Your Sustainability wakeup call
If you read, watch or listen to the news on any given day, hour or minute, it’s hard not to notice the quickening drumbeat of reports about the impacts of climate change, pollution, waste and a host of other consequences that stem from years of unsustainable human activities all around the world.
It feels like we are heading over a precipice and nobody can make a difference.
Don’t you wish someone would just do something to make a difference?
Perhaps you’re imagining a world leader with a heart like Jacinda Ardern? Or maybe you’re thinking of a passionate young disruptor like Greta Thunberg? Or perhaps even a leader with purpose from Business like ex-CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman?
I believe there’s a specific group of people who can make a significant difference.
This group represents around 0.1% of the global workforce of 3.2 billion people, but they have the potential to have somewhere in the region of 1,000x to 10,000x more impact on sustainability than the other 8 billion people on this planet (keep reading if you want to see the maths on this).
The problem is that they are not aware of their privileged position and they’re not clear on how to make a difference. It might even be the case that you are one of these people. You just don’t know it yet.
In this article, I will
- Explain what’s stopping us from tackling sustainability
- Share the 4 epiphanies I had about behavioural and structural challenges that face anyone seeking to make an impact
- Make the case for the potential this select group has to make a difference
- Introduce you to a 4-stage sustainability framework that hacks the system to help people across organisations make more sustainable decisions
- Invite you to join a community of like-minded individuals who will help you make a significant difference when it comes to being more sustainable
If you simply can’t wait, you can join the community now.
Let’s start by taking a look at what’s getting in our way.
What’s stopping us
Have you ever reflected on the idea that the “someone” who needs to do something about sustainability might, in fact, be you?
If you haven’t, then there’s a phenomenon that explains what’s stopping you.
It’s called the Bystander effect.
The Bystander effect happens when there are lots of people around when an emergency takes place. The more people that witness the emergency, the less likely people are to offer help.
Think about the last time someone in need asked you for money on a busy street. It’s likely that you saw the problem, heard their cry for help, but walked on.
I have suffered from the Bystander effect for years when it comes to doing something about sustainability. The thoughts that cross my mind are usually…
- Well, how do I start?
- And if I started, what would I focus on first?
- And if I did actually focus on something, what would I do differently?
- And if I worked that out, then what difference can I make on my own?
The Bystander effect poses one of several behavioural challenges that get in the way of making more sustainable choices.
As a Designer, I’ve been pondering a set of questions to examine how we might enable and inspire the greatest impact on unsustainable decision-making:
- If you could inspire any group of people to take action, who would it be?
- Who could make the biggest difference?
- How might we jolt these people out of their sense of sustainability apathy?
- How might we help that group focus on the right challenges?
- How might we enable the greatest impact in the shortest time period?
- How could you make all of this easy to understand and apply?
I had a series of epiphanies in relation to these questions in the summer of 2022, when I was attending a conference about sustainability (thanks @Matt Cooper-Wright) featuring a panel of speakers from IDEO, H&M, Zalando, Sage Accounting and the Ellen Macarthur Foundation.
As each speaker shared their struggles, the same patterns emerged, and in the days following the event, 4 epiphanies occurred to me.
My 4 epiphanies
Pattern #1 — Business leaders value profit as №1
Sustainability leaders at H&M and Zalando knew they had to do something about all the single-use plastic waste their organisations were creating. Year after year, they presented ideas to switch from plastic to paper packaging. But year after year, decision-makers rejected these ideas because plastic packaging was cheaper.
Epiphany #1 — Help people see the big picture
Decision makers are limiting their frame of reference. If we’re going to help people make more sustainable decisions, then we must help them focus on more than profit and include other types of social or environmental value. We need to help people look beyond their operations to understand the unintended impact they have.
Pattern #2 — Business cases maximise profit alone
Every panellist spoke with contempt when it came to talking about business cases and how they formed an institutional barrier to making more sustainable investment decisions. Every panellist showed off their scars from their struggles convincing their board of directors to set meaningful sustainability goals to guide their employees.
Epiphany #2 — Rebalance for people, planet & profit
All businesses have a series of institutional barriers that get in the way of making more sustainable decisions. From strategic prioritisation models to business cases, and from measurement and reporting frameworks to individual incentives, key parts of the fabric of business must be altered to enable more sustainable decision-making.
Pattern #3 — Customers + experiments - rules = change
In every case, when the business case forecasts failed to add up for sustainability initiatives, the thing that changed the opinions of decision-makers, the thing that made them take a risk, was when overwhelming customer feedback and small business experiments that ignored the standard ways of doing things provided evidence that having more sustainable options was something that customers found to be desirable.
Epiphany #3 — Change the rules for more impact
We are where we are today in terms of sustainability because the decisions that were made in the past did not factor in the impact of what was happening upstream and downstream of businesses. To understand what impact we are having, we have to engage with- and build trust among a group of stakeholders external to Business and to achieve this, we need to adjust the rules that we conduct business within and the ways that we measure success to enable the right kind of impacts to be realised
Pattern #4 —Focus was on initiatives not the system
Each of the speakers seemed to have the same challenges and frustrations with the system they worked within. It was the system that was proving difficult. One-off initiatives to address a single sustainability topic in a certain part of the business were having limited impact. These valiant attempts were also continually being blocked by Decision-makers who were playing within the rules that they understood and were being evaluated and incentivised on.
Epiphany #4 — Scale impact and value as one team
The final epiphany I had was that if we are going to make a difference for Sustainability, that we would need to connect the activities going on across an organisation to ensure that we are all pulling in the same direction. To help do that, we would need to focus on a very specific group of people, a group who would appear to be the obstacles today but would be the key to driving more sustainable decision-making.
I knew that despite the appearance of getting in the way of Sustainability, this group of people could change the world overnight.
In fact, they’ve changed the world quite recently.
I call this group the Ringleaders.
Meet the Ringleaders
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when societies across the planet went into lockdown, a small group of people shifted almost the entire working world from office- and site-based working to digitised and remote ways of working.
As planes were grounded, curfews put in place and people scrambled to buy the last masks, tubes of hand sanitiser and packs of toilet roll, it dawned on this group that their customers, colleagues and people they served would be confined to their homes and that they personally needed to do something about it.
There was no room for bystanders here.
In a matter of days, this group planned and orchestrated the world’s largest digital transformation in history. They provided the systems, processes, guidance and most importantly access to digital collaboration tools like MS Teams or Zoom, so that their colleagues could work from home and enable the extensive Global Value Chains that they were part of to continue to not only function but for some, like Zoom, to thrive.
All over the world, there were incredible displays of what can happen when everyone across our Global Value Chains pulls in the same direction.
Who made this happen? Who provided direction on which way these enormous global supply chains and value chains should pull?
It was the Ringleaders — the Directors and Senior managers of large National and Multinational companies.
I call them Ringleaders because they determine the allocation and orchestration of a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources.
The decisions Ringleaders make — whether they’re fully informed and intentional or not — dictate what impact their products, operations and experiences have on people across society and our planet.
They sit at the centre of a series of rings that form a chain.
A Controlling influence
I specifically focus on Leaders from large multinationals because they have between 1,000 to 10,000 times more influence and impact on world trade than anyone else and it’s that trade, conducted in the pursuit of profit and bolstered by our consumer culture, that has brought about the unintended impacts on our planet and people.
Why 1,000 to 10,000 times more influence you might ask?
The maths goes as follows…
We’re a world of 8 billion people, of which roughly 3.2 billion work for a living (see Data source 1).
3.2 million of those 3.2 billion workers are directors or senior managers with significant influence or control of the resources and funds of large national or multinational companies (see Data source 2).
If “Money makes the world go round”, then somewhere between 30% to 80% of the world’s trade is controlled or influenced directly by Multinational companies, specifically by those 3.2m decision-makers (see Data source 3).
What this means is that the top 0.1% of all workers control 30–80% of the world’s trade whilst the other 8bn people control 40% — that’s 1,000 to 10,000x more control.
But here’s the problem…
Ringleaders have risen to power in an age were environmental, social and governance (ESG) skills and experiences weren’t necessarily called for.
A Stern NYU study conducted in January 2021 showed that US corporate boards suffered generally from a lack of sufficient expertise in financially material ESG matters.
Amongst this group, only 6% had any form of environmental or governance experience.
So it begs the question, are the “Captains of Industry” the right people to help make a difference?
Let’s come back to this question.
So…
We‘ve established that Business leaders have a disproportionate impact on world trade, to help us understand why those leaders are so critical to help us make things better, we need to examine the historical impact that world trade — and by extension the impact of the decisions our business leaders have taken — has had on sustainability and for that, we need to look at the Great Acceleration Graphs.
The impact of world trade
Launched In 2004 and updated in 2010, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and their Executive Director, Will Steffen, published the Great Acceleration Graphs which charted the rises in a number of socio-economic factors that we can trace directly to an increase in World Trade. Alongside this we can see the corresponding impacts this has had on our planet and society.
On the left — growth in world trade. On the right — growth in unsustainable impacts
The results are plain to see, even if you’re a denier of man-made climate change.
The left hand set of graphs show how human activities have increased since the 1950s in pursuit of global economic growth and world trade.
The right hand set of graphs show that the more we grow, the greater the increase in undesirable impacts on the world. There is a clear correlation between the growth in world trade and the increase in the quantity of harmful emissions into the air we breathe, pollutants in the water we drink and water our crops with, and to the waste we bury in the earth, never to be reused or recycled for use by others again.
We take, make and waste.
Each of these impacts has a red line that when crossed, will lead to a catastrophic collapse, far beyond what we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In some cases, like climate change, we may already have crossed that red line.
Recent news reports that we are about to cross the red line of a global temperature increase of 1.5 C over the temperatures recorded during the last industrial revolution.
So…
We’ve established there’s a group of Ringleaders that control 30–80% of world trade, and we’ve established that world trade has accelerated a whole series of unintended, undesirable and unsustainable impacts on our planet and society
Before we go into the steps we can take to make more sustainable decisions, we need to examine why Ringleaders are unwittingly making unsustainable decisions that lead to these unintended impacts.
I believe it has a lot to do with the prevalence of what I call Type A thinking amongst Ringleaders.
Type A thinking
Think back to those business leaders I mentioned earlier from the sustainability conference who obsessed over profit over other forms of value. It’s that kind of profit obsession that typifies Type A thinking.
Consider also the general lack of ESG skills and experience the Stern NYU study that a majority of business leaders have. This is another strong indicator of Type A thinking.
Type A thinking focuses on maximising financial value — more throughput, greater productivity, reduced cost, increased revenue. Show me the money
Type A thinking incentivises individuals to achieve, setting individual targets and stretch goals to push the limits of what those individuals can achieve.
Type A thinkers, especially Ringleaders, are great at maximising financial value and are rewarded accordingly. They’ve risen to the top because they feel it’s about pushing yourself to put in 110%, that if you want a job done properly, you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. Type A thinkers see themselves as heroes.
Type A thinkers use Type A management systems that limit scope to focus solely on driving business growth and maximising profit.
But here’s the problem.
Business growth does not mean that we’re thriving as a society. Maximising profit does not maintain the delicate balance of nature on our planet.
Being able to breathe fresh air or drink clean water. That’s valuable.
Enjoying being out in nature. That’s valuable.
Leaving the world a better place for your children. That’s valuable.
We need to balance our sense of value when it comes to profit, people and planet
We need more Type B Thinking.
Type B Thinking
Type B thinking values a balance of positive impacts for planet, people and profit.
Type B thinking looks ahead to the future to consider the direct and indirect costs and benefits and potential risks posed by decisions across all 3 impact areas.
Type B thinking goes beyond individual goals and incentivises communities of people across entire value chains to achieve goals that are so ambitious, that it’s ONLY possible to achieve with a collective effort from a network of stakeholders.
Type B thinkers, especially Ringleaders, know they can only succeed if they can get a critical mass of internal and external stakeholders to not only get behind their sustainability decision but also earn trust along the way.
Type B thinkers know they can’t change the system, but they can hack the system by expanding the scope of their management systems and tools to examine the wider system and value chain they operate within.
Let’s take stock for a moment
- We’ve established that our Ringleaders have 1,500x more control and influence over their fellow workers when it comes to world trade
- We’ve made the case that the increase in world trade is closely tied to the increase in harmful emissions, pollution, ecosystem damage, biosphere destruction and resource depletion
- We’ve also made that case that an overabundance of Ringleaders who apply Type A thinking, supported by a system of working that prioritises financial value over other forms of value is reinforcing decisions that are unsustainable
The question now is…
“What can I do to make a difference?”
This is where Plan B comes in.
Time for Plan B
Plan B is a 4-step system to help busy business leaders make more sustainable decisions.
In the interests of making the system easy to understand and drive a bias to action, the system has been designed to plug into existing ways of working.
Plan B is supported by clear guidance on where to make focused changes, what you need to do differently across your organisation and is supported by a set of tools and examples you can follow to make a difference (The Plan B guide is coming soon).
To follow Plan B, you need to follow 4 steps
Step 1 — Think bigger
Step 2 — Reframe the challenges
Step 3 — Hack the system
Step 4 — Connect the dots
Note: If you’re interested in what’s under the hood, Plan B is a combination of behavioural science, systems thinking, strategy design, culture change, operating model design, design thinking, lean startup, service design, impact measurement and sustainable growth hacking.
Step 1 — Think bigger
To move from Type A thinking to Type B Thinking you have to think bigger.
If you’re in the enviable position of being a Ringleader, you need to wake up to your responsibilities as a leader and look inwards to reflect on what’s stopping you and what help you need from others. The good news is that if you’re reading this article, you’re already on your journey.
Next, you need to reach out — Who can help you see round corners you weren’t aware of? Who do you need to bring together so that you can collaborate with a wider group of stakeholders to see the big picture?
We’ve got an answer for that at the end of this article.
Step 2 — Reframe the challenges
Once you’ve brought together the right group of people to help you understand your impact on the world, you need to work with them to reframe the challenges you face and break out of the constraints of Type A thinking and management systems.
Plan B provides guided steps and models to help you understand and evaluate the different types of environmental and social impacts your organisation creates.
Those stakeholders you’ve brought together will help you illuminate what’s important and evaluate the impact your entire value and supply chain is having on people, profit and planet. They’ll help you focus clearly on what the greatest impacts are, provide insights into the root causes that drive them and enable you to set ambitious goals that you can use as a North star to guide your organisations.
Step 3 — Hack the system
Once you have targets to aim for, it’s time to hack the system.
You’ll take those new, more balanced sets of targets that value People, Profit and Planet to hack Type A systems and turn them into Type B systems by making a series of subtle but important changes to the Business management systems that reinforce unsustainable decision-making.
Think of these small interventions as a way to create powerful points of leverage that will shift your entire organisation to make more sustainable choices, from a strategic level down to a tactical level.
You’ll use the difficulty of the sustainability challenges you face and work with your stakeholders to understand the root causes of issues and think creatively to generate differentiated ideas to solve those underlying challenges, experimenting widely to explore a range of ways to solve the problem.
Step 4 — Connect the dots
Then, you’ll keep iterating and improving to scale your impact.
You’ll need to think like a scientist, setting out hypotheses that help us validate whether we are actually creating a positive impact. You need to double down on winning experiments and pivot or drop losers.
Remember that done beats perfect though. Getting the science right on measuring impact is important to realising impact, but demonstrating that you’re actually making a difference and reporting on the results of your experiments, even if they fail, builds trust and engagement with your stakeholders.
In fact the more you experiment, the luckier you will be in achieving results, so focus efforts across your organisation to accelerate experimentation. Run more experiments, share and report what you’ve learned with all stakeholders, and incentivise and encourage early adopters who want to make a difference.
Ready to make a difference?
There’s one thing you can do right now to get your journey started.
The Toolkit is aset of simple to follow canvases designed for Business Leaders, Designers, Changemakers, Sustainability experts and Stakeholder community leaders to mobilise people to take action and create positive impacts across their organisations and value chains to create prosperity.
Ringleader statistics data sources
Data source 1: for the World population I’m referencing Worldometer and Pew Research. For the number of Global workers, I’ve used the UK as a reference point to get in the right ballpark in terms of numbers, where according to gov.uk, 40% of the population work, 27m workers out of 67m population].
Data source 2: gov.uk and statista.com indicate that around 25% of workers, 6.7m people, work for a large national or multinational company with over 1,000 employees. Of that subset, based on anecdotal comparisons, around 1–2% are likely to be Directors and Senior Managers, and of that subset, around 10% are likely to have significant influence over decision-making, ie. through strategic prioritisation, ownership or influence of business cases, objective and key result setting and incentive structure setting). That equates to 27,000 people in the UK. Extrapolating that out to the world population of workers, that’s 3.2m decision-makers globally]
data source 3: note estimates for how much world trade multinationals control varies widely, as reliable data is scarce. Estimates vary between 30% and 80%.
Image credits
Planet Earth — by NASA
Crowd — by Rob Curran
Bystanders — by Rob Curran
IDEO Climate can’t wait conference — by Duncan Porter
Empty office — by MEDIA PROFILE
Conductor — by Mark Williams
Seesaw — by Pascal Bernardon
Forest fire — by Matt Palmer
Money map — by Christine Roy
Factory — by Patrick Hendry
Windfarm — by Appolinary Kalashnikova
Fire Alarm — by Neil Daftary
