Who’s shaping the future?

Escaping the rear view mirror trap: Crafting a sustainable future beyond reporting

‘A great paradox of modern life is that despite unprecedented efficiency, despite the centuries of inventions to save us time, we have less time than ever. We are the first culture in history to be so poor that millions of us cannot attend to the most precious, intimate moments of life. That poverty of the sacred is the result of the obsession with the measurable.’ Charles Eisenstein

Who’s shaping the future??

We’re all familiar with the alphabet soup of sustainability standards and directives that now abound.

We’ve gnashed our teeth about how to resource the growing demands for reporting – while also understanding the need for transparency and interoperability across standards to help us track and drive the changes that are most needed.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve watched the fallout as SBTi announced plans to allow the use of carbon credits in their Scope 3 guidance, prompting employee and stakeholder activism and a raft of commentary about the role of standard-setting in reducing ambiguity and delivering robust science-based guardrails that offer hope for a just transition.?

The high precision rear view mirror

As I come up for air, I am struck by just how much energy we’re investing in this high precision rear view mirror, and how this compares to the time we’re spending on shaping the future.

Make no mistake, this is not a plea to roll back on the reporting frameworks that have been so diligently developed – and will undoubtedly continue to evolve over time.

It’s more of an honest look at where we’re all facing. And to me, we’re facing backwards. We’re crying over spilt milk. The proverbial horse has not only bolted, its currently running wild across country, while talented, visionary, purposeful people are busy building more intricate theories and data points about who left the gate unlocked.

"Spending on sustainability reporting exceeds spending on sustainability innovation by 43%" (IBM March 2024)

Every day I’m meeting knackered sustainability professionals who tell me that between reporting and fire-fighting and re-winning the sustainability business case (at the behest of yet another new leader who doesn’t get it or believe in it) there is simply no time to:

• Re-imagine the future.
• Collaborate with others to achieve more than just incremental change.
• Get different parts of the business to interact in new ways around our shared challenges.
• Invite Executive Boards to apply their vast knowledge and experience to genuinely build towards more regenerative and future-proof business models.

Examples of progress to celebrate

We know it’s possible too, with some celebrated examples of progress:

1. Timberland’s partnerships with the Savory Institute to build a more regenerative leather supply chain and more recently with Terra Genesis International to build the world’s first regenerative rubber supply system for footwear shows the way.
2. EdenLab client Danone is also leading the way as it prepares to source 100% of the ingredients produced in France from regenerative agriculture by 2025, and in doing so is protecting soils, empowering farmers and promoting animal welfare.

But if we’re being honest, the number of businesses operating in truly regenerative ways is still woefully behind the curve.

Most of us are still struggling to get beyond ‘Sustainability 1.0’ which focuses on minimising the negative impacts of our businesses on the environment and society, while maintaining (or increasing) current levels of resource use.

And yet, we all know that something’s gotta give.?

Investing in Pioneers and Communities

The Berkana Institute’s Two Loop model is an inspiring outlook on systems change, which acknowledges the need to hospice all the parts of a dying system that no longer serve us, while making way for new and emergent models of doing and being.

Critically it shows that whilst we must attend to what’s happening here and now, we must also have an eye on the future.

And we must start investing in pioneers and communities of practice that can help us imagine, design and build what will replace all that we must leave behind if we are to truly deliver a just transition.?

More time shaping the future

When we translate this to the role for business, it’s clear that we need to be devoting so much more of our time to shaping the future – of our business, our society and our planet.

It calls for a radical reassessment of how we use our time, investment and the privilege of our roles to be genuine change makers:

• To live up to sustainability job titles – by seeing the long-term sustainability of people and planet as our key priority.
• To devote resources (time and money) to design and build new value propositions that will hold a decade from now or a half century from now.
• To avoid being mesmerised by the rear-view mirror, where the work is already done and our influence is limited.?

I’d love your thoughts on this

Q. How much of your time is spent designing the future?

Q. How much time spent on more than just incremental change?

Q. What can we do to solve this?

Want to start looking forwards?

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