In an era of backlash and uncertainty, Prof. Ioannis Ioannou offers three critical actions from his “Holding the Line” playbook to help leaders embed sustainability into the fabric of business strategy — quietly, credibly, and systemically
Key highlights:
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“Nothing says strategic priority like funding” — Ioannou’s most powerful insight is that directing capital through a sustainability lens is what enables companies to build lasting strategic resilience.
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Progress typically involves tension — Acknowledging trade-offs across cost, timing, and stakeholder impact allows organizations to navigate complexity with greater clarity, reinforce internal alignment, and demonstrate that sustainability is being pursued through deliberate, not decorative, choices.
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Preparing for difficult obstacles — The challenge is no longer whether sustainability matters, but what we are willing to do when it becomes inconvenient. Ioannou’s perspective challenges leaders to build resilient structures and processes that can withstand hostile terrain rather than fair-weather sustainability programs.
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In recent years, Environment, Social & Governance (ESG) issues have shifted from a period of mainstream momentum to an era marked by skepticism and backlash. For Prof. Ioannis Ioannou of the London Business School, the question is no longer whether sustainability matters. “The real challenge,” he writes in Holding the Line: A Playbook for ESG Leadership in Hostile Terrain, “is what we are willing to do when it becomes inconvenient to say so.”
Unlike some typical ESG toolkits that focus on messaging or compliance, this playbook calls for deeper strategic reflection. It is designed for leaders who remain committed, even as external validation fades.
Here are three actions from the playbook that can help organizations move from performative commitments to those initiatives that can have a more enduring impact.
Action #1: Treat capital allocation as the litmus test of strategic intent
“Nothing says strategic priority like funding,” says Prof. Ioannou, noting that capital allocation is where strategic commitment becomes visible. When sustainability priorities shape where capital flows — what gets funded, delayed, or redesigned — they move from rhetorical statements to structural choices.
This goes beyond simply adding ESG metrics to project evaluations. Indeed, sustainability must be embedded into the logic and architecture of investment decisions, Ioannou emphasizes. “It needs to be present from the start — at the first gate — not treated as a reputational check once everything else is locked in.” That includes integrating environmental and social criteria into how initiatives are assessed, which risks are priced in, and how long-term returns are understood.
“If ESG appears in reporting but doesn’t shape executive compensation, capital approvals, or promotion decisions, it’s a signal that the organization hasn’t yet internalized it,” Ioannou explains, adding that financial and non-financial outcomes should be tied together across both individual and institutional metrics.
For many organizations, this shift requires challenging a deeply ingrained capital allocation mindset. “We’ve trained generations of business leaders… to default to short-term financial returns,” Ioannou says. “That logic often crowds out longer-term investments in resilience, innovation, and systemic adaptation.” Overcoming this legacy of short-termism means rethinking how value is defined, especially under conditions of ecological, social, and geopolitical disruption.
Action #2: Make trade-offs visible and treat them as part of serious strategy
“Sustainability work that avoids trade-offs isn’t strategy — it’s storytelling,” says Ioannou. Indeed, a defining mark of credible ESG leadership is the willingness to address the inherent tensions involving costs, timelines, stakeholder impacts, and business models and to engage those conflicts directly, rather than trying to smooth them away.
Organizations frequently frame sustainability as universally beneficial. While that instinct may serve communications goals, it does little to strengthen strategic capacity. “Real progress almost always introduces tension,” Ioannou explains, adding that confronting these trade-offs should be made routine. “Leaders should ask: What shifts as a result of this decision? Who carries the burden? What timelines change, and what expectations must be reset?”
These answers could help bring clarity into operations by translating difficult decisions into language that invites accountability. “If a supplier shift increases costs by 8% but reduces water usage by 30%, that’s not a dilemma to hide. This is a strategic choice to make transparently,” he explains.
Organizations need to normalize this mindset through scenario planning, making ESG-informed business cases, and promoting cross-functional alignment, Ioannou recommends. When sustainability decisions live only in specialist teams, they remain abstract; but when they’re interrogated through operational, financial, and reputational lenses, these trade-offs become manageable.
“It’s easy to achieve consensus when the work stays abstract,” he adds. “The question is what happens when hard choices emerge, such as when costs surface, when values compete, and when speed slows down? Navigating these tensions openly is what makes sustainability real — it’s how leadership moves from messaging to meaning.”
Action #3: Distribute ownership and build governance depth across the business
“Resilience doesn’t come from the brilliance of one ESG leader — it comes from what remains when the spotlight moves on,” says Ioannou.
This means that boards of directors must develop the fluency to govern sustainability not as an adjacent risk, but as a core strategic focus. “Directors don’t need to master every metric, but they need to understand how climate, inequality, and systemic disruption affect the business over time,” he says, adding that boards need to treat ESG competence as a prerequisite for their directors in order to offer meaningful oversight. And this needs to be supported by tailored training, engagement with scenarios, and deepened dialogue around risk and resilience.
However, governance doesn’t stop at the boardroom. “Sustainability can’t thrive as a silo,” Ioannou explains. “It must be integrated into how the organization plans, executes, and adapts” This includes embedding ESG considerations into stakeholder engagement, procurement processes, product development, capital budgeting, and performance management.
Other key elements of this, he notes, is identifying internal champions and the importance of succession. “Look beyond the sustainability team. Who in finance, HR, or operations has the influence and insight to make sustainability actionable? …If the work vanishes the moment someone leaves, then it was never embedded. The question isn’t just what you’ve achieved — it’s what you’ve institutionalized,” he says.
As organizations seek to build governance structures that enable sustainability and continuity they also need to create lasting initiatives to support this strategy — such as ESG committees with cross-functional mandates, internal working groups linked to business planning cycles, and incentive systems that reward collaborative delivery — and foster the conditions under which the work can scale and endure.
“When the political noise fades, what matters is what you’ve built — structures, practices, and decisions that hold shape under pressure,” Ioannou concludes. “That’s the difference between performative ESG and resilient leadership.”
You can find more information in our Sustainability Resource Center here
