Next stop: "epoch-appropriate" action

I always expect to be about 50% inspired and 50% disappointed at conferences and this year’s #BForGoodLeaders summit was bang on. Actually, I think that’s a pretty good ratio, especially for a young conference in an emerging space (whose organisers, Leen Zevenbergen and Marcello Palazzi, MSc MBA, FRSA , deserve huge kudos for bringing it into existence). I’m certainly glad I went, not least to hear the increasingly global perspective of 1200 delegates from 60 countries. Some of them have become good friends and I really value swapping ideas with counterparts from the US, South Africa and beyond.

There were some interesting new voices this year: Rutger Bregman , John Elkington , Prof Colin Mayer, Otto Scharmer , Indy Johar (pictured) and some of the Kiva wisdom keepers all stood out (though why TF did the tech guys start playing music over some of the best keynotes?!). The real magic happens when characters like these start locking horns which happened a bit, but not nearly enough. 

Overall though, it felt like there was a slight lack of real development in the dialogue: we still seemed to be talking far too much about definitions, measurement and KPIs and there was plenty of corporate grandstanding on fairly vanilla future pledges. For all the talk of talking less and acting more, there did seem to be a lot of talking!

I can boil my key learnings down to four main areas which I will be pushing hard in the evolution of Greenheart 's advisory work:

1. The preservation and sharing of indigenous wisdom – patiently embodied for the second year by the wisdom keepers who must be astounded by the general planetary ignorance of most western business leaders

2. The need for bold and conscious leadership – inspired by the wisdom of living systems and based on courage and integrity, not fear and control 

3. Patient capital and steward ownership – by founders, employees, nature or multiple generations; focussed on long-term decision making rather than the short-termism that sadly characterises most ownership archetypes

4. True and ground-breaking business model innovation – built on circular and doughnut economics, with true cost accounting built in

At the closing plenary there were a series of commitments crowded in from the delegates. They were all bold in their way but broadly shared the theme of ‘I will set up X to talk about Y’. I wonder whether we shouldn’t by now be hearing more ‘epoch-appropriate’ action-based pledges such as:

• Within 12 months we will no longer sell things that people don’t need

• No dividends will be paid to shareholders next financial year because we’ll reinvest every penny we earn on transformational R&D

• No dividends will be paid at all until we have successfully transitioned to a financially, socially and environmentally regenerative business model

• We will establish an advisory board including voices for nature and the next generation (watch this space for some Greenheart developments here!)

• We will implement open hiring for all suitable roles within 6 months

• We will collaborate and coordinate with like-minded partners to make more noise than the fossil fuel lobbies at the next COP

So my challenge to the curators for next year is this: to push the central dialogue faster and harder; allow no vanilla pledges or “how could we”s. We should, as Colin Mayer said, be outraged every time a company makes a profit from harming the environment. We should all ask ourselves whether the world would be better off without our product/service and, if so, make it better.  

In 2025 we need to be hearing what people have done; successes and failures. We need to be channelling the collective energy and knowledge into sharing and celebrating those learnings then proactively filling the gaps.  

Amidst a boiling sea of words, one of stand-out quotes for me came from model turned activist Arizona Muse : “Ask simple, blunt questions. Get simple, blunt answers. Then just do it.”