Vision Core · Responsibility · Module
Commitments and targets
What the organisation commits to about its material impacts, measured from a recorded baseline, with milestones close enough to be missed and an owner who would notice.
The idea
How it works
A commitment is only as firm as its baseline. A target to reduce something by forty per cent says nothing until the starting value, the year it was measured and the method used are written down, along with the rule for when the baseline may be recalculated. Without those, the target can be met by redefining the starting point.
Long-horizon commitments need interim milestones that fall inside the current leadership’s tenure. A date twenty years away is useful for direction and useless for accountability; the milestone three years out is the one somebody can be asked about. External frameworks such as the Science Based Targets initiative provide a reference for what a credible climate target looks like, and whether to seek validation is itself a decision worth recording.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Commit only on material topics
Targets on issues the materiality assessment did not rank as material spend effort and credibility on the wrong things.
- 02
Record the baseline with its method
Value, year, boundary and calculation method, plus the rule for recalculating it after an acquisition, a divestment or a method change.
- 03
Place a milestone inside the current planning cycle
At least one checkpoint should fall where today’s decision-makers will still be answerable for it.
- 04
Name the levers, not only the number
A target without the actions expected to deliver it is a forecast of hope. The pathway lists what will actually change.
One level in
The components of commitments and targets
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Target register
Each commitment in exact wording, with its scope, baseline, horizon and accountable owner.
LearnTarget pathway
The interim milestones, the levers expected to deliver them, and what the pathway depends on outside the organisation’s control.
Learn
Ask what the baseline was, and in which year. If the answer takes more than a minute to find, the target cannot yet be checked.
The other modules in responsibility
Impact and materiality
Which of the organisation’s effects matter, judged outward by their weight on people and the environment and inward by their financial effect on the organisation.
LearnEthics
How people are expected to act where the law is silent or permissive — the conduct standards, the dilemmas already reasoned through, and the response when someone raises a concern.
LearnDisclosure
What the organisation states publicly about its sustainability impacts, commitments and progress, and the evidence standing behind each of those statements.
Learn