Politician with TRUE-GRIT please stand UP NOW
David Whiting
HSE Culture Specialist: Helping Businesses Identify, Connect & Engage with Safety Leadership and Culture
Real resilience: There is something to be said for resilience in leadership contests. This doesn’t mean lack of conviction or not caring about the outcome (or those who supported you in your progress to leadership).
Leaders need resilience as more commonly there are challenges that can throw off the weaker players, or decisions for which many leaders take a beating. Irrespective of who wins the election, the role of Prime Minister requires resilience to weather the storms and display strength in hardship. People want their leaders and champions to be strong and stand their ground, especially when the going gets tough.
Absence of purpose: Most would-be leaders claim they have “special” qualities that their rivals lack and sometimes there’s an initial critical buzz about a leader’s latest offerings, but it won’t last if the purpose is ill-conceived, unsustainable or doesn’t fulfil majority’s needs. It’s no good claiming these times are “exciting” when the electorate mood is dispirited and anxious; vision and purpose need to speak to the zeitgeist.
Come election time, voters will need to gauge which leader is capable of revitalising, not “gaming” for votes. Sadly, too many leaders and politicians end up expert gamers. Fewer tread the path of true leadership, though we all have the potential to grow into this role.
The last few Governments appear to been clueless about sustainability and to-date I have not seen one politician – Who stands up and says what it we need to do, so we have to encourage people to believe they can make a difference, as politicians dither and terms rules supreme in our capital markets and Brexit looms ever closer.
“Tribalism says: ‘I can’t raise my hand. I can’t say I’m worried about this because my beliefs about the causes, impacts, risks, and cures to climate change vary wildly by political ideology, making it tricky to reach out (OH NO - I will lose Votes)
We should be rewarding someone for being bold and brave on climate, not punishing them – They would get my Vote.”
What we need to do is build aspirational armies of consumers who no longer feel the need to get cynical at the idea of "small actions, big difference".
John Th?gersen, professor of economic psychology at the Aarhus School of Business and Social Science in Denmark: "One of the reasons why people are passive is that they feel no one else is doing anything and when it comes to climate change, your contribution is so small it doesn't really matter.
What matters is what other people do. “If we don't perceive that many people are also saving energy, then we feel a bit of a sucker because we are losing something without helping the problem."
While the world seems to be in turmoil on just about every front, those watching the environmental management space carefully, can recognize some clear multi-year trends above the noise:
We’re moving from a linear economy to a circular one; data management, transparency and reporting are such that we can no longer rely on one-off spreadsheets and ad-hoc studies; and the complexity of issues we’re currently addressing requires a business language that broadens the discussion beyond hard-core environmental professionals.
2015: UN goals to end poverty, protect the planet & ensure prosperity for all as part Sustainable development agenda. and each goal has specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years and goals to be reached, everyone needs to do their part: governments, the private sector, civil society and people like you.
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
Do you want to get involved? You can start by telling everyone about them. They have also put together a list of actions that you can take in your everyday life to contribute to a sustainable future – Lazy person’s guide
The so-called global financial crisis is in fact a blessing for humanity. While it is causing significant dislocation, it is bringing into sharp relief the idiocy of our consumer culture and the un-sustainability of our economic model. It is a blessing because the sooner we face up to this, the less suffering there will ultimately be.
A short sharp shock can help us to wake up.
Politicians and sustainability agenda
- What progress will be made post the Paris (Cop 21) Agreement?
- Will Brexit unravel environmental directives and impact the British countryside?
- In the past, sustainability agenda were largely driven by events far beyond the reach of even the most powerful politicians.
Current millennium events: (Just a few – I am sure you can think of others)
2001 - 9/11 attacks bring the USA to move towards energy independence 2003 - The European deadly heatwave 2004 / 2005 - Indian Ocean tsunami - Hurricane Katrina 2006 / 2009 - First Avian Flu human-to-human transmission - Swine flu pandemic 2010 - BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill - Russian wheat exports - triggers Arab Spring 2011 – 5yr Syria drought & civil war/refugee crisis - Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster 2012 - Superstorm Sandy 2015 - Volkswagen emissions fraud 2015 - Port of Tianjin explosions in China 2016 - Zika virus spreads across Americas - Sioux halt Oil Pipeline at Standing Rock 2017 Global Risks Report https://www3.weforum.org/docs/GRR17_Report_web.pdf
Indeed, many of these events originate or are exacerbated by poor policies. A good number of them are symptoms of systemic issues. But their outcome are a powerful reminder that in our interaction with nature, we should keep our hubris at bay. It is also a reminder to the advocates of science and sustainability that no matter where political winds are blowing, they should keep their course - environmental impacts won’t simply subside because an important program was defunded or a popular politician denies science.
I recognise this observation hardly meets the definition of “comforting”, but it should serve us all to raise our heads above the parapet, chart the long course ahead and proceed with confidence. An agenda of sustainability, clean energy and resource conservation is as relevant now as ever before.
Such cost constraints leave no room for big-ticket projects — no large strategic sustainability reviews, no broad market studies or product development efforts and certainly no major data-management endeavours that would allow sustainability programs to take a long view, programs are constrained to simply meeting the regulatory requirements by mostly local/national authorities and "random" requests by their strategic clients.
Over time, many manufacturers have become complacent with tactical approaches, hiring and appealing to staff with engineering or operational background that’s finding it harder and harder to keep their heads above water on the more strategic sustainability needs. The "big picture" performance metrics coming in with brand-name questionnaires are all too often met with cynicism, panic or indifference.
Technical staff do not have the time, resources or day-to-day mind-set to deliver "big picture" pivots when most of its tasks require short-term resourcefulness. They need to keep production of the next batch delivered on time and safely, and the 10-year plan falls by the wayside, lacking context that’s relevant to the company’s competitiveness. Questionnaires and audits become yet another compliance challenge, rather than a strategic call for action.
"Mid-tier manufacturers' executives find it hard to justify costly external help, other than for the most pressing compliance-related requirements and unfortunately, many in the sustainability arena still view information technology as a mere technical contribution."
But as software eases the data collection necessary for tracking sustainability metrics, the timeliness and quality of data also will improve, enabling decision makers to use these metrics with greater confidence.
Cloud computing, "big data" and state-of-the-art user interfaces have come together to disrupt multiple business activities from straightforward customer relations management and dynamic pricing to lean manufacturing and smart logistics. It’s now time for software to eat corporate sustainability too.
Unfortunately, many in the sustainability arena still view information technology as a mere technical contribution. But a study of recent history suggests software soon will release the shackles on sustainability innovation and competitiveness, allowing mid-tier players that are currently prevented from entering the game because of the high entry costs to disrupt the market.
Rather than being victims they choose to take control, with the view that:
“By shifting our mind-set we can actually recognise the coming post-cheap oil era as an opportunity rather than a threat, and design the future low carbon age to be thriving, resilient and abundant – somewhere much better to live than our current alienated consumer culture based on greed, war and the myth of perpetual growth.”
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Sustainable Development Goals - 17 goals to transform our world. In Europe alone, 6,000 companies are expected to publish sustainability reports in 2018, in compliance with the EU Directive on non-financial reporting. Many smaller suppliers & mid-tier manufacturers will now join this trend with an affordable solution for professionals and non-professionals alike.
Measuring Global Uncertainty: The majority of SHE professionals find ourselves working with organisations that may not be up to par with our values and understanding of safety and sustainability and it is a constant optimisation of priorities and balance between risks, urgent needs & realistic opportunities so processing information sustainability executives must prepare for a period of global uncertainty.
Maintaining visibility - key to making rapid, fact-based decisions, especially in heat of events, when multiple distractions may occur. Irrational politics, celebrations of inconsequential progress and fashionable analytics come and go. In sustainability - know you’re KPIs monitor progress at all times.
Horizon Tracking - track and focus on the most fundamental trends. In our field we’ve spent too much time rating aspirations, policies and procedures. Time to focus on performance and net impact.
Risk Matrix – What are the real threats are out there heading your way? Threats can come from many unseen directions the frequency of natural disasters and catastrophic pollution events suggest it will likely be a completely different playing field very soon.
Intelligent Positioning - Early positioning and commitment to fact-based action increases your chances to gaining early commitment to positive impact, product and process redesigns may be a precondition to winning new business.
I believe that for companies to successfully meet the challenges ahead they will need a system that helps navigate their social and environmental efforts towards gains in resilience and competitiveness.
Artificial Intelligence: Technology around us has changed, allowing real-time alerts and automation to cover for acute exposures and minimise their overall share of our impact on the environment. In addition, we’re dealing with a new set of system-based problems, where the name of the game is managing the “load” of pollutants being released or the “flow” of materials or energy being transferred from one location to another.
Information and its processing are key: Using sophisticated cloud-computing and using artificial intelligence to horizon scan dramatically reduces burden of data management tasks while also expanding visibility for a better understanding the rapidly unfolding reality and in parallel consolidates critical internal & external data to provide actionable perspective on risk management, benchmarking and strategic sustainability goals.
Climate change is a good case in point: At the most fundamental and global scale, this is an issue of material imbalance — where new industrial-era flows of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere cannot be negated by the natural uptake of carbon in vegetation, oceans and geological cycles.
Periodic cycles: These cycles will not be able to fully prevent buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere in foreseeable future relevant for the next few generation and also, the corporate scale, climate change cannot be beaten simply by setting a threshold that must not be exceeded.