BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY (4): the power of connection
Clive Wilson
Author of "Leading Beyond Sustainability"; "Leading a Purposeful Life"; "Designing the Purposeful World”; & “Designing the Purposeful Organization"; speaker, facilitator and coach.
The power of connection
In my first article of this series I explored the power of aiming “beyond sustainability”.?Then in the second, I explained my reasons for hope, optimism and confidence for a better world which was brought alive in the third article by describing the “Earth Warriors” already engaged in the pursuit of a better future.?
In this fourth article, I return to the theme I started with and bring the vision of our paradise to life using the six sub-visions, one per article as inspiration. Let’s begin with Connection.?
As I suggested in the first article, in my view, Connection embraces the ideas contained by SDG17 (partnership) but goes way beyond the necessary dialogue to achieve sustainability into the realm of joyful loving connection continually making the world a better place.?See what you think.
Connection
My first sub-vision is of a truly connected world abounding with collaboration, compassion, love and kindness.?This is so easy to visualise as we can see examples of this deep level of connection every day as we go about our lives.?
Collaboration
Humans love to collaborate and we have found so many ways to do this, in families, communities, workplaces, governments, conferences and online.?The list is endless. Even Covid couldn’t stop us connecting.?In fact it gave us opportunity to get online and collaborate beyond borders.?Before the pandemic, my clients would frequently engage me to run workshops for their staff or speak at conferences.?
All of a sudden we were doing things differently.?Advances in technology gave us the opportunity for hundreds of people to connect on webinars and we used ever-improving polling software to gather thoughts on subjects we were exploring. One of my biggest projects of 2021 was working with a global business of over 24,000 staff and about 4,000 leaders.?Our quest was to implement a new way of working for everyone, putting individuals in the “driver’s seat’ of their careers.
For our webinars, we carefully designed processes to engage up to a thousand people at a time.?I would ask questions relating to the changes, seeking feedback through polling software.?I loved watching their responses and ideas come flooding in to word clouds.?As a facilitator I started using new phrases of encouragement, such as “listen with your eyes” asking them to notice the thoughts of others and repeat their words and phrases to make them stand out in the cloud.
This is just one example of many methods that the facilitators at Primeast have been using to achieve engagement in lightening quick time across continents.?
This type of technology will only advance as we move closer to our better future, affording us opportunity to accelerate connection and collaboration on anything we choose.?
Crowd-funding
As people find creative ways of accelerating progress to our paradise, its prospect becomes a reality and our hope grows.?Crowd-funding is a form of connection that is growing at lightning speed.?Take a look at the first ten of 32 statistics in North America alone that you can find here.
Crowdfunding Statistics: Overview
Case study
Not all crowd-funding projects are aimed at delivering our paradise, but many are as this wonderful example shows.
Bob Brown Foundation - Environmental
The work of the Bob Brown Foundation has always been focused on preserving our natural resources, from endangered animals to native rainforests. The work they do is more important now than ever before, with the effects of the climate emergency being felt everywhere.
“Nothing will save us from ourselves but ourselves. We need action for Earth based on the reality that this is each and everyone’s responsibility.”?— Bob Brown
BBF has run over 10 successful crowdfunding campaigns to support various initiatives.?
They ran two crowdfunding campaigns in 2020, with their latter 'Save Australia's Native Forests' being their highest fundraiser to date, finishing with $130,354 raised from 1426 supporters.?
These funds will help them to fund their ongoing efforts including endangered species research, direct frontline action and national advertising campaigns to continue to spread awareness of the cause. This case study and more can be found here.
Collaboration
There have been so many ways that collaboration has moved forward at a pace in recent years.?My current favourite example (or rather examples for there many of them) can be found in the wonderful book “Net Positive” by Paul Polman and Andrew Winston.?Net Positive describes how How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take?
The book contains a plethora of case studies, some from the experiences of Unilever where Paul Polman was CEO and others from elsewhere in the corporate world.?It makes the point that businesses should make sure that they are making positive contributions throughout their operations and supply chains, from cradle to grave, or better still as each stage of a circular economy.?It also affirms that feeling too small to influence suppliers or even nations on matters such as human rights is no excuse for falling short.?The authors suggest that if we feel too small, we should come together with others, even our competitors, to advocate for positive change and the improvements the world is crying out for.
I also admire the spirit of collaboration of the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk.?In a passionate bid to remedy climate change through the advancement of electric vehicles, he put the patents for his battery technology into the public domain to encourage his competitors to embrace the associated opportunities.?
The way we see others, maybe as competitors or collaborators for a better future is key to the advancements we will make.?
Compassion
Compassion is a vital part of connection.?According to Wikipedia, it literally means “to suffer together.” Among emotion researchers, it is defined as?the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another's suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the concepts are related.
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Tragedies will not cease to occur in our paradise.?Indeed, as the impact of climate change increases, we can expect more.?But I look forward to a time, not too far away when we will counter the impacts with the most compassionate and appropriate response.?
We were given a glimpse of what we can do during the pandemic.?Our global response wasn’t enough to prevent millions of deaths but we should at the very least celebrate and mimic the things we got right, such as financial aid to many (but sadly not all) people and vaccine development and sharing.?We just need to do more of the same.
Compassion has been tapped in response to climate tragedies such as this year’s (2022) response to the devastating floods in Pakistan.?I’m always encouraged to contribute in initiatives like the “Big Give” where the UK government doubles donations made by its citizens.?
Love
As I suggested in my first article, Love was originally my big heading, but I chickened out and made it a component of Connection.?At a personal level, as I shared in “Leading a Purposeful Life” (LPL) it is the most powerful value of all for me and many others I know and collaborate with.?The trouble is, for now at least, Love means many things to many people and its choice as a banner heading could be misleading.
Again, according to Wikipedia, Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse, which differs from the love for food. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of a strong attraction and emotional attachment.
Love is considered to be both positive and negative, with its virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection, as "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another" and its vice representing human moral flaw, akin to vanity, selfishness, amour-propre, and egotism, as potentially leading people into a type of mania, obsessiveness or codependency. In its various forms, love acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts. Love has been postulated to be a function that keeps human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.
It is this last piece (in bold italics) that resonates with me.?In LPL I suggest that the purpose of life is:
to participate in the joyful act of creation and to do so in shared consciousness with all that is.
In LPL I also commented that, as my good friend, past CEO of Barrett Values Centre and co-founder of Amcara, Phil Clothier, constantly reminds me, this is Love.
To me love is an energetic field that is alive and purposeful.?It is what connects the whole of life.?
On this basis, we are all together “in love”.
Kindness
Again, according to Wikipedia, Kindness?is a type of behaviour marked by acts of generosity, consideration, rendering assistant or concern for others, without expecting praise or reward in return.
I suggest that when we exist “in love” kindness is a natural way of being and behaving.?We don’t have to look far to witness kindness making a difference in our world.
The culture trip website describes eleven acts of kindness that many of us will remember and which changed the world including:
Take a look this article and make a note of your favourite acts of kindness below.?Perhaps add some others that you know off and which are not listed.?
Dig deep in your memory...
...and see if you can remember some of your own acts of kindness and make your own list.?
I remember visiting the toilets and showers at a holiday resort to discover the walls covered in excrement.?I heard children playing and laughing by the poolside outside.?My first thought was to report the situation but then I thought it would be a horrible job to pass to someone else.?So I simply cleaned the walls myself until they were sparkling clean.?Then I jumped in the shower until I was clean as well and went back to my family.?Until now, I haven’t really shared this story.?I simply offer it as one random act of kindness that I’m proud of.?It didn’t cost me anything other than a few minutes of unpleasant toil.?I’m sure you will have many of your own.?
A little while ago I wrote this article on finding balance and purpose after life ambushes.?In it you will read more stories of kindness arising out of challenging circumstances, including one of a friend who devotes his life to looking after his wife during the advanced stages of early-onset dementia.?
In summary
I know I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg with examples of connection playing out in the world right now.?With encouragement and education, is it too far-fetched to visualise a world where positive connection is the dominant way we relate to each other?
As I've suggested many times:
Every time we notice, encourage and celebrate people who are changing the world, we are changing the world.
As we come to the end of this article, please leave your thoughts and comments below.??