Time to shine!

 “If not us, who? If not now, when?” ~ John F. Kennedy

Like many millions of people, I was shocked by the result of the US presidential elections yesterday. That afternoon, I felt the same as I did on the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, anger, fear, disbelief, sadness, disgust, a need to not be alone, etc. The many overwhelming emotions that short circuited my ability to think resulted in me stuck in front of social media (it was TV back then), like a zombie.

Obviously, an event of that importance, with potential impacts of such magnitude, has the potential to challenge your worldviews. Given my deep humanistic values, it certainly challenged mine, leaving me to wonder if my efforts in building a social business and fighting climate change made any sense.

“Wise men don’t judge. They seek to understand.” ~ Wei Wu Wei

After a night of sleep, came the time for understanding. I read dozens of editorials and blog posts, progressively sharpening my understanding of the social dynamic and leadership patterns at play. Many of the recurrent observations revolved around the inability of democratically elected governments to create inclusive and sustainable societies for their people to live happy and fulfilling lives. This is tough when you consider the alternatives. 

As I write this post, I’m still trying to make sense of my own purpose and to assess its very relevance.

I’m convinced that social change requires cross system leadership. There is no single organisation, or even constituent group, that can drive systemic change by themselves. In New Zealand, we are trying to create a national movement to accelerate the transition to a zero emission economy and one of our grounding principles is that this movement can only be initiated and nurtured by a coalition of cross system leaders who will mutually reinforce one another and create a strong yet balanced force for change. If no single constituent group, no matter how powerful, is able to drive positive systemic change, how could it drive negative systemic change?

In functioning interconnected systems, there is no such thing as a single point of failure. When some of the connections fail, others take over and the signal finds its way to be successfully transmitted. All it takes, is for the remaining connections to absorb a greater share of the signal.

I find that analogy useful to regain hope: the system is not down. We’re just experiencing the failure of one of its major nodes which poses a challenge: How can the rest of the constituent groups – businesses, academics, NGOs, and the few governments that are still governed by leaders – step up and ensure that our combined efforts do more than compensate the expected loss of leadership from the US in many areas?

This is a challenge for each and every one of us. How can we raise our standards and our expectations of ourselves and each other in terms of positive impact on our societies and dare I say… humanity? How can each of us, and particularly leaders from across the system, hold a larger space, beyond the current remits of their formal responsibilities?

In the US, Michele Obama was inviting her people to “go high when they go low”. In Germany, Angela Merkel is one of the few political leaders to have put her values before her countries’ commercial interest in her congratulation to the president elect. In New Zealand, Rod Drury, CEO of Xero, just tweeted a beautiful invitation to inclusiveness.

I’ll be going to bed with that question tonight, for myself and for my clients.