Why Closing the Empowerment Gap is Now the Defining Challenge for Corporate Sustainability

Becky Willan

Global Business Line Lead, Strategy, Transformation, and Reporting

United Kingdom

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Becky Willan

Becky has spent nearly 20 years helping businesses embed purpose and sustainability to drive growth. Becky co-founded Given, a consultancy for purpose-led organisations, and advises leading brands on innovation and impact.

Contact Becky Willan View full profile

Contents

• The Empowerment Gap
• Sustainability Needs to Be Everyone's Business
• Sustainability Teams Must Evolve into Organisational Change Agents
• Empowered Middle Managers Play a Critical Role 
• No Organisation Can Navigate These Transitions in Isolation 
• Final Thought
• Contact Us

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There is a tension in sustainability. When I talk to leaders across business sectors, I hear the same problem time and again. They know that sustainability can no longer sit in its own silo – apart from the other business functions. They know that targets and policies alone will not deliver the outcomes they have committed to. And they know that the next few years are crucial in delivering more ambitious and more commercially‑relevant action. 

But I also hear something else. Even in well‑resourced organisations with clear intent, individuals across the business still tell me that teams don’t have the means, the mindset or the mandate to act. For all the noise about sustainability becoming core strategy, we have not yet equipped enough people to deliver on that promise.  

That is the empowerment gap. And it is now one of the biggest barriers to real progress. 

Here, I’ll outline the core challenges I see holding businesses back from turning sustainability ambition into action, and the steps leaders can take to empower teams to make sustainability part of everyday decision-making. 

The Empowerment Gap

Over the past decade, sustainability programmes have often focused on delivering relatively quick wins through target‑setting and policy commitments. That phase has largely passed.

There is now widespread recognition that sustainability needs to move from discretionary activity to delivery; from a sideline concern to core strategy; from incremental improvement to transformational change.

Yet decision rights remain concentrated, sustainability teams become bottlenecks, and progress slows as initiatives depend on escalation rather than execution.

A lack of empowerment has become a fundamental blocker within organisations, but leaders are unclear on how to address this problem.

That’s because what lies ahead is harder, more structural work. Without a deliberate shift in how companies empower their people, sustainability ambitions will not be executed at the scale or speed now required.

Real progress rarely comes from leadership direction alone. It comes from ownership. When people help shape what change looks like, they bring energy, creativity and commitment that no top‑down instruction can replicate. Co‑creation turns sustainability from something imposed into something built together. It allows individuals to connect their own experiences, frustrations and ideas to the organisation’s ambitions – and that is what makes new habits and behaviours stick.

People are the power behind transformational change. Empowerment is not just about authority. It is also about the confidence people gain when they are involved in shaping solutions. When employees see their ideas reflected in decisions, belief grows – and so does momentum.

Sustainability Needs to Become Everyone’s Business

Sustainability cannot be delivered by a single team. The whole organisation needs to contribute if strategies are to be delivered and targets are to be met. Sustainability teams can set direction and provide expertise, but they cannot execute across procurement, finance, operations, product development or HR on their own.

This moment closely mirrors earlier organisational shifts – especially digital transformation. Today, digital capability sits within every function, not just IT. Sustainability requires the same approach.

Another useful parallel is HR. Although HR sets policy and frameworks, the responsibility for nurturing talent, delivering leadership and ensuring wellbeing sits across the organisation. Sustainability demands a similar redistribution of responsibility.

Achieving an organisational shift in mindset requires both hardwiring and softwiring. Hardwiring gives people the practical tools, systems and processes teams need to embed sustainability into everyday decisions. Softwiring reinforces the behaviours, norms and leadership signals that shape how people work and what they prioritise.

Creativity plays a vital role too. When teams understand the boundaries and the goals, they are far more likely to spot opportunities, challenge assumptions and co‑design better alternatives together.

Sustainability Teams Must Evolve into Organisational Change Agents

The skills and capabilities required within sustainability teams are changing significantly. Once focused primarily on technical expertise, sustainability roles now need to operate across the business. Teams will increasingly need to influence decision‑making, shape governance and enable change well beyond their own function.

We are seeing leading organisations responding by deliberately strengthening sustainability teams as change agents. Rather than acting solely as subject‑matter experts, these teams are equipped to support others, build coalitions and help translate intent into action. This enables sustainability teams to act as convenors and influencers rather than delivery bottlenecks. 

Giving sustainability teams the techniques to lead conversations where different voices can imagine solutions together builds ownership, reduces resistance and accelerates delivery. 

Empowered Middle Managers Play a Critical Role 

Sustainability depends on empowered middle managers turning ambition into action. Yet they are often squeezed between ambitious sustainability goals and operating models that have not kept pace. Many are expected to deliver change without having the authority, understanding or support to adjust processes, procurement rules or performance metrics. 

Organisations are beginning to understand they must increase investment in upskilling boards, middle managers and whole functions as organisations recognise that delivery depends on these groups having the correct capabilities and skillset.  

The most effective approaches focus on helping people understand how sustainability shows up in their day‑to‑day decisions, and giving them the opportunity to surface what needs to change to deliver differently. 

It is crucial to empower people through education and inspiration, while creating space for dialogue with peers and leaders about how sustainability connects to their daily role and what must change in decision‑making processes. 

No Organisation Can Navigate These Transitions in Isolation 

Many sustainability challenges are systemic, with constraints sitting beyond any individual organisation’s direct control. This can come in the form of shared suppliers, common infrastructure, regional environmental pressures, and misaligned incentives across value chains and markets. In this context, empowerment extends beyond organisational boundaries. 

Leading organisations are responding by creating structured, pre‑competitive ways to collaborate. This includes convening forums with peers, suppliers, customers, financiers and public‑sector actors to address shared challenges, align standards, and develop common approaches to data, measurement and supplier engagement. 

We are also seeing more joined‑up funding models. Organisations are pooling capital to support impact programmes that enable shared outcomes, such as supplier transition support, landscape‑level initiatives, or enabling infrastructure for decarbonisation and nature outcomes. These approaches reduce duplication, spread risk and increase the likelihood of impact at scale. 

Final Thought  

Sustainability only delivers meaningful outcomes when programmes are co‑created with the people who will live with the outcomes. It may be facts and figures that convince the business, but it is stories that build belief. Individuals need to be able to imagine better futures – and contribute to shaping them – so they feel genuine ownership of the changes that follow.  

Creating space and listening to the “acceptable radicals” within teams – the people who push constructively, challenge established norms and help others see what effective delivery requires – will separate the businesses who are making progress from those struggling to implement the changes the business needs to make. 

Companies that empower their teams via organisational culture, while hardwiring sustainability into decision rights, systems and ways of working, create the conditions for delivery at scale. This is what turns ambition into action: thousands of empowered decisions made every day, aligned to the organisation’s transition goals.