Operational leadership: the hidden driver of net zero

Most startups treat operations as “back office” and marketing as the growth engine. That’s backwards.

On 9 January 2026, UK media and marketing agency The Kite Factory announced the appointment of a managing partner of operations, with a notable detail: the role brings formal responsibility for ESG (environmental, social and governance) into the senior leadership team. Even though this is an agency people-move headline, it’s a useful case study for any startup trying to grow responsibly—especially if you’ve made a net zero claim (or you’re about to).

Here’s the reality I’ve seen up close: you don’t deliver climate commitments with campaigns. You deliver them with operating rhythm. The story behind this appointment is bigger than one firm. It signals how modern organisations are wiring operations, marketing execution, and ESG accountability together—because that’s what it takes to scale without greenwashing.

Why an operations leader changes marketing outcomes

Answer first: An operations leader makes marketing more effective by turning strategy into repeatable execution—budgets, suppliers, governance, timelines, and measurement.

Startups love the strategy part. Positioning workshops, brand refreshes, big creative ideas, ambitious climate pledges. The part that breaks is the unglamorous middle: how work moves through the company, how decisions get made, and how trade-offs are recorded.

When an organisation elevates operations to a managing partner level, it’s usually because they’ve hit a complexity threshold:

• More clients, more channels, more deliverables
• More stakeholders signing off (legal, finance, procurement, ESG)
• Higher reputational risk (including around sustainability claims)
• A stronger need for forecasting and capacity planning

For a startup, the equivalent moment is when your marketing stops being “a few good people shipping work” and becomes a system.

The net zero angle: operations is where claims become evidence

Answer first: Net zero transition work fails when ESG is a slide deck, not an operational function.

Many companies can write a climate statement. Far fewer can answer basic proof questions when a journalist, investor, or enterprise buyer asks:

• What emissions scopes are you measuring and how often?
• Which suppliers contribute most to your footprint?
• What’s your process for reviewing environmental claims in marketing?
• Who signs off ESG priorities when growth targets conflict?

Putting ESG responsibility inside operations is a governance move. It’s also a marketing move—because credibility is earned through process.

What this appointment signals: organisational maturity (and buyer readiness)

Answer first: Executive operations appointments are a maturity signal to customers and partners that delivery, compliance, and ESG are taken seriously.

In the UK market—where public procurement, large enterprise buying, and increasingly even mid-market deals include sustainability questions—maturity signals matter. If you sell into organisations with net zero commitments, you’ll increasingly be evaluated on your own.

A leadership role that explicitly owns operations and ESG indicates three things buyers care about:

1. Accountability exists (someone senior owns the outcome)
2. Trade-offs are managed (cost, speed, impact aren’t decided ad hoc)
3. Processes are documented (audits and supplier checks won’t be “we’ll get back to you”)

This isn’t limited to agencies. Scaleups in fintech, SaaS, e-commerce, and climate tech all run into the same friction: growth creates operational debt, and operational debt eventually shows up as missed deadlines, inconsistent messaging, or risky claims.

A contrarian take: “More process” can speed you up

Startups often fear operational leadership because they equate it with bureaucracy. But the right ops leader doesn’t add friction—they remove accidental complexity.

Good operations reduces:

• Rework (briefs that change midstream)
• Bottlenecks (one person holding approvals)
• Unplanned spend (rush fees, last-minute contractors)
• Brand inconsistency (multiple versions of “the truth”)

That speed matters in 2026, when marketing cycles are shorter and scrutiny on climate messaging is higher.

Three operational strategies startups can copy this quarter

Answer first: You can get 80% of the value of “ops leadership” by installing three disciplines: a decision log, a claims review path, and a capacity model.

You don’t need to hire a managing partner tomorrow. You do need the operating habits that role would enforce.

1) Build a decision log for marketing and ESG trade-offs

What it is: A simple record of key decisions, who made them, what data was used, and what was ruled out.

Why it matters: When sustainability and growth collide, you need institutional memory. Otherwise you repeat the same arguments every quarter.

How to run it (simple version):

• Use a shared doc or Notion page titled Marketing + ESG Decision Log
• For every major campaign or product launch, record:
  • Claim(s) you’re making (e.g., “carbon neutral”, “net zero roadmap”)
  • Evidence source (supplier data, internal calculations, third-party assurance)
  • Approval owner (name + role)
  • Known limitations (what the claim doesn’t cover)

One-liner worth keeping on your wall: If it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen.

2) Create a “green claims” review path before creative goes live

What it is: A lightweight internal review that checks environmental statements for clarity, scope, and evidence.

Why it matters: The fastest way to damage a brand is to overclaim. In sustainability marketing, vagueness is a liability.

A workable review path for a small team:

1. Marketing drafts copy and footnotes the evidence
2. Ops (or finance/COO) checks supplier and measurement assumptions
3. Legal/compliance sanity check if you’re regulated
4. Final sign-off by a named exec

Keep the standard: Specific beats impressive. “We reduced packaging weight by 18% in 2025” is stronger than “eco-friendly packaging”.

3) Capacity planning for marketing delivery (yes, even for startups)

What it is: A rolling view of what the team can deliver, not what you wish you could deliver.

Why it matters: Sustainability work often adds steps—supplier assessment, lifecycle thinking, reporting. If you don’t plan for that, you either skip it or burn people out.

A simple model:

• List recurring work (content, paid, lifecycle emails, events)
• List planned launches (product, partnerships, PR moments)
• Assign rough effort points (S/M/L)
• Identify peaks and decide what gets deprioritised

Operational leadership isn’t about saying “yes” to everything. It’s about making “no” decisions early enough that you can still hit deadlines.

How operations supports the net zero transition (without becoming performative)

Answer first: The net zero transition becomes real when ESG is integrated into procurement, reporting, and messaging workflows—not isolated in a sustainability report.

If your company is serious about climate change, you’ll eventually have to operationalise at least four areas:

1. Measurement cadence (monthly/quarterly, not annual panic)
2. Supplier management (who you buy from is a carbon decision)
3. Product and packaging decisions (design choices create emissions lock-in)
4. Marketing governance (claims are controlled, consistent, and provable)

The Kite Factory’s move—bringing ESG formally into leadership through operations—fits this pattern. It’s a structural acknowledgement that sustainability is operational, not ornamental.

“People also ask”: Do startups really need ESG governance?

Short answer: If you sell B2B, plan to raise, or hire at pace—yes.

Even if you’re early-stage, ESG governance becomes urgent when:

• You work with enterprise customers that require supplier disclosures
• You’re making public environmental claims
• You’re recruiting talent that expects credible climate action
• You’re expanding into regulated categories (finance, health, energy)

The goal isn’t paperwork. The goal is trust at scale.

What to look for when hiring your first operations leader (or COO)

Answer first: Hire for clarity, commercial discipline, and cross-functional credibility—then give them authority.

If 2026 is the year you move from “founder-led everything” to a proper leadership bench, operations is one of the highest ROI hires—because it multiplies every team’s output, including marketing.

Traits that matter:

• Systems thinker: can design workflows without suffocating teams
• Fluent in numbers: forecasting, unit economics, budget governance
• Supplier and contract competence: procurement is strategy now
• ESG practicality: comfortable turning intent into metrics and routines
• Strong taste for clarity: kills vague briefs and ambiguous ownership

Avoid one common mistake: hiring ops but refusing to delegate decisions. Operations leadership only works when they can actually set standards and enforce them.

A simple operating blueprint for credible climate marketing

Answer first: Credible climate marketing is a three-part system: evidence, approvals, and repeatable reporting.

If you want to communicate progress on net zero without stepping into risk, implement this minimum set:

• Evidence file: a folder with sources for every environmental claim
• Approval chain: named owners for marketing claims and ESG reporting
• Quarterly review: a routine meeting that updates metrics and messaging

Credibility isn’t a tone of voice. It’s a process you can explain.

That’s the through-line from this news: leadership structure drives execution quality.

What to do next

If you’re a UK startup planning aggressive growth in 2026, treat operations as part of your marketing strategy—especially if you operate in the climate change and net zero transition space.

This week, pick one action:

1. Start a decision log for marketing + ESG trade-offs
2. Install a green claims review path
3. Build a 90-day capacity plan that includes sustainability work

The question to ask your team isn’t “Do we care about net zero?” It’s: Who owns the operating system that makes net zero deliverable—and provable—while we scale?