Some time ago, I visited a skills hub linked to one of our programmes. I still think about a young woman I met there. She was capable, determined and had done everything we so often ask of young people in South Africa. She had completed her studies. She had applied for jobs. And then she waited. For two years. When she spoke, she said something that has stayed with me: “I don’t need another opportunity to learn. I need an opportunity to be included so that I can grow.”
In that moment, this young person, like so many others in our country, was asking for basic dignity, for a chance at meaningful economic participation. The language we use so easily in boardrooms became very real to me. Sustainability is not abstract – it shapes whether people like her are seen, included and given a fair chance to participate meaningfully in the economy.
I do want to acknowledge the progress that has been made. Environmental, social and governance frameworks have become more sophisticated. Corporate social investment (CSI) in South Africa has remained resilient, disclosure is improving and sustainability has evolved the way it integrates into the corporate agenda in the face of significant global pressure.
Yet, when I look at the realities people and communities across our country are facing, I am reminded that progress in language and reporting is not the same as progress in lived experience. Poverty, inequality, unemployment and environmental degradation remain stubbornly present, and in some areas have deepened. We are still struggling to turn investment into sustained economic participation.
For me, this points to a challenge of coherence. Too often, sustainability, governance and social investment sit in different parts of an organisation, each with its own language, budget and reporting cycle. Leaders engage with them selectively, sometimes reactively, and often without a shared theory of change. The result is effort that is sincere but fragmented; capital that is available but misaligned; and impact that is meaningful in pockets but difficult to scale.
Our national challenges demand systems change. If we are serious about delivering that change, integrated thinking cannot be treated as ivory-tower thinking or a nice-to-have. It is the discipline that helps us connect intention with action and action with outcomes that matter.
Taking values beyond lip service
It is easy for companies to speak about values. They appear on office walls, in sustainability reports and in stakeholder engagement documents. However, I have come to believe that values are most visible in trade-offs. They show up when profit conflicts with inclusion, when short-term targets compete with long-term resilience and when speed is prioritised over participation. These decisions, made under pressure, tell us far more than any strategy document can.
The National Business Initiative (NBI) was founded on a simple premise: business cannot thrive in a failing society. More than three decades later, I feel the truth of that premise more strongly than ever. With unemployment above 30% and youth unemployment above 60% in some categories, we are not dealing with marginal social issues. We are facing structural constraints on growth, resilience and shared prosperity.
When values consistently shape decisions, lived experiences can change. A young woman moves from exclusion to meaningful work. A small enterprise gains access to a value chain that once felt out of reach. A climate finance initiative creates new forms of employment while supporting a lower-carbon future. This is the kind of thriving society that business can help build when its values are allowed to guide its choices.
Integrated thinking as a governance imperative
Values-driven thinking does not always come naturally in boardrooms. Many of us were trained in specific disciplines, whether finance, marketing, law, engineering or another field, and we often work within systems shaped by those disciplines. Finance in particular remains a powerful organising language, but it was not designed on its own to safeguard social and environmental outcomes.
This does not mean we should resign ourselves to those limits. It means those of us working in sustainability, social impact and governance must become more fluent in the language of risk, strategy and value creation. We need to explain climate risk in financial terms and show how a clear theory of change for social investment can strengthen corporate strategy rather than sit alongside it.
That shift changes the conversation. Environmental and social vulnerabilities are no longer treated as peripheral concerns; they become system risks that leaders can anticipate, manage and, where possible, prevent before they become crises.
Integrated thinking means bringing sustainability, social investment, governance and strategy into the same conversation from the start. It asks us to design for outcomes, rather than trying to add purpose after the fact. It also asks us to include the voices of those most affected, not as a courtesy at the end of a process, but as partners early enough to shape it. Inclusion should be a design principle, not a moral add-on.
Valuing investment and outcomes over spend and output
In the social investment community, I rarely encounter a lack of intent. There is commitment, there is funding and there is a genuine desire to make a difference. What is often missing is alignment: of capital, partnerships and decision-making about where resources flow and why.
The shift we need is from spending to investing. Investment asks different questions. It asks not only what was funded, but what changed. It asks whether projects are connected to systems and whether outputs are building towards outcomes. The billions flowing into CSI in South Africa have the potential to become catalytic capital for economic inclusion, but only if they are deployed with intention, coordination and accountability to the right measures.
This requires organisational honesty. We need to ask what we are measuring, what we are ignoring because it is harder to quantify, and whether our metrics reflect what we truly value. Once again, values reveal themselves not only in what we say, but in what we count.
Making time to think
There is one capacity that underpins all of this, and it may be the most neglected: the capacity to think systemically.
I often hear leaders say they do not have time to think. I understand that pressure. The pace of our environment, with its constant demands and distractions, works against the reflective thinking that integrated sustainability and governance require. But if we do not make time to think, we become very good at describing the shift we want to see without making it. Without time to think, we master the language of change but miss the outcomes.
The invitation is straightforward, even if it is uncomfortable. Make time to think. Bring the right voices into the room, especially those who challenge your assumptions. Bring them in early enough to shape the strategy, not merely to endorse it. Ask which system you are trying to change. Identify where collaborative action can concentrate resources around shared priorities. And measure what you truly treasure.
We have the opportunity. We have the capital. The frameworks are increasingly in place. What we need now is the courage and discipline to connect them. Integrated thinking is not an additional task for business leaders; it is how we convert commitment into the sustained economic participation and social transformation that our society urgently needs while in pursuit of economic growth.
