Sustainability leaders are under growing strain — from budget cuts and shifting mandates to compliance overload and executive churn. Yes, now is when some of the most exciting, dynamic work is happening. Work happening at the edge, blazing a trail for the next era of sustainable business.

Ahead of the event we gathered insights from leading advisors in The Now Work’s global talent network to provoke discussion with the leaders who joined us on the day. What follows is a synthesis of the conversations we had in the room, distilled into ten takeaways we think every sustainability leader should be living by right now.

Here it is, 10 rules to live by for sustainability leaders in 2025:

1. You wish you didn’t have to make the short-term business case for sustainability, but you do. So, get creative in how you define it, then report on it often.

If sustainability transformation is a long-term ambition, it will require meaningful investment. Yet, unlike other long-term projects, sustainability is asked to prove its worth to the business in the short-term. What’s more, if it’s unable to prove its worth in the short-term, overall funding and resources are likely to be pulled. An EY survey found that 59% of respondents said sustainability initiatives were more likely to be eliminated than other business activities when a company makes cuts.
Whilst this can be frustrating, we must recognise that it’s also the short-term business case that keeps us on the agenda; remember, to be successful in sustainable business, you must first think like a businessperson. So make the business case clear and unequivocal, and repeat its worth and success through constant reporting, reinforcing its effectiveness.

2. It’s great if you can make the business case, it’s even better when external partners make it for you.

Whilst it’s important for the sustainability team itself to have a clear articulation and evidence of the business case, nothing they do will get the rest of the business to recognise its importance as much as external partners asking for it. You’ll now have a network of partners relying on you to achieve your own targets so they can meet theirs. Make sure that dependency is visible and understood.

3. Find a board-level ally. Just one. A well-timed “I’m disappointed” from the right executive can move mountains—or at least nudge a stuck initiative into motion.

If you want your sustainability agenda to be seen as core business strategy, then it’s important to have at least one person who regularly sets and reviews the company’s strategy committed to its success. If you can find just one board-level executive who understands what you are trying to achieve, them simply voicing dissatisfaction when your agenda is deprioritised will be more powerful than any data or reports you present to others.

4. Be an empath on a mission. Go through each exec one by one and figure out how your agenda can make them look good.

Whilst you’ll want at least one committed ally, ultimately you need to find a reason for every executive in your organisation to care. The easiest way to do that is to understand their personal needs, wants and, importantly, their ego. How can your work help them achieve their own ambitions, make them look good, or tap into an underlying motivator of theirs?

5. Compliance isn’t why you got into this work, but the headache will be worth it. Board exposure & influence has undeniably grown.

We welcome new legislation which raises the collective floor, but sustainability teams and the people within them were never supposed to be compliance functions. By taking the lead on becoming compliant, it has undoubtedly put a big strain on teams and required them to invest in new capabilities.

In the short term it may have taken time and resources away from other work, and changing timelines and uncertainty around implementation of regulations is certainly creating frustration. However, the conversations they have opened up internally will have long-term benefits, be it more engagement, or collaboration with other teams (who may eventually take ownership of the work).

6. When new demands come along, remember no-one knows the best way to do it. This is your cue to find community, support each other and share what works.

When pressure increases it can be easy to retreat; within your company, your team, or just yourself. It’s important to remember that there are so many people struggling with the same challenges, and we can upskill and strategise better if we come together and share our experiences. This has always been true, yet it’s easy to fall out of the good habits of engaging in community and sharing best practices, so perhaps we should sometimes view new pressures as a useful grit in the proverbial oyster, which reminds us it’s time to reconnect – because doing so will have benefits beyond this one challenge.

7. If it’s not working, re-think it. Take a stand and flip the model. We’re going to see constant experimentation in how sustainability functions operate until new models emerge.

If you want a different outcome, you need to change your approach. And if you want radically different outcomes you’re going to need a radically different approach. Much of how sustainability teams work and function has become conceived wisdom, but now, with seemingly more challenges than ever, it might be the time to completely re-think the underlying model of how a sustainability function works. Should sustainability departments act more like internal agencies? Should they purely be training functions for other parts of the business? Should teams become more agile, using specialist skills on demand, only when needed? Over the coming years, expect to see some very new-look models rise to the top.

8. When you can’t see through, look around. Despite headwinds, momentum is everywhere. Remember to find it and leverage it.

In times of volatility it can feel impossible to hold a vision for the future, and even harder to plot a pathway towards it. Rather than focus on the pathway you had hoped you would take, it’s important to look around and notice just how much continues to move forward around you. Whether it’s new innovations, new business models, or other companies hitting their own ambitious targets (perhaps in your value chain), how can you learn from and leverage it? Or maybe it’s something simpler; inspiration from nature or creativity outside of your industry. Now’s not the time for navel gazing

9. Vision and target setting was fun, but it’s time to love the implementation. Become the acceptable radical and you’ll learn to overcome the resistance that’s always frustrated you.

Much of why it can feel like we’re swimming up tide at the moment can be attributed to a big shift in the maturity of many strategies. We’re moving from the target-setting and visioning era – which was free and decided at the top –  to the implementation era – which is hard and involves everyone. It’s going to take a different mindset and tactics than the earlier work. You need to learn to be opportunistic. Perhaps you need to become what Matthew Bell labels the acceptable radical, “a leader who can operate at the edge of the possible, expanding boundaries without breaking them. They are neither a placating incrementalist nor a divisive revolutionary, but a translator of transformation.

10. Never make it feel like more work for others. We have a habit of making things sound weird and difficult. Stop it. No more using words like transformation and agenda, when more pragmatic words will do.

When we were in strategy setting mode, getting conceptual was important. We needed to understand our “material topics” and “levers of change”, plot “transformative horizons” and get clear on “Scope 3 methodologies.” But now we need people to make it happen on our behalf, and we need to make it not just more palatable, but more inspiring for them. Align it with their incentives, and don’t make it sound like more work!