Enterprise A-Z: Deals
Shaping the Footprint Before It’s Locked In
M&A, joint ventures, long‑term contracts, key supplier agreements – these are the moments when your company quietly redraws its footprint for years to come. Often, sustainability is invited in at the end for “ESG due diligence” or a policy check.
By then, most of the real choices have already been made.
Why deals matter so much
A single deal can do more to change your company’s impact than years of incremental improvement work. It can shift where you operate, what you sell, which technologies you back, whose standards you inherit, and which risks you quietly take on.
If you only arrive at the very end – with a checklist and a red‑amber‑green rating – you’re mostly documenting risk, not shaping the play. You inherit whatever footprint the deal creates, then spend years trying to clean it up.
What “deals” actually are
When we say “deals,” we’re talking about the big formal commitments that set the direction of travel: acquisitions, divestments, joint ventures, long‑term offtake agreements, critical supplier contracts, strategic customer partnerships.
Each of these follows a fairly repeatable path:
Someone originates the idea – a business sponsor, strategy, corporate development.
A small group tests the thesis – does this fit our strategy, our numbers, our risk appetite?
Teams run due diligence and structuring – financial, legal, operational, and, increasingly, ESG.
Leaders sign and integrate – and the new footprint becomes “how we do business.”
Your job is not to own deals. Your job is to make sure your lens is present early enough that it can change the thesis, the questions, and sometimes the decision itself.
How to start
Map one recent deal. Take a deal your company has done in the last few years – an acquisition, a major JV, a long‑term contract – and reconstruct the journey. Who had the original idea? Who ran the numbers? When did sustainability, if at all, get involved? Where, in hindsight, would you have wanted your questions asked?
Find the originators. Identify the small group that tends to originate and shape deals – corporate development, strategy, a specific business unit. Have a forward‑looking conversation with them about what you’re seeing: where sustainability risks and opportunities have shown up in past deals, and what questions you’d like to be standard earlier in the process.
Offer value, not just red flags. Come with a short list of concrete things you can add: sectors or technologies that lower long‑term risk, supplier profiles that align with your standards, issues that materially affect valuation or post‑deal integration. Make it easier for them to see you as someone who sharpens the thesis, not someone who only slows them down at the end.
You won’t be able to reshape every transaction. But each time you move one step earlier – from “late ESG check” to “part of the thesis conversation” – you shift from cleaning up impacts to helping decide which impacts exist at all.
