Sustainability in Business

Leaders must take the time to truly understand the problem we are facing, its implications for their business and how to handle it. Translating high-level ambitions into practical action and transforming the organisation requires a robust strategy.​ Q5’s Sustainability Transformation Offering can help translate ambitions into actions for your organisation.

Convincing stakeholders on the benefits of becoming more sustainable requires education and real passion from leaders.

Achieving these goals requires balancing financial, social, climate, health, and political decisions. However, to be successful, you must also manage a trade-off between short-term return and long-term viability.

At Q5, we work with you and your stakeholders to ensure the solutions are fit for purpose.

Successfully implementing your goals requires embedding them into the culture & mindset throughout your organisation.

Such a culture change requires ongoing commitment and actioning multiple levers to reach the right results; this means empowering your people and allowing them to own the changes. Otherwise, the culture shift will not deliver lasting benefits.

At Q5, we are experts in culture change and we can support your organisation in this culture change.

Implementing sustainable business practices requires collaboration within and across organisations, where competition has been the norm. Knowing who the leaders are in this space and growing the ecosystem are important first steps.​

Our consultants help organisations set up for change and deliver it. We base our advice on people, culture, delivery methodologies, change structure & governance. This process also involves knowledge sharing through the transition.

Our sustainability transformation consulting follows our tried and tested approach. We identify and implement the best interventions to take you on your sustainability journey. Q5’s Sustainability Transformation framework describes the key areas organisations need to consider when looking to improve their sustainability performance.

However, we recognise that some areas may be more mature and there may be immediate priorities. So, we will work with you from any stage of the transformation. From framing the ambition upfront or diving straight into targeted interventions.

What is Purpose?

A purpose-driven organisation takes decisions that support its profit-making activities, while considering the impact. This is because those decisions may have on society and on the planet.

At Q5 we believe Purpose emerges from considering an organisation’s unique attributes and capabilities. This means thinking of benefits from these alongside what it is that the world around it needs, now and in the future:

How to have a successfully embedded Purpose?

In our opinion, there are two fundamental principles that contribute to successful embedding and activation of a Purpose:

• Adopt an iterative approach; purpose doesn’t have to be static and can evolve over time.
• Empower your people to own the change; purpose-driven transformation requires multi-level sponsorship and guidance.

What is Q5’s purpose approach?
Our approach enables an organisation to re-clarify its purpose and ambition and set the thresholds through which the organisation can operate.

1. Understand the role of purpose across the organisation.
2. Define an inspiring, future-focused purpose & align the organisation around it.
3. Integrate the purpose into the strategy and priorities of the organisation, & transform the organisation’s culture and ways of working to enable the purpose.
4. Evolve; re-evaluate the purpose over time & define measures of success and track progress towards becoming a purpose-driven organisation.

Many organisations are trying to understand how to best organise for sustainability. This means understanding the roles, responsibilities and capabilities required and how to best build these into the organisation. This approach allows us to help our clients to design their organisations, ready for the net positive future. 

Leading a sustainable business requires new capabilities and mindset. Long-term orientation, inclusive leadership, systems thinker and excellence in partnering are all key to successfully leading for business sustainability. We  Our sustainability consultants help our clients develop these mindsets for better organisational culture and development. 

Last year, the Q5 and the The Transformation Alliance (TTA) conducted research into sustainability transformation. Gathering insights from 160 businesses and interviewing over 50 business leaders across 27 countries. In this report, you’ll discover:

• Why now? Explore the urgent need for sustainability action and why many organisations still don’t know how to start.
• Sustainability ≠ just green: Learn why ESG must be managed holistically, not in silos, to build resilience.
• Beyond traditional transformation: See how sustainability reshapes whole sectors and what new skills leaders need.
• The customer effect: Understand how brand reputation and customer pressure are driving real change.
• Tailored approaches for every journey: Choose your path with three ambition levels, from Purpose-Driven to Beyond-Compliance.
• SPRING into action: Use our practical framework to move from intention to impact.
• Make it cultural: Discover why assigning accountability isn’t enough, and how to truly embed sustainability in your culture.
• Small wins, big momentum: See how early victories can spark organisation-wide support.
• Activate everyone: Find out how shared responsibility fuels transformation, and why most organisations are missing this.
• Think beyond the business: Unlock the power of community and academic partnerships in reaching your goals.
• …and much more!

Click this link to learn more and download the full report