It began, as many meaningful conversations do, with something small: a penguin.

Christine Seddon was standing on a remote beach on Saunders Island in the South Atlantic, a place most corporate leaders will never see and, if we’re honest, rarely think about. The sand was scattered with what looked like brown logs. At least that’s what she thought at first. It wasn’t until she walked closer that she realised the “logs” were moving.

They were king penguin chicks—fluffy, awkward creatures covered in soft grey down.

They waddled, huddled, and occasionally collapsed into the sand as their parents strode past with an air of stoic authority. It was, in Seddon’s words, a “happy, happy memory.” Until one of the scientists beside her made an offhand remark.

“The chicks are panting,” the scientist said. “Because they’re hot.”

Hot.

In Antarctica.

The moment lingered. The kind of moment that doesn’t shout, but instead settles quietly in the mind. The penguins were not supposed to be hot. Their soft down feathers were designed for cold, not warmth, and certainly not rain. If rain falls, the chicks become soaked. And when soaked, they freeze.

Many don’t survive.

For Seddon, that moment would become a metaphor for a much larger question—one that now sits uncomfortably in boardrooms around the world: What responsibility do corporations have for the systems they operate within?

It’s a deceptively simple question. But the answer depends entirely on how you believe the world works.

In 1970, the economist Milton Friedman famously argued that the only social responsibility of business was to increase its profits. If a company was profitable, it was doing its job.

Half a century later, that idea still shapes corporate behaviour.

But in recent decades another idea emerged. It was championed by thinkers like John Elkington, who proposed that organisations should measure success not just by financial returns, but by their impact on people, planet, and profit—what became known as the triple bottom line.

On paper, it sounded revolutionary. In practice, the results have been uneven.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, launched in 2015 with enormous global enthusiasm, were meant to accelerate progress on issues like poverty, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Yet today, many of those goals are drifting further out of reach. Carbon emissions continue to rise. Modern slavery has increased. And several planetary boundaries—scientists’ indicators of ecological stability—have now been crossed.

Even within corporations, the commitment to sustainability appears to be wavering.

During a recent leadership dialogue hosted by The Leadership Experiment, participants were asked a simple question: Are organisations becoming more or less committed to sustainability?

The responses were scattered. Some believed progress was accelerating. Others thought companies were retreating.

Richard Kelly, who hosted the session, described a familiar pattern. A few years ago, he said, sustainability felt like a renaissance. Companies spoke openly about their commitments. Executives leaned into climate goals. ESG strategies appeared in every annual report.

But now, the conversation has quietened.

“Geopolitical tensions,” Kelly observed, “have pushed sustainability to the background.”

He isn’t wrong. The rise of anti-ESG movements, political backlash against “woke capitalism,” and growing cost pressures have forced many organisations to reconsider the role sustainability plays in their strategy. In some firms, sustainability teams are being absorbed into finance or HR departments—treated less as strategic drivers and more as compliance functions.

The implication is subtle but significant. Sustainability is increasingly seen not as a transformation agenda, but as a reporting obligation.

And yet, paradoxically, the organisations that appear to be performing best financially are often the ones that treat sustainability most seriously.

Consider Wesfarmers, the Australian conglomerate behind brands like Bunnings and Kmart. In Seddon’s research, the company emerged as an example of what happens when sustainability becomes embedded in leadership rather than delegated to a department.

Executives there link elements of remuneration to carbon reduction targets. Sustainability performance influences the cost of capital. Strategic decisions are guided by a simple framework known internally as “The Wesfarmers Way”—a set of principles that emphasise ethical decision-making, community impact, and long-term stewardship.

What’s striking about the approach is its simplicity.

Rather than presenting sustainability as a complex moral obligation, leaders frame it as part of good management: making decisions that create enduring value.

This approach is reinforced through what leadership theorists call transformational leadership—leaders who motivate people through purpose, encourage innovation, and model the behaviours they expect from others.

But individual leadership alone isn’t enough. Organisations also need systems that allow learning to spread.

At Wesfarmers, lessons from sustainability initiatives are shared across business units. Teams experiment, learn, and adapt together. Over time, sustainability becomes less a programme and more a cultural norm.

In other words, the organisation learns.

All of which brings us back to the penguins.

When Seddon tells the story, she isn’t trying to guilt executives into action. She’s trying to make something abstract feel real. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality are often discussed in spreadsheets and policy documents. But at their core they are systemic challenges—problems created by the cumulative effect of millions of individual decisions.

Supply chains. Procurement choices. Investment priorities.

Corporate decisions shape the world more than most people realise.

Today, roughly 86 percent of forced labour cases occur within private-sector supply chains. Hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste are dumped into oceans each year. And the global economy continues to operate as though ecological limits were optional.

Which means the real question isn’t whether sustainability matters to corporations.

It’s whether corporations recognise that they are already central players in the system.

At the end of the dialogue, Seddon offered a simple suggestion. If leaders want their organisations to take sustainability seriously, they should start by making the issue visible.

Tell stories. Share the data. Engage boards and executives in defining the organisation’s true intent.

In other words, make the invisible visible.

Because sometimes the most powerful shift begins not with a strategy document or a regulation, but with a quiet moment on a beach—when someone notices that a penguin, in Antarctica of all places, is panting from the heat.