There’s a moment every year when a sustainability professional slams their laptop shut, stares at the ceiling, and mutters (or screams), “Why do we do this again?”
It’s June. Or maybe October. The final draft of your ESG report has just been turned into a glossy PDF with all the flair of a corporate brochure and none of the usability of, say, a toaster manual. The team is exhausted. You’ve debated whether to capitalize “Net Zero” seven times. Legal has deleted every adjective with a pulse. And now… it’s live.
Then comes the email from marketing that makes me want to scream into a complimentary NPR tote bag:
“Your ESG report received 4,000 clicks this year!”
Clicks. Not reads. Not uses. Certainly not trust. Just clicks. As if your 120-page document was a BuzzFeed article.
We can do better than this.
I’ve written, edited, audited, and designed ESG reports for companies in manufacturing, pharma, digital infrastructure, logistics, in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America. You name it, and I’ve felt the pain of these processes with every team:
- The late nights trying to wrangle carbon data from the environment and operations teams
- The meetings to make the outcomes of the report “press release-friendly”
- The white-knuckled debates over whether a bar chart or a donut chart better explains Scope 2 emissions (Spoiler: neither, if it’s buried on page 89)
The time, energy, and yes, tears that go into reporting are real. And yet too often, we end up with a document optimized for printing…in 2009.
That’s why we built ESGPS — a practical guide to make ESG reports actually usable, especially for the people who matter most: your stakeholders. And yes, your investors.
We consulted with analysts at BlackRock, Morningstar, Ariel, and and stewardship leaders across global firms to ask one question:
What do you actually do with these reports?
The answer? “We Ctrl+F and hope for the best.”
So we flipped the script. ESGPS introduces:
- Compass, our UI/UX framework for designing reports that people can use, not just download and forget. We’ve published a 2-pager version of “The Sheet” about Compass. Access it here, or read the details of Compass in the ESGPS Report.
- Anchor, our investor-specific lens to move beyond fluff and straight into what investors really want: risk clarity, strategy, accountability. We’ve published a 2-pager version of “The Sheet” about Anchor. Access it here, or read the details of Anchor in the ESGPS Report.
- And my personal favorite: Stakeholder Quotient (SQ) — because trust and transparency can’t just be performance art. They have to be experienced. We’ve published a 2-pager version of “The Sheet” about our 6 Dimensions of Stakeholder Intelligence. Access it here, or read the details of Anchor in the ESGPS Report.
ESG reports are not charity work. They’re business intelligence.
They should help your customers decide to trust you, your employees feel proud to work for you, your suppliers align with you, and your investors back you.
And yet… we’re still measuring success by clicks.
No more. Not on my watch.
Let’s build reports that are smart, scannable, strategic — and dare I say, a little sexy?
And if you’re on draft 17 of your own ESG saga right now, know this:
You’re not alone. You’re not crazy. And there’s a better way.