This year, as I prepared for Movember, a close mate shared some bad news. The cancer that had been fought and declared beaten had returned.
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As our supply chains get ever more complex and as the issues presenting in the chains become more and more wicked, we might profit from looking to past experiences to expand responses beyond auditing, not to ditch it altogether I stress, but to include other, more complete approaches to supporting suppliers to get it right.
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On Thursday Oct 27th, a group of Bachelor of Tourism students from the Uni of Chur in northern Switzerland visited our Nyon HQ.
The discussion turned quickly to the question of how to bring change at scale.
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Truly responsible business leaders should go beyond the rhetoric of carbon emission reduction targets. They need to surge beyond ideas of carbon neutrality. True champions have a new goal. It’s achievable with investment, with serious intent. It’s Carbon ZERO.
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The companies grappling with the implementation of their own voluntary policies and the NGOs in dialogue with them are the flag bearers for a new way of thinking and working that has great prospects to deal with a whole host of issues.
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Years and years of fighting dragons hasn’t yet stopped deforestation or many other ills. We’ve successfully ‘dragonised’ a lot of people, many companies and brands and yet here we are in Pooville. Judging people in this way leads to shame. Shame gets people’s attention and can work to raise awareness, get discussion started, but it leads to a very human call for punishment. When it comes to really changing, that has serious limits.
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If we can see the beauty in the smallest of snails, the invisible bacteria and protozoans that surround us, just the thought of a wilderness we will never see, in the sunrise or sunset, in the furrowed brow of an exhausted soul torn by war, by poverty or even greed, might we not act in a way that better protects them? That loves them? If we can pause a moment and strive to appreciate the beauty in everything around us, surely we will approach our relationship with it, with ourselves and with each other in a completely different way?
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I just can’t bring myself to advocate that consumers search for ecolabels. That just reinforces the status quo, business as usual approach that in my view urgently needs to change. The trouble I have with ecolabels is that some of them are OK, especially when done well. But they can also be highly misleading, promoting for example the idea of sustainability when workers are so disgustingly exploited.
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I think Lorinda is terrific because of not only what she’s achieved with Palm Oil Investigations but because of the way she’s gone about it, the way she started. I’m big on Values and Lorinda jumped into the crowded and sometimes unpleasant NGO Orangutan conservation space with both feet and a commitment to make a difference. I believe she has.
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The most important NGO-company interactions going forward, if you measure success by the amount of change created, will be those that see the two parties getting down and dirty in a ditch together. Our forests and those affected by the palm oil industry need genuine, solution-oriented engagement. Only then might we truly dance on clouds.
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Might NGOs more effectively engage with senior managers, CEOs and Board Chairs? I’ve seen time after time the power of relationships based on trust. Achieve trust and watch change explode, perhaps still not as quickly as we need given the mess we’re in but certainly much faster than relationships built on shame. Time to build bigger showers.
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Today is the Winter solstice and we have a rare full moon awaiting us on Christmas day. 2016 lies beyond so it's not a bad time to reflect on the year past. More importantly, it's time to ponder the decades ahead. Our (in)action today will frame the nature of the world we and our fellow species inhabit in the future.
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