And now the real work begins...

Back in July, I stepped off the corporate career ladder to focus full-time on helping businesses tackle climate transition in a way that strengthens performance, resilience, and competitiveness. I’ve spent my career leading transformation and strategy delivery, and I’ve seen how powerful businesses can be when they mobilise around big, complex challenges. But I also know how difficult and confusing this transition can be—especially when the business benefits aren’t immediately clear.

Over the next few months, I’ll be inviting business leaders, transformation directors, sustainability teams, and industry groups to input into the MVPs I’ve been developing. I’m keen to understand what’s working, where the sticking points are, and to learn from those already making progress. Through collaboration, I believe we can crack one of the toughest challenges ahead: aligning business planning with the realities of the climate transition. In return, I’ll share what I’m developing—tools, diagnostics, and insights drawn from my research into transition plans and practical business solutions.

My work centres on re-engineering how organisations plan, so that climate, cost, and competitiveness move in step. The goal is to make climate part of how the business runs, not something managed in parallel.

I’m exploring three practical routes for integrating climate into business planning and transformation:

1. Climate-aware planning. A pragmatic checklist that ensures climate and decarbonisation are considered at each stage of existing planning cycles.

2. Climate overlay. Embedding climate and resource considerations into strategy and operations using tools such as scenario analysis and materiality assessment.

3. Climate built-in by design. Fully integrated planning where climate, finance, strategy, and operations work as one system, focused on opportunities that create business value.

   
   

Alongside this, I’m developing a Climate Transition Plan Diagnostic that applies transformation and change-management principles to identify gaps, risks, and opportunities in existing transition plans. It builds on the strong foundations set by the Transition Plan Taskforce, BSI, and others, but grounds them in how real change happens inside businesses.

Because for most organisations, the hardest part isn’t knowing what to do—it’s how to do it while running the business, I'm also focusing on turning transition theory into practical ways forward by developing tools and guidance to help leaders:

• Evolve existing processes and introduce new metrics or forums without overwhelming teams.

• Manage and get value from fragmentated and variable quality of Scope 3 and even Scope 1 & 2 emissions data so decisions are based on something leaders can trust.

• Move from current commitments and assets toward new models, supply chains, and products, challenging where high-cost, high-risk deep decarbonisation efforts may not immediately deliver long-term value or a positive ROI.

• Manage the evolution of the business through staged transformation while supporting employees through significant change.

• Look beyond the organisation’s walls to the wider environment it operates in (government, industry peers, competitors, supply chains, and local communities) for innovation and collaborations as systems thinking, shared investment, and partnerships may be required to unlock new value.

I’m doing this on a collaborative, impact-first basis—partnering with organisations and industry groups who want to shape and test these approaches, with deeper support available where it’s needed most.

For anyone interested in the detail, I’m happy to talk you through the work I've done including the three routes organisations can take to embed climate into planning and the diagnostic I’m developing to help businesses assess their transition plans.  I’d love to hear your views, success stories, and the challenges you’re facing in bringing climate into strategy, finance, and operations. The more we compare notes, the faster we’ll all move.

Evolving the Way Businesses Plan for the Future: Why Climate-Integrated Planning is Central to Business Transformation.

Business leaders don’t need more sustainability processes; they need the systems that already run the company to evolve so that climate and competitiveness are managed together. That’s how we turn compliance into strategy and pressure into progress.

Businesses have a vital role in tackling the climate crisis, but delivering real impact demands a different kind of planning. Many organisations understand what must be done but are held back by how they plan and make decisions. Net zero is too often treated as compliance, not opportunity but effective compliance should be designed to uncover opportunity, rather than compliance blocking opportunity.

However, the shifts needed to cut emissions - smarter operations, collaborative supply chains, digitised processes - are the very ones that can create long-term value. The opportunity now is to bring strategy, climate transition and adaptation, operations, and commercial goals into one transformation agenda that strengthens resilience and competitiveness. Through this combined lens innovation, efficiency and growth opportunities can be surfaced.

Why Planning Must Evolve

To achieve lasting impact, businesses will need to change how they plan and govern. This isn’t about replacing trusted processes but adapting them. Traditional planning cycles built for predictability no longer fit a world defined by volatility, regulation, resource constraints, investor scrutiny, and physical climate impacts.

History shows that businesses can adapt when the world changes. Globalisation, digitisation, and pandemic shocks all forced companies to evolve. The same is true now. Climate and resource considerations – like water and energy - need to be part of every stage of planning: strategy, budgeting, operations, and investment. When they are, they inform the choices that shape performance and resilience for the decade ahead.

The Barriers in the Way

Leaders understand the challenge, but implementation is difficult. The real barrier isn’t intent, it’s integration. Systems, incentives, and mindsets have been built for stability, not transformation. Planning frameworks are deeply embedded in financial models and incentive systems. Decision forums are tuned for cost and capacity, not carbon, resilience and adaptation. Adjusting metrics, assumptions, and incentives can feel uncomfortable and slow because it means unpicking what has worked for years.

Most leadership teams already have more processes than they can manage. The challenge isn’t adding new ones, but evolving the systems that already run the business so climate and competitiveness are managed together.

And beyond process, there are human realities: habits, time pressure, and a natural bias for the familiar. Every leadership team faces the tension between short-term delivery with long-term transition. Supporting those decisions, especially complex and uncomfortable trade-offs is where progress really starts.

My Focus

My work centres on helping organisations make this shift by re-engineering the rhythm of planning so that climate, cost, and competitiveness move in step. The goal is to make climate part of how the business runs, not something managed in parallel.

After leading business transformation for years, I’ve seen how change only sticks when it feels practical and familiar to those delivering it. That’s why I’m exploring three routes organisations can take:

1. Climate-aware planning: A pragmatic checklist approach that ensures climate and decarbonisation are considered at each stage of existing planning cycles.

2. Climate overlay: Embedding climate and resource considerations into strategic and operational analysis and decision-making, using tools like scenario analysis and materiality assessment.

3. Climate built-in by design: Fully integrated planning where climate, finance, strategy, and operations are managed as one system. This isn’t a rewrite of planning; it’s an upgrade that connects existing business frameworks with sustainability data and insights.

   
   

In parallel, I’m developing a Climate Transition Plan Diagnostic that applies transformation and change-management principles to help organisations identify gaps, risks, and opportunities within their existing transition plans. This draws on excellent work already available in regulatory frameworks, standards, and guidance from bodies like the Climate Governance Initiative, the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT), and BSI.

The Real Work Ahead

For most organisations, the hardest part isn’t knowing what to do, it’s how to do it while running the business. Success depends on making tough decisions and how leaders introduce change, how choices are sequenced, and how people are brought along.

The challenge is more than just devising ‘better’ planning processes, it’s about:

• Evolving existing processes and introducing new metrics or forums without overwhelming teams.

• Managing and getting value from fragmented and variable quality Scope 3 and even Scope 1 & 2 emissions data so decisions are based on something leaders can trust. (Which will require up-skilling planning, finance, and operational teams to leverage sustainability data and insights effectively.)

• Moving from current commitments and assets toward new models, supply chains, and products (especially difficult as high-cost, high-risk deep decarbonisation efforts may not immediately deliver long-term value or a positive ROI.)

• Managing the evolution of the business through staged transformation while supporting employees through significant change.

• Looking beyond the organisation’s walls to the wider systems it operates in for innovations and collaborations (government, industry peers, competitors, supply chains, and local communities.) as systems thinking, shared investment, and partnerships may be required to unlock new value.

  
  

These are not abstract problems. They’re the daily trade-offs leaders make between cost, risk, growth, and reputation. When organisations build on processes they already trust, progress comes faster and with greater confidence. Climate-integrated planning isn’t a side initiative, it’s the next stage of business transformation.

Planning for the Future of Business: Why Climate Impact and Decarbonisation Belong at the Heart of Corporate Strategy.

Business leaders are steering through one of the most complex operating environments in decades. Markets are volatile, technologies are rewriting business models, and customer expectations are shifting faster than organisations can adapt. The businesses that will thrive are those that evolve their planning systems to anticipate—not react to—change. Climate considerations (rising regulatory pressures, physical climate impacts, and shifting investor and customer expectations) are now variable and disrupter CEOs and leadership teams need to both consider and act on. Integrating climate into the core of business planning isn’t about compliance or reputation management; it’s about unlocking new sources of growth, efficiency, and resilience.

For many leaders, climate feels like one burden too many. This is understandable given today's complexity, but this mindset is the real risk. Treating it as a separate initiative risk missing opportunities that competitors can seize. The new reality is that climate and core business value are inseparable. The same digital, supply chain, and operating model shifts required to cut emissions are the very changes that drive efficiency, attract investment, and de-risk your future. This article outlines the importance of evolving your existing business planning systems to turn climate pressure into a lasting source of competitive advantage.

Planning and Transformation in a Volatile World

Business transformation has always been about aligning an organisation’s strategy, operating model, and ways of working to the realities of tomorrow’s market. But many businesses are still running planning cycles built for a different era - ones designed to optimise predictability rather than manage volatility. Today, the variables have multiplied: economic uncertainty, digital disruption, supply chain fragility, workforce expectations, and now, the accelerating impacts of climate change. If planning is how a business looks forward and makes choices, then those choices must now include climate.

Bringing Climate into the Planning Cycle

Climate (and for many businesses, water) are no longer a separate sustainability concerns, they are a strategic business variable. Physical impacts such as extreme weather, transitional pressures from regulation and investors, and shifts in consumer demand all directly affect business performance. Embedding climate within the planning cycle is a must to align strategy, finance, operations, and innovation within a single, coherent decision system.

‘Climate performance’ is measurable ability of a business to deliver value while reducing exposure to climate risk and emissions intensity. This includes energy efficiency, supply chain resilience, and the capability to meet investor, regulatory, and customer expectations. When leaders build this into their planning rhythm, they can make trade-offs based on value, not virtue—balancing cash, carbon, and competitiveness.

Integrated planning shifts the focus from managing emissions as a cost, to engineering the business for lower carbon. This unlocks value by:

1. Creating Premium Demand (e.g., green-labelled products and services that command a price premium or win competitive tenders),

2. Driving Operational Efficiency (e.g., digitising supply chains to eliminate waste and energy use), and

3. Attracting Cheaper Capital (e.g., accessing sustainability-linked finance that rewards credible transition plans).

   
   

Strategic Opportunities to Grow Profit and Resilience

Integrating climate into business planning can surface strategic opportunities:

Example 1:  Cost out through efficiency: Unilever reports that since 2008, energy‑efficiency improvements have saved it well over €1 billion in operating costs—demonstrating how climate‑aligned investments deliver measurable cash benefits and long‑term resilience.

Example 2: New revenue from low‑carbon services: Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping and logistics companies, has secured long‑term offtake agreements for green methanol to fuel its dual‑fuel vessels in the coming years - paving the path toward a premium, low‑emissions shipping service. This demonstrates how integrating climate into core strategy creates future‑ready products and customer loyalty while positioning the business ahead of regulation.

Other areas of opportunity include:

• Business models: Decarbonisation reshapes markets and value pools. Future revenues will flow from products and services that anticipate this shift.

• Operating models: Efficiency and sustainability increasingly converge. Digitised, low-waste, and agile operations reduce cost and risk simultaneously.

• Commercial strategy: Contracts and tenders now reward verifiable climate performance. Meeting these criteria opens new revenue channels and market access.

• Governance and incentives: Embedding climate metrics into governance ensures accountability, aligning leadership rewards with long-term resilience.

• Products and services: Innovation pipelines built with climate considerations future-proof portfolios, reducing stranded investments and ensuring relevance.

• Supply and value chains: From suppliers to customers to strategic partnerships with others in the industry, resilience and efficiency depend on understanding emissions and dependencies across the chain.

Adapting to a Changing Environment

Integrating climate into business planning isn’t only about reducing emissions—it’s also about preparing for how the environment itself is changing. For some businesses, that means factoring adaptation into plans: building resilience to heat, flooding, or water stress that can disrupt operations and supply chains. These aren’t abstract risks; they’re operational realities that affect productivity, cost, and customer confidence. Including climate and water considerations within the same planning processes already in use for cost, capacity, and continuity helps keep the business one step ahead—protecting value as well as creating it.

Companies are already disclosing hundreds of billions in potential financial exposure to water-related risks, and global demand for freshwater is expected to exceed supply by 40% by 2030. Building resilience into plans isn’t philanthropy—it’s good business sense. Building water and resilience guardrails into the planning cycle protects business continuity and strengthens investor confidence.

Different Businesses, Different Transitions

Every organisation starts from a different point. Geography, sector, and value chain position shape what matters most. For asset-heavy industries, the challenge may be energy and infrastructure. For service-based firms, it’s data, supply chains, and people. What unites them is the need to evolve planning so that climate is built in, not bolted on.

The Outcomes of Climate-Integrated Business Planning

When climate is integrated into the core planning process, outcomes are tangible and measurable:

• Identification of new growth opportunities driven by climate innovation and consumer demand.

• Lower operating costs through efficiency and reduced resource intensity.

• Reduced exposure to regulatory penalties and litigation.

• Better access to capital from investors seeking credible transition strategies.

• Greater resilience against supply chain disruption and physical climate impacts.

• Stronger brand trust and customer loyalty built on authentic progress.

  
  

These are not theoretical. They are already being realised by companies that view climate as a lever for competitiveness, not just compliance.

Future-Proof by Design

Leaders are already carrying an extraordinary load. The goal isn’t to add to it, but to make planning stronger and more joined-up so every decision works harder.

The next decade will not reward businesses that wait. Those who retrofit later will face higher costs, weaker resilience, and eroded brand equity. Those who evolve now -integrating climate into the planning processes they already trust - will build confidence, clarity, and advantage. Climate integration is not a distraction from transformation; it’s the discipline that strengthens it. It helps leaders plan smarter, act faster, and adapt continuously.

About the Author

Richard Clissold-Vasey is an experienced transformation leader and change management expert who is focused on helping Boards and executive teams to embed climate as a business variable and deliver net zero in a way that strengthens profit, resilience, and long-term competitiveness. His work combines decades of experience in large-scale transformation with a practical focus on helping organisations, industry and climate advisory groups move step-by-step toward climate-aligned growth.