Evolving Sustainable Leadership

In my previous post on the evolution of sustainable leadership I wrote:

The evolution of sustainable leadership is commitment to a process of self development that begins with “me” but necessarily expands to include and transcend “me.” The deeper we dive, the broader we roam, the richer our understanding of our place and purpose.

So how does this process work? The short answer is it must necessarily work in different ways for different people. Though the aim may be the same, we start from different places, different life spaces and conditions. Yet there some constants. One of those is capacity.

To deepen our capacity means to target our capability to perceive and act from what we are learning. At Interkannections we view this as the journey of capacity evolution where G, I and T-shaped leaders become H, A and U-shaped leaders. Here, again, there are many paths up the mountain. However, it would be foolish to ignore some well-worn trails:

In “integral” speak this means being able to leverage what is called a 4Q perspective: deepening and balancing insight gained from perspectives on the self, the self and others, the world and our actions in it, and the systems and processes we create and in which we are embedded. 

Peter Senge has popularized systems thinking as a way to access the meaning to be made from inter-relationship. 

Otto Scharmer uses “Theory U” and presencing to take individuals and groups on learning journeys that allow them to access and leverage intuitive inter-connection and insight.

At Interkannections we employ all of the above-when necessary-to help our clients make the shift from their current patterns of thinking and behavior to a more sustainable, life giving, value generating way of living and engaging with the world. 

The key in evolving your approach to leadership and your life, in general, to a more sustainable one, in the end, is, of course: YOU. You have to want to take on the challenge, have the will, discipline and commitment to evolve. You must have the courage, wisdom and humility to learn and seek out experiences and teachers to help you evolve.

And, most importantly, YOU can start, NOW.

 

Tags: capacity evolution, Otto Scharmer, Peter Senge, presencing, sustainability, sustainable leadership, systems thinking, Theory U

The Evolution of Sustainable Leadership

Sustainable leadership arises from being able to see the world as it is: in its infinite complexity and subtle simplicity. It requires deep capacity to know and reflect on yourself and the multiple implications of your actions. It also requires that you extend your concept of “self” to include much more than “me” and home to be much more than “my house.” As the poet Gary Snyder has written “home is as big as you make it.”

Leadership is a practice. One CEO I recently spoke with said that leadership is a performance. Indeed it is both. Leadership is the enactment and realization of our capacity as humans to engage others and the world around us and inspire thinking, reflection and action. At its best, leadership is transformative. Great leaders transform themselves and with the depth of their perception, the strength of their conviction and the beauty of their vision they help others transform as well. Often these transformations can be “spiritual” in their quality. Spirit being that which connects you to your self, your self to others, that self to the world, the divine and those mysterious, powerful insights that arise from these relationships.

Sustainable leadership is the practice, performance and enactment of a perception, conviction and vision that respects, nurtures and supports that which sustains us and, importantly, that which sustains that which sustains us.

The evolution of sustainable leadership is commitment to a process of self development that begins with “me” but necessarily expands to include and transcend “me.” The deeper we dive, the broader we roam, the richer our understanding of our place and purpose. From this process our practice: our words and actions arise. The greater the depth of our perception, the greater potential we bring for transformation, the greater our capacity to create sustainable approaches to living, community, innovation and business.

Sustainable leadership may, sometimes, be in response to something, however, at its best it is an inspiration and invitation for something. It comes from the inside. It is radiant and compellingly transparent. It is not easy and it is not what you think it is, right now.

This is just the beginning. More to follow soon…

Tags: leadership, sustainability, sustainable leadership

Good News! Whole Foods and Wal-Mart Execs Agree: We’re Not Green

This is some of the best news I’ve heard in a long time around sustainability. Good news?! Yep. Read the article at B-net in which representatives from Wal-Mart & Whole Foods speak about the realities of CSR. Thanks to Lance for pointing it out.

To quote:

“If Wal-Mart is not a green company, then Whole Foods is not a green company. We do a lot of green things, and we have green intentions, but we don’t believe that we are, and we try not to say that we are.”

And later:

Sustainability, Besancon added, creates a great deal of tension between the three legs of the “triple bottom line”: People, planet, and profits. Replacing plastic bags, which cost a penny each, with paper bags, which cost as much as 17 cents each, is not a zero-sum move.

These men and many other men and women like them are running into the systemic realities of sustainability. There are no zero sum, linear and tidy solutions. And, more importantly, there is a lot of tension between the eco-logic and the eco-nomic. Our economic systems are based on perceptions, assumptions and thinking that are simply deeply misaligned with eco-systemic processes. Throw in a big helping of “green” oughts and it becomes very hard to see what is, much less what to do. It takes a lot more than unilateral actions to intervene in systemic dynamics. In human systems, in particular, we’re talking about changing the actions of millions of self-interested systemic constituents (people). 

There are two other key points in this pithy little article:

1. There is potential for retailers and consumers to work together to “push for more transparency in the supply chain.” This is where, with a little facilitation, there is potential for some very powerful and meaningful synergy.
2. In the wake of Katrina it was corporations and other organizations that were most responsive and able to help. We are just beginning to tap the potential of non-governmental entities to contribute to social welfare and sustainable interventions.

Wal-Mart and Whole Foods wisely acknowledged they have a long way to go before they believe they are approaching sustainability in their operations. This is good news. It shows they know where they would like to go and that there is organizational awareness of the gap that needs to be closed. They are beginning to show signs of coherence in their approach to sustainability. The limitations of partnership are becoming clear.

What will help them and others make the jump is an evolution in the capacity of key organizational members (and eventually the organization as a whole) to see the world in its systemic and inter-systemic complexity and let what they see guide their actions. That is when the boundaries begin to blur between corporate and communal, between self and system and when our interconnectedness ceases to confound.

To appropriate the tag line of the X-Files: The truth is out there (and in there). We simply need the capacity to see it.

 

Tags: capacity evolution, corporate social responsibility, csr, sustainability

Evolving Capacity

Our capacity to engage the world evolves as we are faced with situations that confound our current world views. As children we move from a relatively simple, direct relationship with the world to one that involves abstraction, hypothetical projection and logical order.

Conventional wisdom tells us this is the end. Actually, it’s only the beginning. 

Over thirty years of research has shown that as we are continually challenged by changing, complex and confusing conditions that it is possible for us to evolve stages of consciousness that better equip us to adjust and fit ourselves to these contexts.

In order for us to make that shift though, we need desire, commitment and accountability to follow through on what is not an easy process of change.

Our best chance for evolution comes when we are assisted and supported, mentored and coached through the process.

Just like in martial arts, finding the right teacher or guide to the discipline can make all the difference. In the case of capacity evolution the stakes are much higher. We’re not learning an art, we are learning about our selves, how we make meaning and how we see the world.

Look at your self, now. What do you see?

Tags: capacity evolution

Capacity Evolution Page Updates

I have updated the pages for:

• X-Shaped People
• G-shaped People
• I-shaped People
• T-shaped People
• H-shaped People
• A-shaped People
• U-shaped People

Tags: capacity evolution, H-shaped people, I-shaped people, leadership capacity, t-shaped people

The Meaning to be Made in a VUCAlicious World

Found this primer to the challenges facing the Next Generation Leaders on Jessica Margolin’s site. Called, Next Generation Leadership it is a short PDF on leading in the VUCA world.

VUCA stands for: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous-the four horsemen of chaos and complexity.

Margolin goes on to astutely assert that success will favor those who thrive in VUCA environments. Couldn’t agree more.

When we talk about capacity evolution, we have just an environment in mind. Our work in Japan has brought us client after client who are caught flat-footed as they rather suddenly have to try and navigate a world of little certainty, rapid & unpredictable change, and situations with no and many “right” answers that are often questions themselves.

In a VUCA world, leaders need the capacity to perceive, act and make meaning in non-linear, trans-rational ways. Some come to it naturally, some will be called, many will have to be shown the way.

Where do you fit in?

Tags: ambiguity, capacity evolution, complexity, leadership, uncertainty, volatility

Really Strategic CSR Part II

What is Really Strategic CSR?

So what does Really Strategic CSR look like? First let’s look at what it is not:

• Governed by linear thinking and analysis
• Reductionist in scope
• Short-term in it’s orientation
• For the benefit of the corporation and the cause only
• Undisciplined support of multiple causes unrelated to the corporation’s strategic interests
• Reactionary

Really Strategic CSR is:

• Governed by systemic thinking & understanding of non-linear dynamics
• Informed by eco-systemic realities & relationships
• Taking a holistic and collaborative approach to being socially responsible
• Understanding the part from the whole and acting accordingly
• Treating CSR as a targeted intervention into complex open systems
• Visionary 

Really Strategic CSR emerges from the understanding that corporations need to intervene cooperatively and collaboratively to create sustainable global market stability and growth. The major problems facing (or soon to be facing) global business are deep fissures in the foundations of global commerce. According to Lester Brown’s Plan B 3.0 these include:

• Deteriorating Oil and Food Security
• Global Warming & Rising Sea Levels
• Emerging Water Shortages
• Deteriorating Eco-systemic Resilience
• Poor Urban Planning & Poverty
• Energy Inefficiency & Waste

Simply, if we do not begin to collaborate on some truly innovative, very disciplined and exceptionally non-partisan interventions to address these issues, the havoc that their convergence will wreak on global business, global security and stability will be overwhelmingly immense. I will leave the gloom and doom predictions to others. Suffice to say that things could get very, very bad.

However, if we can begin to move into a space of open collaboration and a paradigm arising from an understanding of systemic inter-relationship we open our selves (individual and organizational) to a new level of Social Responsibility in which we perceive, think and act “glocally” (simultaneously global and local). 

It’s a big step. It requires the desire to change and evolve our capacity to perceive, think and act. It’s not just going to happen. We have to be change to enact the change. No excuses. No rationalizations. And as a mentor of mine used to say, here’s the trash can: leave your ego there. There’s no room for it here.

 

Tags: corporate social responsibility, csr, sustainability

Truly Strategic CSR Part I

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) takes many forms with many aims and applications. Some corporations merely and cynically “greenwash”, others sincerely try to be “green” but only reach the level of seeking out and supporting random or thematically connected NPO’s or social welfare causes. Still other companies are trying to embed a spirit of philanthropy or social responsibility by creating giving programs for employees who are able to select their favorite causes and apply corporate sponsored points that are then converted to funds for their the causes of their choice. There are some nifty dashboards I’ve seen in operation that manage these point systems. Unfortunately, those all of the approaches may do some good, even taken in their aggregate effect, they contribute little to long-term sustainability.

 

Understanding the Parts and the Whole

Michael Porter and Mark Kramer argue in their 2006 Harvard Business Review article, “The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Responsibility” that companies need to take both a holistic and highly targeted approach to their activities. This is accomplished by mapping the entire value chain with an eye on points of intersection they call “inside-out linkages”. However to balance that viewpoint an “outside-in” perspective must also be developed. That perspective looks at outside social influences on competitiveness.

While I whole-heartedly agree that the two activities are essential in understanding the systemic contexts in which a business operates, those perspectives are not enough for two reasons. One is the context that Porter and Kramer put forth is largely social in nature. Using a Pareto approach, let’s say this covers roughly 80% of the operating context. What is the remaining 20%? The remaining 20% is the context in which the social itself is embedded: the eco-systems and supporting relationships that sustain life. To be engaged in any meaningful way, these systems and relationships cannot be reduced and must be viewed in their wholeness. Further, if these support systems begin to fail, societies will fail with them.

The second reason is scope. Scope has two parts. The first is the criteria for choosing CSR strategy. To quote from the article:

Typically the more closely tied a social issue is to a company’s business, the greater the opportunity to leverage the firm’s resources-and benefit society.

Although the above is true and makes good short term business sense, it tends to be exactly that: short term in it’s focus, application and effect. In other words, by choosing the “social issue of the moment” or taking a low hanging fruit approach, corporations will continue to do harm by doing good. Think of it as planting flowers on the beach at low tide. All that money, time, goodwill and effort squandered for six hours of beauty. It feels good, looks good and makes great performance art. ‘Nuff said.

The second aspect of scope is that the Porter and Kramer model is still governed by the corporation as a self-governing, autonomous entity. Essentially, they are asking corporations to act from an enhanced sense of enlightened self interest. The issue here is that the corporate sense of self is still often restricted to unsustainable quarterly earnings requirements, mechanistic, bottom line thinking. Though the corporate heart may be in the right place, the corporate head is clouded by the pernicious myopia that is bringing the world to some very dangerous tipping points. The image of Nero fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind.

 

Toward a Benevolent Net of Sustainable Practice

If we want to get truly strategic around CSR, the first and biggest step is to realize that we are not in this alone. Although we may be competing for market share and consumer interest, it is in our best interest to work together to create long-term systemic health in the markets in which we operate. The goal not being subsistence but instead to flourish. Simply, long term thriving and healthy markets rest on a healthy and thriving web of life.

In reality it is a return to the dilemma of the Tragedy of the Commons. Do we get what we can while the getting is good or do we manage the commons in a way that allows all beings to benefit (and share their benefits through increased consumer spending!). The commons, now though, is not a pastoral village green. The commons, now, are the oceans, our combined capabilities to grow and transport food, our access to water and living assets that allow economic endeavors to take root, grow and enrich local, regional and even global prosperity.

Part II of this post will take a practical look at what that net of sustainable practice would look like and some practical first steps for making the shift from our current paradigm.

 

 

Tags: capacity evolution, corporate social responsibility, csr, sustainability

A Simple Truth

Found an opinion piece from the Washington Post called “Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster.” Some of you might think some of the news items cited in this blog are overwrought gloom and doom prognostications. And, it may be true that some of the predictions the authors make may tend toward extreme extrapolations of our current situation. 

However let’s look at a simple truth: any disruption in the supply or availability of oil will affect all aspects of our lives. The article by James Howard Kunstler cited above states this clearly:

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the “peak oil” story. It’s not about running out of oil. It’s about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

The way we produce food

The way we conduct commerce and trade

The way we travel

The way we occupy the land

The way we acquire and spend capital

And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis.

The current rise in oil prices may be due more to speculation than shortages or supply issues but, really, it doesn’t matter. As a world we are now in a situation where the strands of commerce, trade and production that interconnect us (imagine a mandala of rubber bands all stretched taut) are getting pulled pretty tight. Any little vibration resonates throughout the entire interconnected system. This situation will not ease anytime soon. In fact, the stress on these strands will most surely increase due in no small part to the ascendancy of China and India.

The question is, are we going to wait for conditions to force us to make changes in the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce and trade, the way we travel, the way we occupy the land, the way we acquire and spend capital, etc. or are we going to embrace the opportunity to proactively re-design the way we engage these activities.

In his article Kunstler chides Americans for their child-like attachment to wishful thinking. Americans are optimists and recently that optimism has revealed itself in some pretty shallow practices like those arising from the escapist idiocy being stoked by the The Secret. Still, that optimism, if grounded in an understanding and acceptance of the complex and dynamic systemic realities confronting us can, I believe, still be quite magical. As Kunstler says:

We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it — by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don’t figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works.

We can still have hope, still dream and wish for better times but we can’t stop there. We have to let that intrinsic desire to be and live well manifest itself in informed, well-timed and thoughtful action. The logic behind that action is also key.

We have to evolve our understanding of the world from one of linear cause and effect that can be controlled to an understanding of the world of interconnected open, complex systems that can, at best, be influenced. And, we’re going to have to learn to live and act lightly, coherent with the systems that support and sustain us.

You want a simple truth? We’re not in control, never have been, never will be. Deal with it and remember the rubber band mandala. 

Tags: capacity evolution, leadership capacity, peak oil, sustainability

Room to Read

My partner, Chad, and I have been providing Room to Read, a non-profit organization, that is doing an outstanding job of bringing literacy and education to Southeast Asia and Africa with pro bono consulting services. However the chapter in Tokyo that we are supporting is such a dynamic and exciting group of people, we often find ourselves doing more than just consulting.

John Wood, the founder, left a very promising career at Microsoft to start this venture. I highly recommend reading his book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. If not only provides a template for how a non-profit could and should run, it also is a simply inspiring read.

We just came off a big event with John, here in Tokyo in which we were able to fund the building of multiple schools, several reading rooms, thousands of books and over 300 years worth of scholarships for young women in Asia and Africa. 

The work Room to Read is doing doesn’t stop at increasing literacy and education levels, though. They are investing in the capacity for sustainability in the students and their countries and regions. Simply, as these children come of age they, by virtue of their education, bring with them greatly enhanced potential to reduce poverty, stabilize population, innovate sustainable food production and water use and land use practices as well as research and implement alternative fuel and energy generating plans.

All of that potential for less than a new car. Talk about Return on Investment.

Tags: capacity evolution, room to read, sustainability