A Bunch of Firsts in the West....

Vulnerability, accountability, and the push to move past all the feels…

Last night we held our first SEVENTEENx event in Perth with a highly engaged audience and panel of speakers from a range of industries and experience.? As our 3rd stop of now atruly Australian tour , I’m sitting in Perth airport in my now almost habitual SEVENTEENx personal debrief of all that happened and lessons I can personally take from the speakers on stage last night.

As with most events, I had a key learning with Perth, however this time, it doubled down and there were a couple of major takeaways from talks that really resonated with me.

Before I get into that though, I’ll set the scene. Perth was a “first” , which was exciting but also a little uneasy, as it’s hard to remove the ego from a project like this where all eyes are on you for the first time. The morning of consists of a bunch of “what if” thoughts, most often on the negative, to push the blood pressure up. It’s funny how our “what ifs” aren’t “what if it’s amazing” … human nature I guess; preparing for self preservation, managing risk etc etc..

Ok, to back to the event. As I said, a first, and built on partnerships locally with our headline partners Edith Cowan University (School of Business & Law + ECU City Campus as a joint support); and the venue SBDC; both providing huge support to get the event to town. Kind of feel like this is a test run for remote event management for Europe in 2023.

We ended up with 8 speakers! Still only 6 keynotes; however 2 of them double acts! (another first).. there were 2 PHDs on stage, decades of experience, life experience , research, tech, and Asteroids! … yes Asteroids all funnelling our audience into a mix of inspiration, thought leadership, appreciation, a bunch of laughs … but also a clear , collective agreement, that it’s not enough.

Lesson #1: Accepting, acknowledging and OWNING the reality that we’re not perfect; and that’s how we move forward and become great.

Ben and Deejay from Beerfarm gave us an engaging duo talk on their business model down in Margaret River (and yes, brought some beer for us too). Their model is pretty bloody good to be honest. A great case study of how we can embed our impact INTO our business rather than an afterthought or a “give”. From the focusing on their responsible production and supply chain, the land they’re on, their by product, their people, the energy us. There is a well-constructed and clearly designed circular model to their business.

One thing that stood out for me though and was recognised by everyone else in the room; was Deejay pointing out where they were falling short on some of their sustainability and even going backwards. WOW.. a CSO of a Sustainable Beer company standing on stage and pointing our where they are falling down. WHAT! (another first) – bit like Eminem at the end of 8 mile.

I think there is real strength and credit due to those who own their shortcomings within their work. Because it’s owning that reality of what is REAL where we get true authenticity, and belief that it won’t always be that way. That the work will get done, and the needle will move. Humble leaders attract inspired people who want to contribute and are ready to go into battle with you. But it also opens up the opportunity for innovation and collaborationfor bold solutions. Humble leaders who know where they really are, are ready and willing to work with people and empower their community to come with them on the journey.

Kudos Deejay and Ben and the team at Beer Farm.

The 2nd ?lesson of the night, was a bit more of a combination from everyone, from Julian talking about working on ourselves every day, Jemma and trust, Judy and Nickey on the next generation, Adam and asteroids and David on putting the ACT in IMPACT…?

Lesson # 2: We can’t talk and wait.. we have to make our impact + purpose habitual, and we have to do it better. Adam from EY summed up his talk (about Asteroids) with the reality is none of us are good enough, and we need to get past the high fives and good feels (especially in the sustainability sector) and get better and faster as a civilisation. The reality is, (and this hit home for me as the producer of our event; as I captured this lesson) that high fives and congratulations are about as good for things like climate change and inequalities in the world as are “hopes and prayers” for the families of gun violence in US Schools. We need to push past the ‘feels’ and force more action. (perhaps I’m acknowledging where SEVENTEENx is falling short… for now)

There is absolutely a place to celebrate the wins, and to use those to inspire action.. but we have to push past those feels and create very clear pathways from talk to action. Otherwise… it’s just hot air right? So our responsibility as the SEVENTEENx community grows is to ensure we are connecting our ecosystem to action through collaboration. #sdg17 for the win.

SEVENTEENx exists to connect the business community to collaborate for meaningful ACTION for the Global Goals. OUR evolution of our model is to provide a platform for these lessons to extend out, to manage our expectations, to encourage our community to know where they are short, and how to take action.

Take Action.. that might just be our tag line for 2023. Because without action story telling is just that…

Much to do from 2022.