We can talk endlessly about the grip the globalised economic system has over us, but it is a myth that we are facing an impregnable monolithic structure we are powerless to change.
The system has been built around the ideas and thoughts of a few powerful individuals that have, over time, been systemised into rules and institutions that hold it together.
But once enough people in positions of influence start to change their minds, or when the public mood significantly changes, systems that look solid are always shown to be built on shifting sands.
The problem with the current form of capitalism is that the elite is still gaining more than it is losing, there is a belief the system is too complex to transform, and some believe it is better to stick with the devil we know than risk the sort of economic collapse we have seen in countries like Greece.
That is why it is such an important time for leaders to show us a more positive alternative future, but where are they?
I was speaking to a senior UN official just the other week, who was in a meeting of world leaders who spent much of the time bemoaning the lack of leadership at this time of great crisis. She says she sat there aghast, thinking over and over again: “But you are the leaders, you are the change.”
I asked Guilherme Leal what he feels around perceived feelings of powerlessness. The CEO of Natura will hear none of the talk that we are enslaved to the current economic paradigm. He points to the arrival of Pope Francis in the Vatican as an example of how one individual can drive transformation in even the most difficult of circumstances.
“The institution was full of problems just before his election,” says Leal. “He went there as an individual saying, I am not able to bless you but I need your blessing. He’s getting much more change in the whole institution than others who are respecting the system, the red shoes, gold hats, and things like that.”
Leal’s comments came to mind when I listened to the UK’s energy secretary Ed Davey say that the success or otherwise of this December’s climate change talks in Paris will rest not so much on all 195 countries agreeing a deal, but on the courage of a few key individuals sitting around the negotiating table.
Davey argued that “historical record shows many examples of national leaders pursuing narrow interests, playing to domestic galleries and ignoring wider imperatives and horrific costs”, making the stakes for Paris very high.
“And that is why I do believe personality matters,” said Davey. “It will matter who is sitting round the table in Paris in December. Who will be willing to take risks, to embrace enlightened self-interest, to move beyond the narrow confines of their domestic politics, to take that leap?”
The power of individuals to either support transformation or kill if off is also a key factor in whether corporations can drive the sustainability agenda.
I recently witnessed a team of senior executives within a multinational corporation go through the process of creating a new sense of corporate purpose. Re-imagining the benefit of the company to broader society went reasonable smoothly. There was also clear agreement on how to align this to a comprehensive strategy of change. So far so good.
But as soon as the conversation turned to the realities of implementation, it ran into a brick wall. It focused on the egos of individual executives, who would almost certainly seek to block progress.
All of this goes to show that transformational change depends on the outcome of the battle we face, whether as individuals, communities or nations, between the temptation to look after only ourselves or to serve the greater good.
Paul Polman, CEO of consumer goods giant Unilever, talked at the recent 10th anniversary of the Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders’ Group on the need to protect the world’s remaining tropical forests. He quoted Gandhi, who said that “what we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another”.
In other words, to change the outer world, we need to change our mindset. Bill McDonough, co-creator of the cradle-to-cradle design concept, gave the same message at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, when he spoke of the growing problem of plastic waste going into our oceans being the result of our way of thinking.
“Being less bad is not being good,” he said. “We need to start from the mindset of what would plastics look like if the ocean is fabulous.”
What both Polman and McDonough are really saying is that if we choose to look more deeply, the economic system is not a monolith, but a permeable membrane which we can pierce at any moment when we have new eyes to see it.
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