sustainability champions not yet keen or able to generate internal buy-in for science-aligned action levels. And to encourage those who have not yet engaged with any sustainability action to start with the “quick wins”, the “every little bit that counts” (except it doesn’t), because “sustainability is a journey, not a destination” (except it isn’t).

The mantra is so canny it’s made me wonder whether it had been planted by BigOil.

In principle it seems very reasonable and pragmatic, and hence objecting to it seems a priori unreasonable and deluded. It is very dangerous: It is being interpreted as saying that incremental improvements to the status quo (i.e. to an unsustainable core business) are good, a step in the right direction, which they actually are not. They are pulling in the opposite direction.

What we need in order to avert or at least soften the blow of global collapse scenarios is an *immediate* *radical* *systems change*. That is what available science has been telling us, and we must be grounding sustainability action in science if we wish to attain real-world sustainability, not imaginary sustainability that exists only in sustainability reports. We cannot afford diluting that message.

The uncomfortable truth is that only radical transformational action will “move the needle in the right direction”. (To quote the IPCC here, specifically AR6 WGIII: “Mitigation and development goals cannot be met through incremental change”). And that is indeed daunting, but we must not allow it to paralyse us.

We must instead seek and grasp what that radical transformation looks like, and what levers are available to each of us — individuals and businesses — to bring it about.

This is not an invitation to seek perfection and perfectionism (which the quote smartly projects as what it distances itself from). It is an invitation to imperfectly take upon radical transformation immediately — instead of imperfectly taking on science-defying incrementalism.

There is enough guidance to get started already out there. Likewise, there are progressive consulting firms who help companies bring on such transformation and lead a systems change (and I will be compiling a list of them).

Don’t let the cosy and palatable be the enemy of what counts.

PS: If you must do a little incremental change in order to build internal momentum towards transformation, with a clear roadmap of how it will get you there, reasonably fast, by all means do it. But without such a roadmap it’s not a scenic route to the same destination. To use a metaphor, if you need to take antihistamines (allergy medicine) in order to be able to access cancer treatment, by all means do it. But let’s not be presenting antihistamines as cancer treatment.

Acknowledgment

Much of the thinking and language in the above brief article is inspired by r3.0.

About Alice Kalro

Alice is an emerging global thought leader in science-based corporate sustainability, providing practical guidance on science-aligned business transformations and urging corporations to take on a systems leadership role in order to help secure a just and liveable future for all.

She has been leading business transformation programs and developing stakeholder-centric business strategies since 2014, and currently heads the Corporate Sustainability consulting practice at Goodera.

She is a prominent Advocation Partner at r3.0, a global non-profit catalyzing a systems change towards a regenerative and inclusive global economy. She has been working to trigger a reinvention of the sustainability consulting space towards science-aligned practices.

Alice holds a masters degree in International Relations and several sustainability qualifications from Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford universities, as well as a GRI certification.

Alice has worked with teams and clients across five continents, and lived in Europe, China, and is presently based out of Bangalore, India.