How Can Boards Wrestle the ESG Agenda? Questions to ask the CEO.

• Author: Young, Dave
• Position: THE CHARACTER OF THE CORPORATION

Boards must guide management to frame an agenda for the company to meet its most critical challenges. And that agenda should include consideration of how the company will shape its future environment, including its contribution to meeting society's most critical challenges.

And yet, few boards (or management teams) are fully prepared to engage in such an expansive and consequential agenda for the good of the company and the good of society.

How can the board effectively wrestle with the ESG agenda? Engage the CEO on these five questions:

* How can our corporate strategy simultaneously deliver on shareholder returns, strengthen the company for the longer term, and create additional value to society that brings new opportunities and rewards to the company?

* What difference is our company making to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

* What are the three biggest societal challenges in each key geography that puts our company's business at risk; that our company could impact through our core business? How do our strategies in those geographies incorporate those societal risks and opportunities?

* How are our largest institutional investors assessing the company's performance on what they regard as material ESG metrics? How are we assessing our performance and the rate that we are improving? Are we effectively...