Field notes from the front line of impact valuation.

Start telling a better story. Every sustainability, social value and impact leader I know has the same recurring meeting. It is the one where they have to justify the team’s existence. Sometimes it is dressed up as a budget review. Sometimes it is a strategy session. Sometimes it is just a corridor conversation with the CFO that goes a bit sideways. The shape is always the same. You arrive with evidence of good work. They arrive with a spreadsheet. You leave having defended y

Sustainability matters more than ever. The way we report it does not. I want to say something that gets me into trouble at events. The work the sustainability profession does has never mattered more. The label we put on it, and the way we measure it, are both badly broken. In the US, ESG has become a political insult. In Europe, it is drowning in reporting frameworks nobody reads. In boardrooms across the world, it is the slide everyone scrolls past on the way to the financia

And it is about to stop being a differentiator at all. Quick question. If your organisation hit net zero tomorrow, what would actually change about your commercial position? Five years ago that question had a real answer. Today, for most sectors, the honest answer is: not much. Carbon reporting has become table stakes. Frameworks have hardened. Tooling has commoditised. Every serious competitor is doing it. You do not win contracts by reporting carbon any more. You lose them