Anna Töndevold: Redefining Sustainability Strategy

In today’s geopolitical and economic landscape, sustainability is becoming central to enterprise performance. 

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

Many organisations have set ambitious environmental goals, however some struggle to translate them into measurable progress or business growth.

Anna Töndevold, Nordic Sustainability Services and Strategy Lead at Accenture argues that this is due to a design failure with other business goals.

“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 that sustainability has been organised, it’s been a siloed function from business decisions and performance management, not just organisationally isolated.

“So, whenever targets conflict, a financial or a traditional corporate target and a sustainability target, then very often, the sustainability target fails, because it was not part of how targets and value have been defined in that company.”

Anna argues that redefining the value formula – to include resilience value and growth option value alongside financial performance – is what turns sustainability from a competing priority into a source of competitive advantage.