CASE STUDY
To what extent should ESG be integrated into core business strategy rather than treated as a compliance or reputation function?
ESG should be 100 % integrated, and leaders need to see it as part of a strategy. We view verifiable trust as the most valuable currency and the ultimate licence to grow. Treating it just as compliance makes it a cost; treating it as a strategy makes it a trust engine for growth. This means mandating auditable integrity and verifiable transparency across everything we do. Personal authenticity builds stakeholder trust and models the behaviour needed for the company to champion transparency across all metrics.
What mechanisms can companies use to ensure that decentralisation and empowerment do not lead to fragmented culture or inconsistent governance?
Fragmentation is only truly managed with alignment. Leaders need to ensure their decentralised models can still be unified for scale. For Paragon, this means connecting our specialised business lines to our vision and mission to deliver growth, engagement, transformation and efficiency for our clients. That shared client vision prevents fragmentation. We rely on our culture, which we see as the competitive edge – celebrating that our people have shown impressive leadership as they embrace the new vision, delivering ahead of schedule. Ultimately, culture and strategy must be executed with intelligent and diligent work across the entire global structure.
Looking across the three instability zones – geopolitical, technological and human – what qualities define a truly resilient, human-centric leader today?
A resilient, human-centric leader needs to be three things: an authentic trust-builder, a strategic de-risker and a champion for governed innovation. You need the personal transparency to build trust – that groundwork is essential when you’ re driving growth. You need the pragmatic courage to make hard strategic decisions to de-risk the business for the long-term. And you need to be the champion of governed change, balancing an entrepreneurial spirit with the strict, financial-first framework needed to scale technology for profitable impact. Put simply, empathy and trust are not soft principles; they are the most critical infrastructure investments for a resilient modern business. x
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