We need leaders to lead

Thoughts and questions from Climate Week: Why systems change for sustainability has to start with transforming our leadership models.

Reimagining growth panel during Climate Week NY with Sarah Kent, Rachel Arthur, Beth Jensen, Joe Murphy and Sandrine Dixson-Declève

How much of what we have to change before us comes down to a leadership challenge? That’s what I’ve been thinking about all week while at New York Climate Week. We know the problem, we have the solutions, now we just need the bravery to introduce them, to back them, and perhaps fundamentally, to rework the rules and incentives of the system to enable them. 

But as Sarah Kent wrote for The Business of Fashion in her wrap-up from New York yesterday: “Fashion executives are grappling with a sluggish market, geopolitical uncertainty and disruptive new technologies that are diverting attention from climate risks, which are hard to value, often cost money and frequently deliver intangible returns.” A report she referenced from Bain & Co shows sustainability is accordingly slipping down the priority list for corporate leaders.

I was speaking on a panel with Sandrine Dixson-Declève of the Club of Rome on Wednesday who reminded us all that even CEOs, CFOs and politicians are ultimately human beings; that they too have to go home and look at their kids, their grandkids. Our task, she said, has to be working out what will enable that level of emotional connection with what is happening. 

I recognise that is significantly more complex to undertake in reality, but it reminded me of what Paul Polman, author, thought leader and former Unilever CEO, asked everyone during the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen this year: “Do you care?” His argument was that unlocking our own human consciousness is central to systems change.

The fact you’re reading this likely means you’re already on that page. So here are some of the other questions I heard about this topic this week, as well as some of the ones I’ve been asking about it myself…

• If we need to rewrite the rules and incentives of the system, that in of itself has to be done by people. We created that system, so who and where are the leaders (literally) who will redesign it? What does that scale of leadership play actually look like?

• How do we get leaders across the board to confront these truly hard topics - the ones that question not just the product or the processes, but the business model at large, the measures of success, indeed the economic system itself? How do we speak that language so it resonates and so it lands? 

• How can we support leaders to not only be brave (e.g. in addressing the above), but to be protected so they don’t just get pushed out by shareholders or by boards when they take action or make decisions that go against the typical business measure of success?

• How do we find the emotional story, the piece that resonates with each individual leader to bring them to the table on this if they’re not yet here - what will actually resonate and connect? What will enable them to stop ‘othering’ the issues (seeing them as unrelated to themselves or their loved ones) and bring it to their own personal space?

• How do we tie all of these conversations to their pay, or to the incentives that sit alongside their pay - is that ultimately the greatest motivator? What does a world look like where business is about less and their salaries have to go down? (Context here: CEO pay in the USA has increased by 1460% since the 1970s, taking inflation into account, while typical worker pay has grown by just 18.1% in the same time period).

• How do we do this in a world where there is so much money being ploughed into lobbying for the opposite of the system shifts (e.g. policies) we’re trying to see introduced? (Note the barrier this caused for the likes of The Fashion Act this year). Why do we allow this as a practice and what would it take to ban it?

• If we know that gender equality and bringing more female leaders to the table will help - how do we sustain them once they get there? Women internalise more, we feel the burden of climate anxiety more, and we burnout more; so how do we provide that sort of support to those we put into positions of power who are vulnerable to what it might bring?

• How do we each influence these sorts of things without actually being in a place of leadership ourselves? Or how do we ensure that doing so doesn’t jeopardise our jobs, or the access that our jobs might afford us?

• How do we get those leaders not on this page whatsoever to be in the room when we’re having these conversations in the first place so as to educate them about them; how can we get them to even show up? 

What other questions do you have?