Leadership in a World in Transition

Midway to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we have covered only 12% of the distance, admitted leaders of the G20 in 2023. Therefore, change must be accelerated to make it 7 times faster, beginning now, to achieve the goals. The global climate is changing much faster than human efforts to slow it down. Scientists have calculated that the rate of reduction of carbon emissions for each percent of GDP growth must be 5/7 times faster now.

?Trying to solve problems by working harder with the same type of thinking that has caused the problem is madness, Albert Einstein (and others) have said. We need radically new ways of thinking and radically new ways of acting to save the world. India’s Prime Minister called on G20 leaders to change the paradigm of growth to a human-centric model, not the prevalent GDP-centric model of growth.

?I shared some insights about new ways of thinking, acting, and being, explained in my book, ?Shaping the Future: How to Be, Think, and Act in the New World?(A Guide for Systems Leaders), with leaders at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru on 9th January 2024. In which I also critique the fundamentals of economics. I also explain alternatives to the current top-down models of organization with which we are trying to produce impact on scale.

?Top-down solutions for climate change and improving the livelihoods of all citizens are not working. Nor are they bringing about peace in the world. Rather they are creating more inequities and causing more violence.

?The new paradigm we must adopt for global problem-solving is: local systems solutions cooperatively developed by communities for solving the complex, systemic, global problems.

Thinking

The world is a complex system formed by inter-connected, environmental, economic, social, and political forces. The challenge for leaders at all levels in this system, from the local, through the national, onto the global, is to induce the system to change itself to make progress more sustainable and inclusive. Systems leaders must have the right model of a complex system before they make policies to change any part of it. Otherwise, fixes to one part of it, like growing the economy, can backfire to make the condition of the environment worse and increase societal inequities—which is the problem with the present model of economic growth.

Complex technological machines, such as space rockets and airliners, can be designed by an expert outside the system. However, neither the economy, nor human society, is a machine. A socio-economic system is a self-adaptive system. Moreover, the brains of changemakers of socio-economic systems are inside the systems they want to change; unlike designers of technological products, whose brains are outside the products they design. Therefore, real world systems changers cannot be entirely objective about the world: because they are products of the world they are trying to change. With their inherently incomplete understanding of the world, they can harm the world with their hubris that their new technologies can overpower Nature. ?

Acting

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Indeed, this has created the geo-political crisis in the new millennium, bringing the world into another world war. The UN institutions, set up to prevent any more wars after the horrific second World War in the 20th century, have failed.

The paradigm of globalization driving technological and economic progress since the 1990s has been One Economy, One Earth, One Future—that the world is one economy, and everyone on it will benefit, by increasing the size of the economy with free flows of finance and trade across nation’s boundaries. We cannot carry on with this model any longer.

India promoted an alternative model at the G20:? One Family, One Earth, One Future (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam). Human beings are not cogs in a global economy. They are members of a global family. Relationships within a family are not economic transactions. They are shaped by mutual trust between older and younger generations and amongst weaker and stronger members. New models of organization must be propagated, designed on the forms of families, not corporations; and with principles of cooperation, not competition—which is the prevalent model for economic progress.

Being

“Be the change you want to see in the world”, Gandhiji said. Not: become what your corporation, or government, wants you to be, to fit you into its ways of working for fulfilling its’ own purpose. Which, for business corporations, is the selfish purpose of increasing the profits of its shareholders. ?

Know what you care about deeply. Think of the impact of your policy and decision on the poorest persons you know—how will it benefit their lives, Gandhiji said. And not: how will it improve my life and increase my wealth.

Leaders

A leader is she (or he) who takes the first steps towards what she cares most deeply about, and in ways that others wish to follow (not, are told to follow).

We can, and must become leaders of change who helps others, wherever we are in the world, or whatever level we are in an organization.

1.???? Look deep inside yourself. What do you care about most? What is the change you want to see in the world?

2.???? Look at the world with curiosity. Why is it working the way it is? Listen to people who have different views than yours. Why do they believe in what they do?

3.???? Finally, what are the steps you could take, here and now, to make the world better for others around you, mindful of their impacts in the future? How can you make non-violent ripples of change that will grow into a wider movement for change?

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