Outcome-led nature strategies: Aligning business with the value of nature
The next phase of nature leadership isn’t about pledges.
It’s about outcomes.
Nature is no longer a fringe issue. Businesses now recognise it as a material concern. Central to risk, resilience, and long-term value.
But recognition alone isn’t enough. Too many nature strategies remain high-level, disconnected from real decisions, or limited to compliance. This results in commitments without change.
This is where outcome-led strategies come in. They start from the core of the challenge — focusing not on what sounds good, but on what works in your unique context, for lasting impact.
What makes a nature strategy outcome-led?
An outcome-led strategy is one that aligns ambition with reality, with guiding clarity from the intentional value you are seeking to create. Four principles frame this approach:
Context before content: Strategies must reflect what the business actually does — its markets, value chains, operating model, and nature-related exposures.
Materiality over generality: Strategies must be grounded in a holistic view of the impacts and dependencies that matter most now.
Scenarios, not assumptions: Plan for multiple plausible futures, especially where risks are locally specific and non-linear.
Purposeful value: Define the outcomes the company wants to achieve. Not just reduced harm, but positive value for business and society.
The difference between a strategy that sits on a slide deck and one that reshapes decision-making is whether these four principles are truly integrated. Many strategies touch one or two, but few bring them all together.
Why this matters now
There’s been huge progress. We’ve moved from voluntary pledges to structured frameworks for disclosure and target-setting. Nature is no longer a fringe topic but a boardroom issue. The problem. Compliance alone won’t deliver the outcomes that business or society demands.
Without linking strategies to outcomes:
Strategies stall at the level of intent.
Material issues blur into generic goals.
Business units disengage because the strategy feels abstract.
Accountability evaporates because no one agrees what success looks like.
What outcome-led strategies do differently
Outcome-led strategies stand out because they’re built for execution. They help companies cut through complexity, stay grounded in their context, and move from commitment to change.
They bring together governance, granularity, and goal-setting in a way that connects inputs (e.g. exposure to land-use risk in soy), decisions (e.g. how to respond across multiple sites), and outcomes (e.g. improved resilience, reduced impact, new business value).
Here’s what sets them apart:
They focus on change, not just compliance: Whether it’s shifting a sourcing model or rethinking site operations, the strategy is built around actions that move the needle.
They track what matters: Not just inputs like CO₂ or hectares avoided, but real progress against business-relevant outcomes.
They integrate scenario planning: As explored in a previous blog, this means strategies hold up even when the future diverges from expectations.
They link to intentional value creation: Resilience, reputation, investor trust, access to new markets. Outcome-led strategies are clear about what success looks like and who benefits.
How to build an outcome-led strategy
Outcome-led strategies don’t happen by accident. They’re built through deliberate choices, grounded in the business, informed by risk, and focused on value.
That doesn’t mean they have to be complex. But they do need to be purposeful. If I were building an outcome-led nature strategy today, here are the five steps I would take:
1. Start with what your business must do
Not what’s trending. Not what your peers are doing. What you do. And what your future depends on.
Look at your core operations, value chains, and markets. Where do you rely most on nature? Where do you have the biggest impacts, exposures, and influence? That’s where your strategy needs to start.
This isn’t about narrowing ambition. It’s about making it real. A food manufacturer has different levers than a logistics firm or a bank. Outcome-led strategies focus on the change that’s possible and necessary from where you are today.
2. Focus on what’s material now
Don’t spread effort across every issue. Use tools like ENCORE, and TNFD’s LEAP approach to zero in on what’s material to your business today.
You’re not just looking for hotspots of risk, but leverage points for action. The goal is clarity: where to focus, why it matters, and how it links to broader business decisions.
3. Stress-test your strategy under multiple futures
As explored in my last blog, nature-related risks are non-linear and locally volatile. You can’t afford to plan for just one future.
Use exploratory scenarios to see how different combinations of ecological, regulatory, and stakeholder shifts might affect your business. Then use that insight to build a strategy that holds up under stress or that can adapt fast when the world changes course.
Outcome-led strategies use uncertainty as a design constraint rather than a barrier.
4. Define outcomes that matter — and how you’ll measure them
Most companies still track activities or intentions. That’s not enough. What are the real-world changes your strategy is trying to achieve? Where, when, and for whom?
For example:
Build customer trust and comply with EUDR regulations by ensuring that 100% of soy supply sourced from Brazil, for all our products, is verified deforestation-free by 2026.
Increase resilience of manufacturing sites by eliminating dependency on water extraction in water-stressed regions by 2030.
These aren’t generic goals — they’re tailored, measurable outcomes tied to material risks, business value, and societal needs.
5. Design for ownership and follow-through
Even the best strategy will fail without the right people owning it.
Outcome-led strategies embed nature into decision-making: across procurement, finance, operations, and the board. They link actions to incentives and make nature everyone’s business, not just the sustainability team’s.
That means asking tough questions early:
Who is responsible for delivery?
How will progress be tracked and acted on?
What happens when trade-offs emerge?
But ownership isn’t just about governance structures. It’s about creating the conditions for follow-through — from clear lines of accountability to performance metrics that drive behaviour. It’s about making sure your CFO is as invested as your CSO. After all, nature risk is financial risk.
We’ve moved beyond the age of pledges. In this next phase, leadership will be defined not by how loudly companies speak about nature, but by how deliberately they act.
Outcome-led strategies are not just better strategies. They are the only ones fit for a world shaped by ecological disruption and increasing scrutiny.
