Charting New Paths Toward a Sustainable Transition
March 09, 2026
This isn’t an easy time to be a leader. The Trump administration is rewriting the rules of global trade one tariff at a time, reshaping the Middle East through military force and threatening to annex long-time allies. There are crackdowns on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives, and climate change is being mocked as a hoax. Meanwhile, the accelerated advancement of artificial intelligence presents as many risks as it does opportunities.
Given the tension and polarization that are gripping the world we live in, how can we maintain our focus on transitioning to a sustainable future? That was the central question driving the third edition of the Measuring Beyond conference hosted by Executive Education HEC Montréal, in partnership with the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, in collaboration with the IDEOS Hub and presented by KPMG with support from Lallemand.
Why does the transition to sustainability even matter in such troubled times? In short, because the environmental and social issues at the heart of this movement haven’t gone anywhere. “Despite the stiffening headwinds, one thing is clear: the sustainable transition is not on hold,” said the event host Déborah Cherenfant, a leading strategist in women’s entrepreneurship. “It’s evolving. It’s adapting. It’s reinventing itself. Because hope isn’t passive. Hope is something we build through choices, alliances and courage.”
HEC Montréal Director Federico Pasin stressed that today’s executives and the next generation of business leaders are crucial in supporting this transition, saying in his opening remarks that management “cuts across all sectors of our economy; its role is inseparable from the long-term movement toward a sustainable socioeconomic transition.”
Managing against a backdrop of geopolitical turbulence
During the first panel discussion of the day, Paul-Harry Aithnard, Managing Director of Ecobank Côte d’Ivoire and Regional Executive of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), acknowledged that this climate of uncertainty makes leaders’ jobs more difficult, especially when they are pressured to make quick decisions.
“When you’re told to speed things up, that’s precisely when you should stop,” he said. “When you’re asked to decide faster, that’s the time to think before taking action. As leaders, we must adopt a mindset that moves us beyond the short term and encourages long-term thinking, even in the midst of chaos.”
Certain priorities should guide decision-making in this context, he added: we have to take care of our climate, our people and our communities. “And above all, leaders must work to build a pillar of stability amid the mayhem.”
Removing the blinders
But none of this is easy. Dominique Anglade, Executive Education HEC Montréal’s Executive Director and Professor of Practice at HEC Montréal, faced her share of leadership dilemmas during her time as Deputy Premier of Quebec and head of the Quebec Liberal Party. As the moderator of the opening session, she asked her two guest speakers about the impact of the current turmoil on sustainability.
Like Aithnard, Kaveh Madani, Director, United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, hails from the Global South, providing him with unique insight into how the transition has been addressed thus far.
Madani emphasized that science, politics and climate advocacy have long been controlled by the Global North. The result has been a kind of tunnel vision, inflating the attention given to reducing carbon emissions and overlooking other urgent issues in large swaths of the rest of the planet. “In the North, people focus on the fate of future generations, but in many countries in the Global South, people don’t even know where the next meal for their children will come from,” he said.
He noted that achieving alignment on ESG goals, both domestically and internationally, requires leaders to recognize their own biases and embrace diverse perspectives. He also stressed the importance of finding common causes everyone can get behind, like the availability of clean drinking water. Concerns about the growing scarcity of this precious resource transcend the right–left and North–South divides. “When you’re working on the water issue, you’re automatically helping to fight climate change, prevent biodiversity loss and combat desertification,” he added.
Making AI more sustainable
Tensions are also mounting with the rise of AI and the massive consumption of energy that comes with it. “If today’s trends hold true, major data centres could need as much as 9 gigawatts to run in 2030. That’s the equivalent of nine nuclear reactors,” said Sylvain Amoros, Guest Professor with HEC Montréal’s Department of Marketing and moderator of the panel discussion on AI.
Camille Grange, Associate Professor in HEC Montréal’s Department of Information Technologies and Director of the Sustainable Transition Office, emphasized the need to take a much more thoughtful look at how we use AI. She cautioned against the “magical narrative” that often surrounds new technologies — which in this case is driven by two main factors.
The first factor is the tendency to think of technology as a fix-all. “This leads to a focus on immediate gains in terms of performance, productivity, output and so forth, but downplays more structural and indirect costs,” she said. The second factor is a narrow, non-systemic view of innovation that celebrates positive local impacts while ignoring less visible social and environmental consequences experienced elsewhere.
Grange said that leaders have the power to act, particularly when it comes to reducing the negative externalities of AI, especially those related to energy consumption. They can start by questioning whether certain tasks are genuinely AI-worthy. As Amoros noted in his introduction to the panel, AI is extremely powerful. “But you don’t need a car to get to the convenience store down the street,” he quipped.
Grange pointed out that in Quebec, where hydropower and renewable energy predominate, equipment accounts for most of the sector’s energy costs: “We have direct control over that: we can keep equipment working for longer, extend warranties, pick sustainably designed products and form partnerships to ensure equipment gets a second life, which is what HEC Montréal does with Insertech, a Montreal-based non-profit.”
Frédérick Marchand, co-founder and President of fruggr, which assesses companies’ environmental and social footprints, encouraged leaders to rethink how they integrate AI into their organizations and to pay attention to three key points. First, AI should not be seen merely as a productivity-enhancing innovation, but as a tool for facilitating a deeper transformation, sometimes even a comprehensive revamp of an organization’s business model. Second, it is important to manage the ethical and environmental risks carefully. And third, indicators must be developed to assess the financial results and environmental impacts. He noted that there is a strong correlation between the financial cost and carbon cost of an AI system, making reduction efforts doubly worthwhile.
Thinking systemically
Takeaways from the conference included a more profound appreciation of certain aspects of leadership in a context of polarization, supply chain management, climate action and sustainable investment performance during the four academic-led interactive workshops in the afternoon. During the closing plenary session, a group of five speakers touched on the transition-related tensions that came up repeatedly throughout the day.
“We know a thing or two about transition. Our world has been in a state of upheaval for five centuries, and these kinds of changes have always been beyond our control,” said Ghislain Picard, Adjunct Professor, HEC Montréal, and Chair of the Advisory Committee of First Nations Executive Education.
He indicated that an important part of his work involves raising awareness among non-Indigenous governments about certain fundamental realities, such as the interdependence of caribou populations and Innu communities. For the Innu, the caribou isn’t only a species to be protected: it plays an integral role in the balance of various ecosystems, cultural practices and community life. Meanwhile, First Peoples seek to strengthen their institutions and governance in an effort to better promote their vision of the land, living beings and relationships with other communities.
Staying the course
A number of cosmetics and wellness companies such as L’Oréal and Naturo & Co are braving the anti-ESG storm. “The past year has been the most demanding since I started working in the sustainability space 15 years ago,” said Maya Colombani, L’Oréal Canada’s Chief Sustainability, Human Rights and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer.
In response to the backlash against sustainability, the leadership at L’Oréal Canada wondered whether they should try to keep a low profile. But in the end, they decided to remain true to the company’s values. They joined the Government of Canada’s Net-Zero Challenge and were even awarded the Prix Maurice-Pollack for their achievements in promoting cultural diversity.
The Brazilian-based Natura took a similar approach. After President Trump was sworn into office, the company released a print ad reaffirming their commitment to sustainability and EDI. Their CEO has publicly reinforced this stance. They even went a step further, replacing their sustainability strategy with one rooted in regeneration. “Maintaining the status quo isn’t enough. We have to start to make things better,” said Charmian Love the company’s Global Director of Advocacy, co-founder of B Lab UK, Heliotropy and Volans, and Executive in Residence at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
A new mindset
In a world rife with tensions, burying our heads in the sand isn’t an option. “It’s not about sidestepping or smoothing out these tensions,” said Marya Besharov, Professor of Organisations and Impact and Academic Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. “It’s about navigating through them.” Her advice is to include diverse voices in the thinking and decision-making processes, create structures rooted in sustainability and, most important of all, face these issues head on.
Tima Bansal, Professor of Sustainability and Strategy, Ivey Business School, Western University, believes that organizations need to learn how to think systemically and relationally. “Now more than ever, organizations are operating in a world of interdependent systems,” she remarked.
Despite their different backgrounds, the speakers at the 2026 Measuring Beyond conference all agreed that the current disruptions make the transition to sustainability more essential than ever. But leaders have to be more imaginative, bold and deft in finding ways to forge ahead.
Luciano Barin Cruz, Professor in the HEC Montréal Department of Management, Academic Executive Director of Executive Education HEC Montréal and Director of the IDEOS Hub, was the moderator for the closing session. He highlighted what the academic world can do to support these efforts. “I am proud that we will be able to continue to do what we’re doing as part of this conference. I sincerely believe that it is at moments like this, where people aren’t entirely sure about the need to uphold their sustainable development commitments, that universities have a decisive role to play,” he said.
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