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.