Sustainability as a Business Capability: Six Lessons from Natura

What happens when sustainability stops being something an organization reports on and becomes a compass for decision making?

That question stayed with me after joining sustainability leaders from across Latin America at Natura Cajamar, Brazil, for From Sustainability to Regeneration, an experience co-hosted by Natura and PMI. Walking through Natura’s campus makes tangible something that can sometimes feel abstract in sustainability conversations: the connection between sustainability, innovation and business performance.

My biggest takeaway was simple: Sustainability creates lasting value when it becomes an organizational capability, and projects are where that capability becomes real.

That connection is also at the heart of The PMI® GPM® P5™ Standard for Sustainability in Project Management, which provides a framework for bringing sustainability into project decisions and delivery. Beyond Sustainability, a P5™ and PRiSM™ executive playbook from PMI and Natura, brings that thinking to life by exploring how organizations can build regenerative business capabilities and create long-term value.

Regeneration takes this idea one step further. Rather than focusing only on reducing negative impacts, it asks how an organization can strengthen the environmental, social and economic systems its future value depends on, and, in doing so, create new opportunities for innovation, resilience and competitive advantage.

That shift has significant implications, for sustainability leaders, business leaders and the people responsible for delivering projects.

Six lessons for turning sustainability into a business capability

What I saw and heard at Natura reinforced that moving sustainability from ambition to execution requires more than goals or commitments. Six lessons stood out about how organizations can build sustainability into the decisions, capabilities and projects that create long-term value.

1. Let sustainability inspire innovation

Leading organizations are evolving from “doing less harm” — reducing carbon, water or environmental footprint — to creating value. Natura demonstrates a more ambitious proposition: business growth can actively strengthen the environmental and social systems on which the business depends.

The numbers make the model tangible. Natura's supply chain helps protect 2.2 million hectares of rainforest and generates income for 11,000 families across 46 communities. In 2025, more than 13% of Natura's raw materials came from the Amazon, while investment in the region increased 29%. Natura plans to quadruple purchases of Amazonian inputs by 2030.

For project teams, responsible delivery still matters. But we should ask: How can solving this sustainability challenge help us create more value?

That is the point at which sustainability stops being only a constraint and starts becoming a source of innovation.

2. Turn sustainability strategy into project decisions

Natura's example shows that sustainability ambition only becomes business value when organizations develop the capabilities to translate it into decisions, investments, supply chains, innovation and ultimately projects.

Organizations can make ambitious commitments. They can set targets, publish strategies and establish long-term visions. But eventually, every ambition becomes a series of choices: What will we invest in? Which products will we develop? Which suppliers will we select? Which technologies will we adopt? Which risks will we accept? What will we measure? What should we redesign? And sometimes, what should we stop?

Those choices happen through projects.

At Natura, we saw a concrete example. Projects cannot move through every stage of the company’s stage-gate process without an environmental impact assessment. A proposal may demonstrate attractive revenue, margin and financial returns, and still be sent back for revision if it does not meet environmental requirements. Projects are redesigned. Some do not proceed.

Sustainability should be a guiding principle from the moment a project is conceived. When it shapes the business case, scope, design and governance from the outset, teams can consider impacts and opportunities before key choices are locked in—whether that means rethinking the product, choosing different materials or suppliers, or redesigning the business case.

That is what integration really looks like: sustainability influencing decisions before those decisions become outcomes.

3. Expand the definition of value

This raises a bigger question: what do we mean by value?

Revenue, margin, cost and return on investment remain essential. But organizations increasingly depend on sources of value that are harder to see on a conventional balance sheet: knowledge, relationships, trust, biodiversity, resilience, adaptability, innovation capacity and access to future opportunities.

These assets matter because business does not operate separately from the systems around it. A decision that looks more expensive today may make a supply chain significantly more resilient tomorrow. Investment in long-term relationships may unlock future innovation.

This is where regenerative thinking becomes particularly powerful. It asks organizations to look beyond the immediate transaction and understand the systems that make future value creation possible.

4. Build for resilience, not just efficiency

For decades, organizations and projects have become exceptionally good at optimizing for efficiency. But efficiency can become fragility when we optimize for a world that no longer exists.

Climate disruption, resource constraints, changing regulation, technological shifts and evolving consumer expectations mean organizations increasingly need another capability: the ability to adapt.

A resilient supply chain illustrates this well. Climate impacts can interrupt logistics, affect suppliers, damage inventory and disrupt operations.  These consequences have a financial cost whether or not they immediately appear in an emissions report.

Seen through that lens, sustainability becomes part of how organizations manage resilience. Risk management helps protect existing value from disruption. Foresight helps anticipate how conditions may change. Regenerative thinking goes further, asking how we can strengthen the systems that future value depends on.

The organizations best prepared for the future will not simply be those that optimize today's system. They will be those capable of evolving as the system changes.

For project management, this broadens the goal beyond reducing negative impacts. Projects can also protect existing value, create new value and strengthen an organization’s ability to adapt as conditions change.

That is the opportunity: to approach projects not only as a way to deliver change, but as a way to build the resilience and regenerative capacity organizations need to thrive in an increasingly uncertain world.

5. Give project professionals a wider lens

If projects are where strategy becomes reality, the people leading them have an increasingly important role in turning sustainability into action. Cost, schedule and scope still matter, but they are no longer sufficient to understand the full impact, or the full opportunity, of a project.

This is where The P5 Standard provides a practical framework for expanding that perspective across five interconnected dimensions: People. Planet. Prosperity. Product. Process.

Imagine a product development project. Of course, we need to know whether we can deliver it on time and within budget. But we also need to ask: What materials are we using? How resilient is the supply chain? What happens across the product lifecycle? How does the project affect the people delivering it? What risks might emerge later? What value are we creating for the organization and its stakeholders? And what systems does that value depend upon?

P5 helps project teams bring sustainability into planning, execution and measurement by making important impacts, risks and opportunities visible throughout the project lifecycle. That broader perspective helps project professionals make better decisions, track what matters and connect project delivery to a wider definition of value and success.

6. Build capability through collaboration

Perhaps one of the most important lessons from Natura is that sustainable transformation is not a journey any organization, function or profession can navigate alone.

There will always be trade-offs. Technologies take time to mature. Investments do not always generate the expected return. Consumer expectations evolve. Projects need to be redesigned. Some need to stop.

Capability is not the absence of these tensions. It is the ability to navigate them, learn from them and make better decisions over time. And that capability becomes stronger when we build it together.

Sharing what works, what doesn’t and where the difficult trade-offs emerge allows organizations to learn from one another instead of solving every challenge in isolation. That shared learning helps organizations improve how they make sustainability decisions over time.

From individual projects to an ecosystem of change

This is where I believe the sustainability conversation is heading:

• From commitments to capabilities.
• From individual initiatives to organizational systems.
• From a specialist ownership to a shared responsibility.
• From isolated expertise to networks that learn and innovate together.
• And from strategy to execution, project by project.

Taken together, these shifts point towards an ecosystem of change. No single organization, sector or profession has everything required to build a more sustainable and regenerative economy. Different organizations, disciplines and communities bring different knowledge, capabilities and perspectives to the work.

Project professionals have an important role within that ecosystem because they operate where many of those perspectives come together. They connect stakeholders, make trade-offs visible and translate strategy into decisions and delivery. Project by project, that connective role can help turn sustainability from an organizational ambition into broader, lasting change.

Tags: Sustainability | Business | Innovation | Resilience | Project Management

Quick Answers to Common Questions about the PMI-Natura Beyond Sustainability Playbook

What is the Beyond Sustainability: How Regeneration Creates Competitive Advantage Playbook?

The Beyond Sustainability playbook is a PMI-Natura executive resource that draws on Natura and its work in the Amazon as a living laboratory for exploring how organizations can turn sustainability from an obligation into a business capability. It focuses on how capabilities such as biodiversity knowledge, community relationships, sourcing systems, innovation and governance can work together to create resilience, differentiation and long-term value.

What does regeneration mean for a business?

Regeneration goes beyond reducing negative impacts. It asks how an organization can strengthen the environmental, social and economic systems that its future value depends on, using sustainability as a source of innovation and competitive advantage rather than treating it only as a compliance or risk-management activity.

How does the Beyond Sustainability Playbook connect to the P5 Standard?

The Beyond Sustainability playbook explores the strategic shift from sustainability as an obligation to sustainability as a capability, using Natura to show what that can look like in practice. PMI® GPM® P5™ Standard for Sustainability in Project Management provides a structured way to bring that broader thinking into project decisions by assessing impacts across People, Planet, Prosperity, Product and Process and integrating them into governance and delivery.

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