Op-ed by Amie Fox, director, A Fox Consulting.
Across Ireland and the UK, sustainability now sits firmly on board agendas. Targets are set. Net-zero ambitions are announced. Reporting frameworks are strengthened. The intent is clear.
What is less clear, in many organisations, is how those commitments translate into consistent action once the board paper is closed.
Recent Irish data illustrates the tension. In EY Ireland’s 2025 State of Sustainability survey*, 73% of respondents say sustainability is embedded in how business priorities are set and 69% say environmental and social factors are used to assess organisational performance.
Yet while 37% report having a science-based net-zero goal, only 26% express strong confidence in achieving it. That gap between ambition and confidence is not about awareness. It is about delivery.
Strategic vision
This is not unusual. A GlobeScan/Salesforce study of senior professionals** found that 67% believe sustainability is very important for commercial success, but only 37% say it is very integrated into the core of their business.
In other words, it is valued strategically but not always embedded operationally.
When sustainability is important but not integrated, it competes with every other pressure of the working week: margin protection, staffing constraints, client deadlines and short-term performance targets.
The pattern mirrors wider findings on execution. PMI’s global research***, published in December 2025, reports that only half of projects meet a modern definition of success, with 13% failing outright and 37% only partially delivering expected results.
Executives identify the leading barrier as a disconnect between planning and execution. Sustainability strategies are not exempt from this reality; they are complex change programmes running through multiple functions.
In practice, the stall point is rarely the strategy itself. It is the absence of clear operational design.
Ownership is often broad rather than explicit. Sustainability ‘belongs’ to everyone, but no one can confidently describe which decisions they are accountable for when trade-offs arise. Targets exist at organisational level, yet teams are not always given a practical translation into what must change in procurement, budgeting, recruitment or product development this quarter.
Measurement can also sit slightly apart from the commercial rhythm of the business. If sustainability performance is not reviewed with the same discipline as revenue, cost or margin, it becomes easier to defer when pressure increases.
Operating discipline
The organisations that make steadier progress tend to approach sustainability less as a programme and more as an operating discipline.
That means translating ambition into defined decisions: capital allocation rules, supplier standards, design thresholds and performance expectations that are clear at functional level.
It means making ownership visible, not only at C-suite level, although EY’s survey* notes that 62% of Irish organisations now assign sustainability responsibility at executive level, but throughout the functions that control day-to-day trade-offs.
It also means building a review rhythm that creates follow-through. Quarterly plans, clear milestones and a forum where tensions between cost, speed and sustainability are resolved rather than parked.
There is a quieter human dimension to this as well. Delivery improves when people are clear about what they are responsible for and how their contribution connects to the wider goal. When sustainability is framed not as an additional burden but as part of how good work is defined, it becomes more stable and less reactive.
Execution architecture
For leaders, a practical test is simple. If you asked a procurement or operations lead…
- What sustainability decisions are you accountable for this quarter?
- How is success measured?
- Where do you escalate when commercial pressure conflicts with environmental targets?
…would their answers be specific, and would they align with the board’s expectations? If not, the challenge may not be ambition. It may be execution architecture.
The organisations that close the gap between intent and impact are those that design sustainability into their operating rhythm, through clear decisions, visible ownership and explicit expectations.
The real measure of progress is not the strength of the commitment announced, but the consistency of action on an ordinary working day.
Learn more about A Fox Consulting at www.afox.ie.
*Source: EY Ireland, 2025; **Source: Trellis reporting on GlobeScan/Salesforce research; ***Source: PMI, 2025
