You're doing the work. But are you building capacity for change?
May 2026
We spend enormous energy telling people what needs to change, and very little time thinking about how change actually happens.
Most sustainability efforts inside organizations are built around the individual. Convince the right person. Model the right behavior. Win the argument in the room.
And to be fair, that approach gets things moving. Until it doesn't. The real barrier isn't information. It isn't even intent. It's the conditions we create for people to change together.
What I'm seeing in the most effective organizations isn't individual champions doing heroic work. It's something more structural: well-designed groups where people shift together, hold each other accountable, and build something that doesn't collapse when one person leaves the room.
The Myth That's Keeping Sustainability Leaders Stuck
We've been told that change starts from within. Model the behavior. Be the example.
There's something to that. But as a complete strategy, it sets you up to fail.
The more you optimize your own behavior, the less you resemble the people you're trying to influence. You lose the language of the reluctant. You forget what it's like to be in procurement, asked to take on something that sits outside your job description and your incentives.
The best messenger is usually someone who was recently in the same position as the person you're trying to reach.
And more fundamentally: individual change doesn't build the capacity for scale. Groups do.
People who change together, in well-designed groups, achieve more durable change than individuals working alone. They inspire each other. They normalize the struggles. They share what actually worked. And when someone in the group wins, the whole group feels it.
What Actually Kills a Coalition
When I ask sustainability professionals about groups that lost momentum, the same patterns emerge every time.
• Too much talking, not enough doing
• No implementers in the room saying what actually gets in the way
• People turning on each other when things don't work, instead of treating failure as information
• Unclear roles, unclear goals, no way to resolve differences when they arise
But the one that strikes me most: misinterpreting behavior as character.
When someone doesn't take the action we hoped for, we conclude they don't care.
Behavior change science tells a different story. It means they're not yet ready, the conditions aren't right, or they don't yet have the skills or support to act differently.
Groups that hold this understanding outlast the ones that don't.
Action Hubs: Who Belongs in the Room
One of the most powerful shifts you can make is to stop thinking about stakeholder engagement as a series of consultations and start thinking about it as a design process.
Take EPR compliance. You probably involve packaging engineers and product managers. But are you in the same room as the facilities that will process the material? The resale vendors? The community service providers handling waste collection in your key markets?
Or Scope 3 supplier engagement. One company found that their sustainability training wasn't creating change. The real problem was translation. People didn't know how to take Scope 3 principles into their daily workflows.
Their procurement leader built what I'd call an action hub: legal, sales and marketing, and category managers all in the same room. The legal person rewrote the contracts. Each person contributed their expertise. Together they built a tool others could actually use.
The CSO of PepsiCo, when asked about their biggest mistake, said: not understanding all the players in the system.
Who is consistently missing from your conversations? Who isn't there when you're actually designing the solution?
What Groups That Thrive Actually Look Like
The groups I've seen sustain momentum share a few structural features. They're not
accidental.
• Short learning cycles with midpoint check-ins, so barriers don't accumulate unseen
• Progress tracking that shows daily behaviors alongside long-term outcomes, not just the headline metrics
• Deliberate celebration of small wins, which keeps people believing that progress is possible
• Psychological safety to experiment, fail, and try again without it becoming personal
• Around ten people: large enough for diverse perspectives, small enough that every contribution lands
Size matters more than people think. Too small and you lose the diversity that makes the thinking better. Too large and accountability diffuses. Around ten is where trust and momentum tend to coexist.
Your Role in All of This
You've spent years building expertise in what needs to change. You know the barriers. You've been in the meetings where the right thing didn't happen.
The shift worth making: from being the person who carries the knowledge and does the influencing, to being the person who creates the conditions for others to lead change together.
That might look like convening an action hub around a specific Scope 3 challenge. Bringing suppliers into the same room as procurement and legal. Designing a quarterly rhythm of peer exchange for people across your value chain who are all trying to solve the same problem.
The leverage isn't in knowing more. It's in building the group that acts together.
One Question to Sit With
Think about a multi-stakeholder challenge you're currently navigating.
Who's in the room? Who isn't there when you're actually designing the solution? What would become possible if the right people were?
About the Author: Dr. Jacqueline Kerr is a top 1% most-cited behavioral scientist, TEDx speaker, and Harvard Business Review contributor. She specializes in translating behavioral science into practical tools that help organizations drive change without relying on authority alone. Her work focuses on making progress visible, unlocking peer influence, and designing systems where sustainable action can spread naturally.
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