We like to think we all make free decisions, but that’s not really the case. Convenience, affordability, and even just good old-fashioned peer pressure influence how we act on a daily basis. The systems around us shape our choices more than we like to admit.

Not convinced? Sodexo and Nuffield Health ran an experiment across 35 UK hospitals, making plant-based meals the default option. If a patient wanted meat or dairy it was still possible they just had to request it. 

The result was that food-related emissions fell by 20%. While people continued to pick meat, consumption dropped 14%, while plant protein skyrocketed by nearly 50%. Nobody was unhappy or complained. 

There is a lesson here for climate action more broadly: you do not need to persuade individuals to change, you need to change the system.

People are happy with the easy choice

Organisations can be scared to embrace change. There is the potential that change will annoy customers or harm operations.

That concern is not unreasonable, change does carry risk. However, you need strong leadership to recognise and drive action when the potential benefits outweigh those risks. This case study is the perfect example. Rather than months of consultation or the backlash that comes with removing animal products entirely, the approach was subtle.

They simply changed what people saw first.

Branding also played a big role in the success of this switch. A Thai peanut rice noodle bowl sounds like something everyone might like. A Coeliac bowl does not. One sells the food, the other is a limitation. Even just calling something the meat-free option alters how people approach the dish. 

The lesson for any organisation trying to drive change is straightforward: find ways to make the more sustainable choice appealing and the default option. 

System change is a leadership problem

For CEOs, CFOs, and strategy leads, this should be compelling. Climate-friendly options can reduce costs over time, and the Sodexo and Nuffield Health experiment shows the change does not have to mean conflict with customers. The friction tends to come from enacting the change itself, and from uncertainty about how it will land. This approach protects the consumer’s choice, removing a potential source of friction.

However, it will not happen without leadership willing to act. Organisations need teams who understand that behaviour change is downstream, and that systems change is strategic, operational, and financial. 

In practice, this means:

• Senior leadership: Decides to switch suppliers to lower-emission inputs even if margins tighten short-term, ties executive bonuses to emissions targets, and signs off on capex for new infrastructure as the primary lever for change. 
• Functional specialists: Redesign the supply chain to cut transport miles, reformulates products using lower-impact materials, builds emissions into financial models, and tracks real-time data to spot where waste and carbon are actually being generated. 
• Investment professionals: Backs companies building scalable infrastructure (energy, food systems, logistics), rejects “green” businesses whose sustainability credentials are reputitional rather than operational, and structures deals where returns are tied to measurable outcomes, not just narrative.

Stop waiting for people to change

For many of the problems society struggles with, responsibility can be placed on the individual: the obesity epidemic, climate change, and plastic pollution to name a few. We expect the consumer to take the path of most resistance simply because it’s the right thing.

To some extent they do, but meaningful change won’t come from asking people to try harder. It will come from removing friction and making the better choice the default choice.

That shift creates a different kind of opportunity, and a different set of hiring priorities.

• For corporates and scale-ups, it is about redesigning systems without disrupting the customer experience, understanding that the easiest choice and the right choice do not have to be different things, and they know how to make that happen operationally.
• For investors, the opportunity is identifying businesses that are changing the environment around customers rather than asking them to change. That is a fundamentally different bet, and it requires people who can tell the difference.
• For nonprofits and social enterprises, this means people who can move from policy to implementation, redesigning how choices are presented rather than campaigning for different ones.
• For advisors, the demand is less strategy in isolation, more delivery. The question clients are increasingly asking is not how to communicate sustainability, but how to embed it so quietly that it does not need communicating at all.

That is the real lesson here. The organisations making progress aren’t waiting for behaviour to change. They’re building systems that change it for them. That starts with hiring the kind of people who make things happen.