Greenbacks Versus Going Green – What’s A Leader To Do?
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Greenbacks Versus Going Green—What’s A Leader To Do?

Greenbacks Versus Going Green—What’s A Leader To Do?

by Ginny Whitelaw. Originally published on Forbes.com

Not long ago, I was part of a team asked to bring a nature-inspired leadership program to the top leaders of a highly successful company. This was to be a program in what I’ve written about and teach as “perma leadership”, that is, a way to connect, reimagine, energize and realize a thriving future. This Big Company wanted to future-proof their leaders for disruptions ahead. They loved the idea of drawing inspiration from nature as mentor and model, as well of a source of resilience, but as we got into designing the program and how to prepare leaders for it, we hit a wall with internal stakeholders. They did not want to upset these leaders with a pre-read or video around the climate crisis—it could be too political. Even the company’s own Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report setting ambitious climate targets was off limits because, they argued, it only applied to one area of the company and this program was for all areas. Anything put into writing was a risk they weren’t willing to take. In the end, leaders arrived unprepared to a sterilized program.

Once they were in the room, the leaders still brought the program to life because, of course, they wanted to face the climate crisis in looking at the future—they have children, they read the news, some were even engaged in climate-related issues through boards they sat on or volunteer work. These were savvy leaders who cared about their communities and the world. And even though they were among the most powerful leaders in this company, chances are they won’t be able to move the culture. Because even though the company espouses care for the planet, the culture is dominated by minimizing risk or anything that might threaten its present level of financial success. It may want to go green, but it wants greenbacks more.

And so it is, this natural tension, not only in this company, but in most companies. How do we do right by people, planet and the future, and also do right by shareholders? How do we balance purposeful work to go green and profits to stay in business? This tension exists for individual leaders, as well as corporate cultures. The role of the leader who can heal in this climate-crisis time is to transcend it, that is, to hold and model the higher-level unity that resolves the two sides.

It’s not easy work, and it’s taken us awhile to accept that it’s our work. A dozen years ago, according to McKinsey, only 20% of companies in the S&P 500 even had sustainability targets, and even fewer took real action toward those targets. Climate consciousness accelerated through work on the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Climate Treaty and, by 2013, 72% of S&P 500 companies were including sustainability goals in their reporting. Still, the challenge remained: how to make going green an actual driver of value. According to a recent McKinsey survey of more than 2400 global companies, only 22% of them would say they’ve figured out how to do that. The most significant trait distinguishing companies that make going green a value driver is they genuinely connect making a positive difference on a tangible climate issue to the organization’s purpose. They’re able to shift the culture by showing and training people in how their work aligns with this specific purpose.

Ironically, what this study suggests is a cautionary tale to such Big Companies as the one we worked with that without embracing some aspect of going green as a critical part of their purpose, they will have a harder time ever earning greenbacks for it.

Another McKinsey study points to a further evolution in business climate consciousness, and that is the emergence of “climate unicorns” that is highly successful startups who thrive because of the way they’re meeting the climate crisis. It’s not just part of their organizational purpose, but rather they’ve set a bold, stand-apart vision and purpose that they are passionate about. This passionate commitment to make the world better manifests in three key traits McKinsey found that distinguished these companies and their leaders:

While there can be a danger in thinking technology is always the solution, and it’s certainly easier for startups with little to lose to be empowering, risk-taking and rapidly experimental, these climate unicorns are likely to be where business disruptions challenging to Big Companies will come from. Because these startups are attuned to present reality in a way that companies that have built their wealth, culture and structures from the past are not.

So how can leaders draw from the lessons of businesses that are most successfully creating value in the climate crisis to transcend the tension between going green and greenbacks? The key to mastering any paradox lies in valuing both sides—being big enough to hold both, knowing what enough is and knowing when to shift focus. This can be as natural as shifting between inhale and exhale when we have a felt sense of needing both to thrive. To take the metaphor further, to serve a specific purpose such as playing a flute, we might extend our exhale as long as possible and minimize our inhale to just enough.

Applying this same principle to a green purpose we’re passionate about, we might exhale our attention toward this purpose as long as possible, and inhale just enough profit to keep thriving. To do this authentically, we’d have to embrace and value what conventional economic models ignore—such as love, happiness, health, clean air, water and healthy ecosystems. ­­We’d also have to have a sense of what’s enough of the value economic models do focus on; i.e., money. This is not easy to do in a culture that would have us believe we’re all separate and never have enough to keep us truly secure. Regarding ourselves as separate and our businesses as separate—individuals with our own bank accounts, companies with our own P&L—we use money to exert control and feel less vulnerable. Hence we consciously and unconsciously protect our wealth and hunt for more, whether we’re an individual or a Big Company.

Our big mistake is in thinking we’re separate. Put another way, separateness may describe our appearance and maybe even our experience, but that’s not our greatest truth, nor the only experience available to us. We can also experience our interpenetrating oneness with all of life—a samadhiexperience available through Zen and other wisdom traditions, and often through a visceral connection with nature. Indeed, Indigenous wisdom, giving us a window into the oldest cultures on earth, would say that we used live this way: with a felt sense of interconnectedness with all of life. But we’ve forgotten. As Andres Roberts, founder of the Bio-Leadership Fellowship puts it, “We have come to a point in human systems and structures where we’re detached from nature. We’ve forgotten how to see the world as a living system and ourselves as a part of it. We need reconnection with nature so that we remember.”

Once we remember what it is to be a connected human being, the greed and fear of separateness don’t get their fangs into us as deeply. When we function as a part of life and nature, we naturally care for and value all that we feel a part of and recognize the natural fill lines of healthy human needs; i.e., we know what enough is. From this connected consciousness, leaders can set a bold, green vision and throw themselves wholeheartedly into its service, taking enough to keep going, but not so much as to gorge. From this place, leaders transcend the tension of purpose and profit and find an authentic rhythm for both. Moreover, the other traits of “climate unicorns” more readily manifest from connected consciousness. We can better sense ways to partner and combine technologies when we’re fearlessly driven by purpose, not haggling over profits. When we want everyone to bring passion to their work, empowerment is natural. Risk taking is easier when we have less to lose, but it’s easier still when we know there’s nowhere to be lost to, that we’re already the whole picture. Finally, a test and try mentality comes naturally when we’re curious and secure in ourselves, knowing every twist and turn will teach us something.

Even after leaders begin to have experiences of their intrinsic connectedness through meditation, nature immersions or other embodied practices, the ability to manage the tensions of purpose and profit, whether individually or as part of a Big Company, do not come instantaneously. We often have to unwind a great deal of cultural conditioning and trauma to understand our own relationship to money and how we’ve used it to feel more in control or less anxious. But the more we experience ourselves as one-with the whole picture, the more our particular life becomes an adventure of joy and service. From there, we best fulfill the role of the leader in facing the existential threat of the climate crisis and creating a better world.

Ginny Whitelaw is the Founder and CEO of the Institute for Zen Leadership.



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