ESG Programme Lessons Learned
This is a practical guide to building a lessons learned for an esg programme project — what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects, adapted to the realities of delivering an environmental, social and governance programme.
What a Lessons Learned is
A lessons learned is what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Lessons Learned. On an esg programme project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for an ESG Programme project
ESG Programme projects live or die on delivering an environmental, social and governance programme. A well-built lessons learned gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how esg programme projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- What happened
- Impact
- Root cause
- Recommendation
ESG Programme-specific considerations
Tailor the lessons learned to the risks that most often derail esg programme projects:
- Data availability
- Evolving standards
- Stakeholder scrutiny
Example
On a real esg programme project, the lessons learned would be shaped by delivering an environmental, social and governance programme. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — data availability, evolving standards, stakeholder scrutiny — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.