In 2023, what will leadership look like?
As I started this commentary, I wanted to shed light on how business leadership could make a difference through innovation and partnerships in 2023 in order to address the ever-exceeding planetary boundaries. But, after personally experiencing the ‘unprecedented’ floods in Tāmaki Makaurau this weekend, where the city I call home received a month's worth of rain in 1 hour, I felt this was about leaders coming forward regardless of their role. Not just from the business community but from everyone in a position of power, opportunity and privilege. We all need to step up and no longer remain silent or turn away from the issues we face. We need to do it for ourselves and every living creature on planet earth.
I have just spent the weekend living through a State of Emergency - battling the stormwater drains that was sending water into my property rather than taking it away, watching my neighbours lose their homes, their cars and for some, their family members. Once the rain subsided, I spent the weekend emptying my cupboards of dry towels, blankets, shoes and clothing for those who had lost everything. The cost of these floods can be seen everywhere on our suburban streets with the contents of whole houses in skip bins, roading lifted and houses fallen down cliff faces or the reverse cliff faces fallen on houses below. The strength of our response to this crisis has come from the people in communities who have stepped forward to help in any way they can.
We experienced these losses in our City of Sails, not just because 249mm of rain fell in 24 hours, but because of our inability to adapt to the reality of climate change and make the decisions that need to be made.
“Maybe the biggest long-term lesson is that as a Marae leader put it to me over the weekend “this is what you get when you disrespect Papatuanuku.” You cannot concrete over, pipe away or sandbag the really long term issues.” — Rob Campbell, LinkedIn
Source: The Australian.
Indecision, denial, underrepresentation and deprioritisation has become the narrative of choice for decades and so now we are experiencing what science told us would happen -
“...as the climate continues to warm, the amount of water vapour in the air increases….One degree of warming in the air translates, on average, to about 7 per cent more water vapour in that air.” — James Renwick, The Conversation. See the science further explained here.
Despite the science getting easier to understand and the actions we need to take clearer - we seem to spend more time fighting each other rather than against the real enemy of the human race. That is the way we live, the way we make our money and how we extract virgin resources from the earth for pretty much everything we consume. The arrogant belief that these decisions are not linked to the effects we are seeing including flooding, loss of species, and displacement of people from their land and homes defies any logic. Of course, those who are the most affected are those who can’t afford to be and often don’t deserve to be.
Over the last month, I have been watching content coming out of Davos 23 ( Watch: Leading the charge through earth’s new normal), which yet again proved emissions are still going UP despite commitments. (Thank you Al Gore for being so clear about our position, to avoid any doubt our current efforts are not adding up to enough). We are consuming more than ever before, losing more species than every before and nothing about this future that we are heading for looks good from any angle.
A particularly poignant moment at Davos came from Yo-Yo Ma who said:
“It’s our choice to make, to succeed and thrive or be the instruments of our extinction. But no one likes being told what to do. Deep personal commitment comes from personal choice and that comes from us finding the on switch and we each have a different trigger to turn that switch on. Once you locate it, make that choice, turn it on.”
And so, we welcome in the new year, 2023 - with more personal freedom than years of late, predictions of a recession, talent shortages, geopolitical turbulence playing out in economies around the world and the expectations from ‘consumers’ that businesses will be a force good, tackling all our wicked problems with fewer resources and bandwidth. What a year to be business owners, CEOs and leaders of organisations.
So before the floods, I was thinking about how I could motivate and inspire business leaders to ‘find their switch and turn it on’, lift out of the reductive strategies deployed during a recession (or in advance of one), to see the light at the end of the tunnel and double down on the strategies that we know we need to do, but in fact, this applies to all of us. We all need to lead.
This can’t be more of the same.
“True leaders will be called into action like no other time in the past. Forging resilience, integration and financial robustness with an eye on the people and nature will be mandatory.” — Fernando Honorato Barbosa, Chief Economist, Banco Bradesco
Because it is abundantly clear that the take-make-waste economic model of ‘business as usual’ comes at a cost we simply can’t afford for our own survival.
100 billion tonnes of materials are extracted from the earth every year to support the rate by which we are consuming, building, eating, etc. This is impacting on nature’s ability to draw down the carbon we are continually putting into the atmosphere and against any efforts to reduce our carbon footprint.
45% of total global emissions are from the products we consume.
92% of raw materials are returned to the earth as waste or pollution after a single-use
90% of biodiversity loss is associated with the extraction and processing of natural resources.
It is not what we are producing, it is the how. The world’s flow of materials, every piece of timber, plastic bottle, soil, apple and more is only 7.2% circular according to the Global Circular Gap Report, which is used more than once. Many will consider single-use only relates to a plastic water bottle or perhaps a coffee cup but in fact, pretty much everything in our economy is single-use.
It is time to come together, and go beyond the 7.2% of resources that are cycled back into our economy...that is where the real change needs to take place.
Every decision counts. Balancing risk with the opportunity for a new economy to unlock $4.5 trillion in unused resources to build resilience in our supply chains and regenerate our living systems.
“Businesses will face a completely different economic environment from now on. We have not seen such a combination in decades: high rates; geopolitical uncertainties; energy insecurity; and, the need to rethink the global supply chains. Amid that, there is a need to innovate, protect the environment, become more inclusive and reskill the labour force. No CEO has the roadmap to address these challenges in a smooth and predictable way. They will have to take larger risks and, as usual, face the burden of their decisions.” — World Economic Forum
As a business owner myself, I can appreciate that this imperfect storm may lead us to bury our heads in the sand in denial (or yell, cry, blame, insert emotional response here that ends up in a comment box on social media) but I also know that it is not going to get any easier if we do.
It will get worse. Perhaps worse than we imagine.
The only way forward is if we all lift our heads, hands and hearts above strategies of self-preservation towards one of collectively reshaping a very different future for our businesses, our economy and our communities. A future that moves beyond dancing around the edges of these issues, and goes directly to the heart of why we are in the hot mess right now.
So how are today’s business leaders forging a new path forward?
It’s actually pretty simple and it starts with how we are using the earth’s resources.
Today’s business leaders are innovating, circulating and eliminating.
Eliminating harmful materials or services, circulating materials to be used again and again and at a high value, and innovating at an unprecedented rate into renewable materials and regenerative practices to restore our planet.
They create beauty products without water to reduce transport costs, saving water for better uses.
They help us run with shoes made from renewable materials that can be grown again and again or take back our old shoes to be reground and remade through a simple subscription payment.
They grow our food regeneratively, restoring soil and waterways in the process.
They provide citizens with the right to repair their phones and they create pop-up repair cafes in every community to fix everyday appliances.
They reduce their costs and impact by banning landfills on ski hills.
They upcycle bread waste to create delicious cake mixes and crackers that consumers love.
They make the shift from single-use to reusable, returnable packaging made from waste.
They measure the circularity of their products, packaging and water to understand how they can improve their impact.
They are creating policies to shape the behaviours and actions required from their teams to create a positive impact and eliminate those that create harm.
And they are sharing their knowledge widely as they learn, improve and scale up their impact across their communities and stakeholders.
So…make the shift today and prepare for recovery in 2023, not the recession.
“A recession might last nine months, but a recovery could last nine years.” — Ira Kalish, Chief Global Economist, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
Leadership is not just about climate, or just people or just the economy. It is about the boldness to bravely face the opposition head-on, to make decisions that change our trajectory despite how easy it is to turn away. That’s true leadership.
As for our leader in Tāmaki Makaurau, just three days after the ‘unprecedented rainfall,’ the Mayor faces a growing petition to remove him from office because he didn’t lead our city as we expected or needed him to.
“The mayor showed a total lack of leadership during Auckland's flooding crisis. We need someone who can take charge and be responsible and ready as Auckland will be facing many more problems in the future.” — Hazel Gill, Change.org
So find your on switch in 2023, step out of the shadows of denial and indecision and lead a new way of being on planet earth.
Because once you do, you’ll find the coalition of the willing right behind you, ready for someone to lead us forward across all areas of society.