After years of examining why change in the business world is not happening at the scale and pace required by planetary standards, I finally came across an answer that effectively moves us out of the why and into the how of systems change.
In my last blog post about impact accounting, I discussed the controversy and criticism surrounding the introduction of disclosures related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) related issues in recent years. From my perspective, as someone who has studied and worked in the field of social and sustainable business for years, these criticisms are irrational because they are aimed at maintaining the status quo in a world that is facing clear and indisputable social and environmental upheaval. Upheaval that has been caused by the failures and externalities of the very status quo ESG critics are looking to maintain: a global economy that does not account for the social and environmental impacts of producing goods and services.
Over the course of my career, I have often experienced moments that have surprised me when analyzing a so-called intractable problem, conducting research on the context surrounding it or considering possible solutions. Moments that make me wonder why, given all that we know about the severity of the harms, the factors involved and the viability of solutions, do we still not make a change? Climate change is one such problem. Given the massively destabilizing effects of climate change on our people and planet, why is a full-scale, coordinated, global effort to reverse the crisis still not fully underway?
A common motivation-related answer to these types of questions is often: a lack of political will, which is undoubtedly a part of the problem. There are, without question, those in business and government who are motivated to impede change to protect their money and control. But the more I grapple with this motivation problem the more I realize there is more going on than just a lack of political will.
Our current institutions and forms of governance allow for a relatively small group of people to be able hoard a ridiculously large and unequal amount of resources and decision-making power at the expense of the rest of the world. Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard, perhaps said this best when he expressed that he believes that “every billionaire is a policy failure.” So, in addition to a lack of political will, we also suffer from structural issues with respect to how our political, economic and social institutions are currently organized and run. I have discussed my views and proposed solutions on these motivation and structural issues at length in a previous blog post.
But a lack of political will and structural issues with our institutions do not fully explain why, when we are collectively staring down the barrel of catastrophic planetary failure, we still do not make a change. I have worked for the Red Cross and am active in the sustainability sector, so I acknowledge that I, more than another person, may be more aware of the social and environmental issues our planet is facing. But I am also a mother who a couple of summers ago had to wake her son up in the early morning hours while on holiday in Vancouver Island, so we could quickly pack up and drive south, to get ahead of forest fires that were approaching from the north. And just this past summer, during Toronto’s air quality crisis, I experienced what it feels like to have near zero visibility and your eyes and throat painfully burn when you step outside your home because of wildfires raging hundreds of kilometers away. I also, along with the rest of the world, read about the scorching heat waves across Europe, severe flooding in South Asia and drought conditions in parts of the Caribbean. So, why? Why, given that the concentration of money and control with a few means absolutely nothing in the face of catastrophic climate disaster and positive change for the planet and its people means everything, do we still not make a change?
The fact that I did not find the answer to this question in a business proposal or policy paper is telling – not only about the degree of change that is necessary, but also about the nature of the world (that is, if we want a world that’ll be worth living in) we must start building together now. The answer came to me by way of a special podcast mini-series on systems change, which is hosted by the Mind & Life Institute. The mini-series focuses on how inner-led change, both personal and collective, has moved out of theory and into actively shaping real systems change at scale in our world today.
I speak about systems change in a business context on my Resources for Funders page, addressing how innovative finance models are being used to enable systems-level change in business model innovation and market development. While these actions are important and moving us in the right direction, they still exist only on the fringe in finance circles, like most social and sustainable practices in business today. I see the inner development work the Mind & Life Institute has made a strategic focus in its organization, as very much being the missing piece required to drive social and sustainable business from the fringe into the mainstream of our global economic system. The piece that will not only complete the transformation but also make it lasting. This is a big topic, one that merits a post of its own, which you can look forward to soon.
For now, to illustrate the profound importance of inner-led work, I am going to return to the discussion about climate change and a story Jamie Bristow, the host of the Mind & Life podcast mini-series, shared in the introductory episode: Exploring Systems Change. In the episode, Jamie talks about The Club of Rome, one of the oldest environmental organizations in the world, which published The Limits to Growth report in 1972. The report warned of the inability of the planet to support then rates of economic and population growth into the future. Fifty years on, with the need for change ever more urgent, the Club of Rome published Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, which is a roadmap for how humanity can come together right now to execute a turnaround that can achieve prosperity for all within planetary boundaries in a single generation. However, this time around the Club of Rome recognized that it’s not enough to just layout the science and expect people to act; that there is, in fact, a real gap between thinking and doing because individually and collectively we have psychological barriers to climate action. Barriers such as generating the necessary political will (mentioned earlier), collaborating across differences and overcoming bias and denial – all of which are inner challenges. So, the Club of Rome commissioned a report alongside Earth for All called The System Within, which advocates for the need to also address the overlooked inner dimensions (psychological, social and cultural) of systems change, finally recognizing that we have been missing a crucial piece in our effort to achieve sustainable solutions for the planet – and moving us out of the why and into the how of climate turnaround.
Inner-led change, both personal and collective, has moved out of theory and into actively shaping real systems change at scale in our world today. I see inner development work as being the missing piece required to drive social and sustainable business from the fringe into the mainstream of our global economic system. The piece that will not only complete the transformation but also make it lasting.
