Reactions to the lavish coronation of King Charles III have not been universally positive. This is unsurprising, given that people world-wide are struggling to meet their basic needs and experiencing the early-stage whip-end of climate change. Yet, the monarchy could be relevant in today’s world in 4 powerful ways –

1.     Hold business to account

Unfettered capitalism could be contained by the moderating influence of those with a long-term world view. Most CEO’s are incentivized on short-term gains. The monarchy looks to reign over multi-generations and holds a long-term interest in the sustainability of the country.

Using soft power to hold business to account over the long term allows time for the realisation of the positive effect of regenerative and intergenerational thinking. In addition, leveraging their own considerable asset base as a demonstrator, the Monarchy could look to disinvest, use shareholder power and actively invest into organisations that represent seeds of future prosperity.

Following on, the Kings relationship with Parliament could also serve the people should he use it to support regulation around long-term thinking for UK business and to help the UK step away from personal or embedded short-term interests.

King Charles does this already to some extent, through his support of business coalitions for change (e.g. We Mean Business), the Princes Trust and Duchy Organics. It would be powerful if this was further used as the lens across the Royals supply chain and asset base. Imagine if Buckingham Palace had undergone a green refurbishment? Or if the Kings financial interests were all invested in green, future-facing assets?

This should be core to his continued representation of Britain to prepare the country to survive post-Capitalism and to set it out as a beacon for other nations.

2.     Model reparations

The Crown, as head of the British Empire, benefitted unduly from both colonial excess and slavery. The Empire hollowed out vast swathes of the world for Britain’s benefit and much of the wealth of the Royal Family is based on this extractionism. The Empire detained vast swathes of population, set draconian laws or wiped-out whole populations to exercise control.

Many of these places have never fully recovered and are trapped into debilitating poverty and structural debt. This extractionism continues across the world as resources (e.g., rare earth minerals, oil, human capital, etc.) are taken from developing countries. It is particularly unpleasant where payment for these resources is linked to paying back structural debt.

Reparations are long overdue. King Charles has spoken out against slavery and is funding research into the Crowns role. He could change the fate of many of the countries that served his Empire by eradicating debt, developing structures to fund people out of poverty and lobby to change one-sided trade agreements.

At the very least he could right the wrong of colonial looting through returning the koh-i-noor diamond and other stolen trophies.

3.     Use convening power for good

Not many would refuse an invitation from the King of Britain. While this title still holds some cache, King Charles should use it to bring together different groups to further progressive aims. Given Britain’s role in the origination of the Palestine/Israel conflict, brokering peace there is a good place to start. Similarly, the King could also look to the UK’s buoyant weapon sector and its role in stimulating war across the world. A convening group here to curtail their activities to defence could also support world peace.

There is also a role to pull together coalitions of the businesses that currently make up both the bulk of tax revenue for UK Plc. – and have a disproportionate influence on climate emissions. These are oil & gas and financial services. As a long-term leader for Britain, he could influence them to create transition plans towards a cleaner, more equitable future.

4.     Shift narratives

In relation to the Monarchy, we are not consumers but citizens. This is a welcome reframing of our role as beings with inherent value vs market value. A reframe could enable us to step out of the individualism and separation that characterises this late stage of capitalism and find more meaningful ways to live as connected contributors to society.

There are few institutions with the wealth and reach of the British Monarchy. King Charles can make a considerable difference to the lives of people today and to future generations by deftly wielding his assets and influence. 

Awash with good sustainability intentions – but is that enough? here is a brief user guide to innovation for more profound (and potentially profitable) change.

Call it ESG, regeneration or just good sensible business – this is sustainability’s time to step into the limelight. After cowering behind risk in the back row of any agenda, it is now being allocated a front-seat right next to strategy, by forward-thinking businesses. And that is quite right! Because in this time of escalating environmental and social crisis sustainability will create the conditions for business to survive.

Maybe. Because business won’t survive if it sees sustainability as an add-on to its existing operations. Sure, it will get part of the way there to use this as a risk-lens to interrogate where business has gaps. But filling those gaps isn’t enough. At the least we need a leap of imagination to achieve high standards set for carbon reduction, etc. and – to truly reap the transition rewards – we need to create a new landscape. This means using sustainability as a lens to unleash human ingenuity. To redesign the way business operates – and, in the process – rethink what we value.

This means step back! Step back from a primary focus on the tools of sustainability – including ESG reporting, circular economy, materiality, and SDG’s. Look at the whole picture and work out how to strategically shift to take advantage of an emerging paradigm of a world operating within environmental constraints.

Most of all it means invest in innovation. It is only innovation that will close the gap between where we are now and where the world needs to move towards. Recycling, renegotiating, and rearranging the deck can help an organisation move some way towards a new future, but it won’t do enough to repurpose it for a changing world. The gap is real.

The word innovation can be fluffy for some and feared by others. For us, in this context and this time and for business, it means this:

+ Design a radical strategy:

What does your business need to do and be to at the least remain relevant and preferably benefit in the changing world? How do you put purpose at its core to ensure active alignment of people and possibility to strategy? Can you be bold enough to set an agenda that changes your sector? Can you tell a different story of possibility?

There are some excellent examples of organisations repurposing themselves for a better future. Phillip Morris has performed a pivot on a new-found purpose to turn away from traditional cigarettes, Veolia has reframed its relationship to waste to see it as a resource, Umicore has shifted from extractive mining to processing existing sources. These are all commercial pivots which align them to new world values and opportunities. All will help them build capabilities to compete and resilience to survive.

Recently we worked with property developers to bring together waste, energy and food production to positively shift social outcomes for a region.  We use systems change theory, reinvention methodologies and future valuation models to support business in identifying and understanding valuable options.

+ Invest in innovation:

How far will your business as usual get you towards your goals? Do you have sufficient internal innovation capability? Can you secure funds or use innovative funding mechanisms to support the transformation? Can innovation processes and governance create a safe zone to unite your organisation towards new outcomes?

A thoughtfully designed co-innovation process allowed disparate parts of Interface to come together to meet a shared innovation investment agenda. It showed gaps, overlaps, and united the governance structure to objectively address investment towards a shared strategic direction.  It highlighted resources and capabilities needed to meet strategy. It formed a testing ground for strengthening relationships, influencing perception and building capabilities required to grow the company.

We worked closely with Interface to put this programme into place. We co-defined a simple and effective innovation investment programme using models, structures, and processes from traditional asset investment.

+ Create fertile ground:

How do you effectively engage employees for change? How do you collect and manage ideas generated by employees? How do you find internal entrepreneurs and provide them with tools to support change?

Radical strategy done right can act as an enormous booster for employee engagement. But this will wane unless there is active engagement in co-creating the sustainability journey.  This might be about shifting mindsets through leadership development programmes (and through She Leads Change we’ve worked with Pearson, Nesta, Ellen McArthur and others to build perspectives and capabilities for the future). It may be through two-way communication e.g. creating internal dialogue circles which allow new concepts to be socialised (see xxx). It may be an ambitious programme, like the SABMiller Prosper campaign to uncover internal entrepreneurs globally, give them visibility and resources to be the change from within. It might be through a variety of mission driver sprints to stimulate and create the future.

Having run these and other programmes, it is clear, that any outcome is only as powerful as the degree to which people are brought with on the change journey. Sustainability is a strong rallying cry to engage people across the business to contribute to fresh thinking.

+ Seed generative collaboration:

Where can you work with others to achieve more? Can the multiple parties work together to create a systemic response? What ripple effect could you cause in your sector or beyond? Can you support the formalising of the sustainability agenda through collaboration? Where are cross-organisational conversations needed to promote widespread change?

AB Inbev, Coca-Cola Company, Colgate-Palmolive Company and Unilever are part of a 100+ Accelerator to fund and pilot sustainable innovation in supply chains. In its first three cohorts, the 100+ Accelerator has worked with 70 startups in over 20 countries supporting entrepreneurs to solve sustainability challenges. M&S has put collaboration at the centre of it’s sustainability strategy, convening the sector to solve problems that effect more than one organisation, e.g. they ae a founding member of Ethical Trading Initiative, Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex), Food Network for Ethical Trade (FNET).

We work with multi-stakeholder facilitation techniques including Deep Democracy and World Cafes to surface challenge, foster collaboration and spark ingenuity. This was powerful in supporting the Body Shop, H&M, Estee Lauder and others to seed the idea of a cosmetics collaboration for sustainability. We saw systemic change by bringing together DE&I individuals into a collective impact training programme through She Leads Change. We worked with the Climate Finance Accelerator to bring together governments, funding and climate projects to overcome barriers to investment in climate change.

If you are wanting to not only meet your goals but rethink how you can do this in ways that exponentially increase your business value – please do get in touch. Innovation is the answer.

Among the well-researched high-tech, complex or expensive sustainability solutions suggested by executives on a prestigious development programme, an audacious idea stood out. One person suggested their organisation invest in dialogue circles.

This idea doesn’t come with a huge price tag, it doesn’t necessarily attract attention in a corporate brochure or say to the world ‘look at us lead’ – but it is a powerful tool to transform, align and connect. I’d suggest listening is perhaps the most powerful tool organisations can and should be using to realign and reinvigorate their workforces – to address uncertainty, create a future-facing agenda and to engage employees.

We’ve had a lot of experience with listening at She Leads Change (https://sheleadschange.org/). Our award-winning leadership programme uses structured dialogue as part of every interaction. We have used dialogue for:

• A group of diverse C-suite professionals to assess and grow their leadership potential by exploring critical topics together, including setting boundaries, the role of play and managing change.
• A global not for profit organisation wanting to shift internal culture towards a more beneficiary-centred approach, to help each person understand the limits of their individual paradigms and create a more collective understanding of the world.
• Women from a progressive global publishing business to support them stepping into leadership by exploring together how to expand their self-belief, navigate relationships, create impact and build resilience.
• A large group of sustainability practitioners from around the world to collaborate and explore better ways of addressing the climate crisis during COP through investigating their relationship with time, empathy and nature.

We have learned 4 things are imperative to the success of this work:

1. Clarity of objectives: Dialogues need to be expertly structured against specific aims. It is not enough to put people in a room and hope for the best! For example, if the primary objective is team cohesion all the activities and questions should be directed into this objective. Holding this at the centre of the dialogues allows some flexibility – but also a coherent outcome.
2. Depth of conversation: Dialogue is meaningless unless it comes from the heart. To ‘go there’ people need to feel safe. We embed this into our dialogue programmes in two ways – first we work on the psychological safety of each participant and second we very carefully structure our agendas.

• Psychological safety occurs when each person feels able to be themselves and is created by instilling trust. We do this through setting the tone – sharing from the heart ourselves, recognising and engaging each individual and listening and responding with respect.
• Our agendas take the group through a deepening-process of examining their own understanding, letting go, getting clarity, exploring possibility and integrating their learning. Each part of the agenda is supported by non-traditional learning methods to engage people fully e.g. somatic learning, poetry, games and stories.

3. Appreciation of diversity: Our most successful dialogues occur when we can lift people into a new and better shared reality. To do this we need to bring in diversity. We do this in three key ways:

• First we design our programmes to respond to the diverse needs in the room – how people best like to learn and the varying strengths and weaknesses of participants.
• Second we acknowledge, appreciate and give direct permission for the diversity in the room to surface. This could be gender, age or race but also includes non-visible aspects of diversity e.g. preferred ways of interacting, cultural world-views, etc.
• Third we actively bring in different perspectives – through introducing people from outside the organisation or bringing in innovation methodologies e.g. future-thinking. We’ve done this through inviting people from different geographies, different sectors or through creating an exhibition showcasing futuristic products/services around the dialogues.

4. Plan for outcomes: Any organisation running dialogues needs to have a clear route for all that surfaces during these dialogues – both good and bad. While dialogue can have value in and of itself, participants generally want to know ‘what next’. They will need to know how their ideas will be used or how their new-found relationships or ways of working will be protected or expanded in the traditional organisation. There needs to be a way of handling unexpected outcomes e.g. the group who thought the sustainability plan was not progressive enough…

It is attractive to reach out for the next best thing (e.g. AI, big data, vertical farming) or to erect a big organisational banner (e.g. Net Zero) – and these things are worth exploring. However, if you really want to tap into the potential of your people, if you really want to create lasting impact and an organisation that is resilient to knocks – try listening. Listening will surface fresh ideas, socialise new ways of working and create stronger internal connections. Listen.

If you want to know more about the power of this simple tool to transform your organisation, please do get in touch with us on hello@sheleadschange.org.

What makes a sustainability initiative good? This list of ‘Most innovative corporate social responsibility initiatives’ from Fast Company was set-out because they are ‘reshaping industries and culture’. Except they aren’t.

The initiatives listed will positively impact specific topics (e.g. inclusivity), local areas (i.e. USA) or meet emerging client needs (e.g. climate calculators). All of them will be positive for the organisation brand and help employees feel good. And to some extent they might give fresh perspectives to industry and influence USA culture. But none of them will achieve the degree of change necessary to meet the challenges of climate change, resource constraints and an inequitable world.

To truly reshape industries and culture – business needs to commit beyond ideas that are good things to support brand image. It needs to realign its strategy, purpose and operating model to a new planetary reality. This is not only important for meeting the challenges facing humanity but for the longer term relevance of the organisation.

For example, Microsoft is one of the ‘Top Ten’ for its investment into providing a data set on disability. This is is an excellent and necessary initiative. However, with all of its resources and reach – what could Microsoft do to radically impact the way we humans do business? How could it shape its organisation to provide solutions for a world that needs to operate within natural boundaries and support social justice?

Microsoft could shift the way money flows out of poor communities by rejigging its business model. It could focus its organisation on developing tools that serve the planet by shifting is purpose. It could lead the tech sector into longer-term relevance by reimaging itself as a social change organisation and becoming a B-corp. These would really reshape the technology industry and change culture.

To have significant impact and long-term relevance, brand enhancing initiatives are not enough. It is in the interests of organisations and the people within them to change their version of doing business to align to a vision of a more just, sustainable world.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90846914/most-innovative-companies-corporate-social-responsibility-2023

I’ve been lucky enough to work with the wonderful Dina Epifanova, Head of Sustainability at Tetra Pak and her team in Moscow. Here she shares a how system change tools and mind-sets are giving her more muscle where it matters.

Why is system change valuable to you?

If you want to make a real step change in sustainability, addressing complex social and economic issues, you need to have a strategic mindset and work cross-borders. Influencing factors in our globalizing world goes far beyond a local or isolated context. To succeed in this environment, we need to adopt and use a systematic approach in our daily routine.

When you use system change frameworks, you harness greater potential and leverage to reshape the things of concern. To give an example, I applied the framework of ‘Landscape, Regime and Niche’ levels of system change to our recycling development challenge. This brought new perspectives: for instance, at the landscape level, we looked at whether the communities were ready to implement separate waste collection. Earlier, we had considered it as a communications task to engage people with new ways of treating their household waste: challenging and potentially expensive in terms of effort and investment, but still manageable. With the ‘landscape level’ lens, we realized it is not that simple: you need to consider whether communities wish to change their habits. This is not a manageable object, but a variable one, that influences and even determines the probability of your success in change management here. So, now, when analyzing where we should start deploying separate waste collection in Moscow, we compare the districts, based on their communities’ readiness to sort out waste. We have some data, available from waste management companies, that reveals where there is a lot of potential, due to the social characteristics of the given population, that unexpectedly have huge amplitude in one and the same city. 

I also had an unexpected and valuable insight: just how much attention a system changer should ideally pay to his own role and personal development as the driver of the change. This has brought me to another level of self-reflection and system change capability. I’ve also found this useful for other spheres, such as self life-coaching. 

I believe corporates should start a more decisive walk towards this kind of knowledge and skills.

How else does system change feature in your work today? 

Being Head of Sustainability at Tetra Pak, I face system challenges in three major areas: climate change commitments, Forest Stewardship Council-certification deployment, and post-consumer waste recycling. For all of these challenges, we can no longer afford to create ‘faster horses’ – to refer to Henry Ford’s metaphor: we absolutely need new ways of moving forward.

 How does Tetra Pak approach system change?

At Tetra Pak, we realise very well that the modern world is changing rapidly, and we have consciously focused on change management capabilities and tools. System change complements this approach, and is crucial to meeting our sustainability goals.

The first thing on the agenda today is to actively search for the right allies to drive environmental issues at full speed. Our indisputable benefit here is our long-term approach, which has been always in the company DNA. Our Scandinavian corporate culture complements our sustainability efforts. We are ready to lead the process, rather than wait for requests from our customers or consumers. To achieve success in any systemic change, someone needs to take a risk and become a moving force to lead the process of change.

 What is the appetite for system change in the regions where you work?

The level of societal maturity affects the appetite and need for system change and a sustainability agenda. I work in the markets of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. Here, a company seeking to advance sustainability faces two major challenges. One is that local markets and infrastructure are not yet at the level of the advanced consumer when it comes to sustainability. A buyer can face frustrations when wanting to find out if a carton is FSC-certified or not, or find themselves pushing for separate waste collection.

On the other hand, now is a great time to push for this kind of change in the region, as most of these countries find themselves currently in big shifts. This means consumer mindsets are moving and prepared for the change, with sustainability no exception. 

 How ready do you feel various countries in the region are to embrace system change?

All countries here are now going through major historical system changes, in the scale of decades or even centuries. This, on the one hand, makes the societies quite adapted and ready for changes, but on the other, if recent changes were too painful, it can have an opposite effect, resulting in huge demand for stability.

We will see, for instance, in Ukraine – a country of believers in European values and political practices – readiness for change is high. In Russia, on the other hand, the changes that the country has gone through in the recent decades were so painful that the majority of the population is keen to keep stability.

The paradox is that years of rather short-term decisions, especially in economics, have brought Russia to the point where system change is critically needed to keep any equilibrium: without it, wider changes will inevitably catch the country unprepared.

 What ways forward do you see for Russia? 

Even though the appetite for system change here is the lowest in the region discussed, you can nevertheless easily find two powerful sources of system change here. The first is the government: the political elite understands clearly the need for change – satellites fall down, weapons are not that good, economic reserve has been used and eaten, political ideas have up short too: take Syria for instance. As in Mikhail Korostikov’s “honey-badger doctrine” the current political strategy is very effective, but works for survival, not for growth.

The good news is that the government puts this need for change into action. One example is appointing a 35-year-old Maxim Oreshkin to be the Minister of Economic Development, with a personal assignment from Mr. Putin to implement effective KPI-based frameworks to raise the professional level of management and, if successful, to scale the practice to other ministries.

Another source of system change in Russia is the new generation, which hasn’t the trauma of the 1990s’ hunger and criminal years, and which now lives in the completely new reality of the digital world, with no sense of limitations. Any serious barrier that they will face later will be absolutely not understandable and not acceptable to them! These young and free-mind people will be big change drivers: we only need to wait some 10-15 years.

As Vladimir Trofimchuk, Trade Policy Department Consultant at Eurasian Economic Commission, puts it: each country of the former Soviet Union block is now shaping its national identity and has to refresh its understanding of its political allies. All of them are facing now changes in politics, economics and even religion (for instance, the rise of Islam in Azerbaijan). This is creating a different appetite for system change, depending on the specific situation in a separate country. What the different countries have in common is that the whole region is today in tectonic system change process and this is a huge opportunity knocking.

Earlier this week I spent time at the Ellen McArthur Foundation on the Isle of Wight. Here I was interviewed by the wonderful Joe Iles as part of the Disruptive Innovation Festival.

Below, you’ll find thoughts on how to influence stakeholders, how to see differently, frameworks for change and examples of excellence.

Do you have any good business riddles to share?

More info on the Festival here.