The Global ESGT Megatrends 2025-2026 | #Conclusion - An actionable leadership blueprint

THE GLOBAL ESGT MEGATRENDS 2025-2026: ACTIONABLE LEADERSHIP BLUEPRINT

MEGATREND #1

GEOPOLITICAL TECTONIC SHIFTS RUPTURING

1. Adopt geopolitical situational awareness to your executive briefings and board meetings – the times of dismissing geopolitical risk analysis from your business strategy are long gone whether you knew it or not

2. Focus like a laser beam on the intersection of your supply chain and the geoeconomic geostrategic footprint of your organization – both upstream to your clients and downstream to your supplier and their supplier – 

3. Upgrade your supply chain tech to include whatever level of GenAI sophistication may be needed or warranted to protect the business, its stakeholders and offer a competitive advantage

4. Name someone on your executive team to be the geopolitical, political and policy guru to coordinate all necessary information from your various departments – risk, operations, at the country and local levels – an ensure the proper reliable resources, subscriptions external experts are available to help in general and in a crisis

5. Integrate Geopolitical & Political Analysis with Enterprise Risk Management & Risk Governance – better yet ensure ERM has a robust bucket for geopolitics, politics and public policy and make sure both management and the board get periodic reports and updates

MEGATREND #2 

LEADERSHIP TRUST RECESSION

1. Prioritize Integrity and Emotional Intelligence for Leadership Selection. Boards, management and other responsible oversight bodies should do proper in-depth due diligence and prioritize (1) competence/expertise, (2) finances, tax returns, (3) reputation, (4) psychological profile. The latter is critical because sociopaths and similar non-emotionally intelligent people should not be put in positions of power.

2. Understand your Critical Stakeholders and Cater to Them and Their Needs. Study, engage and solicit key stakeholder views on critical issues, understand their pain points and their desires whether they are employees, customers, partners, the regulators, or the media.

3. Create Trustworthy Information Ecosystems, Cultures and Roadmaps. Leaders are in a unique position to foster the use and deployment of quality data and it’s their responsibility to do so. This includes building a culture of trust on how tech - AI, GenAI, other relevant technologies - may affect, replace or augment existing jobs, and change the skills and jobs mix forever. Trust begins with transparency about the impact of tech on jobs. Share your well-considered thoughts.

4. Understand and Provide Safety and Security. Leaders must understand the threat surface for virtual and physical dangers to their stakeholders (and their convergence) and must devote the proper time and resources for budget and strategy to deal with these constantly morphing and potentially existential threats. Those who do will have a much better chance at longterm resilience, sustainability, survival and success.

MEGATREND #3 

EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGY UNFETTERED

1. Learn About the Tech that Permeates Your World and Treat Your Organization as if it were a Tech Company. Every organization – every company, every agency, every university, is a tech entity or person. There is no such thing as a company or other entity that is not a tech entity. Leadership must rapidly achieve future tech literacy. It is a survive or die time.  Boards and management do not have the option of ignoring tech disruption—hire management and recruit board members with tech governance, ethics, or risk expertise and even more with a continuous education mindset, humility and curiosity. 

2. Focus on your Talent Mix Making Adjustments from Top to Bottom. Everyone will be affected by the technology changes underway – which have not yet accelerated but will. As individuals, decision-makers and global citizens, it is incumbent on us to learn everything necessary about how exponential tech affects us, our people, our organization and our community. You must begin to make necessary – and humane – plans and adjustments.

3. Prepare for the Borderless Tech Surveillance Enhanced World. The borderless tech world is here – for everyone – for better and for worse. We all need to be informed and prepared to deal with adverse outcomes from some of these exponential technologies. Understand what’s on your smartphone, your computer, your IoT devices, on the street and in pou8blic venues and make the right choices to protect privacy and data. 

4. Adopt a Voluntary Exponential Governance Mindset. Don’t wait for regulators to catch up - it is incumbent on responsible entities in all sectors to develop suitable voluntary tech governance frameworks to retain their social tech license to operate

MEGATREND #4 

SOCIOECOLOGICAL POLYRISKS & TIPPING POINTS RISING

1. Identify and Integrate Your Key Socioecological Issues into Enterprise Risk Management and Risk Governance. Ensure that all relevant social, biodiversity and environmental risks and opportunities are integrated into organizational risk management and risk governance and that your board is fully informed and continually educated on changing conditions.

2. Deploy Polyrisk and Polycrisis Preparedness into Strategy. Understand that tipping points may happen in the next 1-2 decades – what does that mean for your business strategy? Conduct appropriate scenario planning. Integrate key societal, environmental and biodiversity risks and opportunities into your business plan and strategy.

3. Evaluate How Tipping Points May Impact Your Supply Chain. Undertake a serious supply chain analysis including an understanding of how certain tipping points might affect your upstream and downstream supply chains and make sure that alternative, diversified arrangements and back up plans are made.

4. Understand Socioecological Impacts on Your Key Stakeholders. Conduct an analysis of who your most affected stakeholders are – employees, contractors, subcontractors, communities, others. Understand the key socioecological issues of your key stakeholders—especially employees, but also customers, and communities—and develop programs and plans to address such key issues including health (mental and physical), safety, and crisis management.

MEGATREND #5 

STAKEHOLDER CAPITALISM METAMORPHOSING

1. ESG Polemics are Noise—Sustainability is Signal – Focus on the Latter. Consider the ESG polemics as the noise, and sustainability as the signal—arm yourself accordingly with the talent, tools, and culture your organization needs to survive and thrive through the next few years. This means having the right CEO and management team as well as a board that understands sustainability governance intimately. Don’t let temporary political policies distract you from the long term resilient sustainability that can power your business. 

2. Put Stakeholders and their Key Issues at the Core. This should include critical environmental and social risks and opportunities such as mental and physical health and safety, human rights, mass involuntary immigration and privacy—add them to your risk register and strategy. In other words, care about your stakeholders.

3. Acknowledge the Central Role of Tech in ESG/Sustainability. Technology has a central and crucial role to play in advancing sustainability and resilience—make sure you know what you need to do technologically.

4. Despite the ESG Headwinds, Stick to Values and Resilience Building. Because for every force there is a counterforce – for every pendulum swing there is a counter swing. Change will happen faster than we expect. Staying true to values, practices and long-term resilience will be the winners. Speak up consistently with your organizational values even when it jeopardizes actual or potential business. Successful stakeholder capitalism is a long-term play not a day-trader’s game.