Compliance obligations have expanded beyond those associated with a legal license to those connected closer to a social license to operate – ESG is an example of this.

These obligations include making progress towards vision zero targets along with other stakeholder priorities. To succeed organizations must operationalize these objectives within and across their value chain.

However, ESG is suffering much the same way as does quality, safety, security, privacy, environmental, and other compliance objectives. These are often not included as part of the value chain and set apart from it often in the corner of the org chart. 

This reductive and siloed approach decreases the probability of meeting any of these objectives efficiently or effectively. All these initiatives (including ESG) must be managed simultaneously (like a portfolio of investments) and integrated within the operations of the organization. Pursuing vision zero objectives requires the same operational capabilities as any other value…