My husband asked me if I planned to take our girls to see the Barbie movie. My kids have never had Barbie fever, so honestly, I don’t even think they’re aware of the movie. And yet, I’m curious. Barbie and her manifestations are a symbol of how our society thinks about women, femininity, and even leadership.

Full disclosure, our family didn’t own a single Barbie until late last year, when Mattel debuted a new set of four environmentally-themed dolls. Given my background in sustainability, I was intrigued. What is Mattel up to? 

In Barbie’s long life, she has been many things, but I think it’s not a reach to say that most of us tend to think of her as an unrealistically proportioned woman whose feet seem like they might cramp up at any moment.  Yet, she’s transformed into an astronaut, a dentist, a fashion designer, a floral designer, a rapper, and more. 

Well, did you know that now, she can even be a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO)?

CSO Barbie is one of a set of four Eco-Leadership Team dolls that Mattel released last last year: “Do you like collaborating and working with a team to help the environment? You Can Be a Chief Sustainability Officer!” Says the recycled cardboard packaging. 

Yes, you can! 👏 It’s a hugely positive aspiration, and one is incredible to see, not just because these skills are in-demand from employers, but because they’re highlighting career fields where women can come into their own power.  

In my role at Leaders’ Quest I frequently work with CSOs and their CEOs, and so Eco-Leadership Barbie and the Barbie movie have me thinking about the responsibilities of quickly evolving roles like the CSO, and those of the other dolls that Mattel has marketed recently: a conservation scientist with binoculars and a notebook; a renewable energy engineer with hard hat, safety vest, solar panel, and tablet; and an environmental advocate with camera and sign.  

Whichever you are, or aspire to be, these valuable roles are full of paradoxes–just like Barbie! 

Taking the CSO as an example, the common challenges I see in my work with Leaders’ Quest include: 

Five paradoxes of the CSO 

1. Making the business case when success isn’t always measurable in conventional terms. This is a common challenge for CSOs who are looking long-term and holistically, but being measured on quarterly or annual results.   
2. Balancing great stories with hard work. I often work with CSOs who are able to garner support for highly visible activity that is good for PR and for the brand, but not for the hard work that happens in the background that makes an incremental but meaningful difference.  
3. Aligning the priorities of shareholders and consumers. While this isn’t a direct responsibility of the CSO, they keenly feel the pressure that the CEO is getting from the Board, shareholders, and consumers.  
4. Running too fast or too slow. It’s a balancing act for the CSO to make enough change that stakeholders see and value, but not to go so fast that they lose buy-in from key figures like the Board and CEO. 
5. Beating the drum, but not too loudly. Because of the economic importance of corporate environmental and social governance (ESG), the agenda has become politicized and risks distracting people from the mission of the CSO.

What strikes me about all of these paradoxes is that they are not about whether a business can become sustainable or regenerative. They are about mindset change:

Are the CEO and Board bought into the benefits of sustainable business and are they prepared to buy-in for a length of time sufficient for a CSO to start making a difference? 

Is the leadership team open to new language, new timeframes and new ways of measuring success?  

Is the leadership team willing to balance highly visible activity like tree planting, with the hard work of measuring and reducing carbon emissions in the background?

Often, the answer is muddled. 

Business leaders understand the rationale, but they’re in what we call the ‘messy middle’ where they’re still figuring out why and how to change. At Leaders’ Quest, this is where our work excels. As one of our recent clients said, our programming offered insights into the ‘inner game of leadership: “It gave me the tools, motivation, and energy to work with nuance within contested spaces in an increasingly polarized world, with far-reaching benefits beyond my professional life.”    

We focus on the internal aspects of change. We help leaders make the inner journey where new insights, mindsets, behaviors, and awareness can grow. This brings a whole new dimension to how we direct our energies towards regenerative business leadership. If you want to hear more, please feel free to reach out to me.

And how about Barbie? Can she also evolve? 

One of the organizations I worked for in the early aughts aimed to put a woman in the White House. The organization, The White House Project, worked closely with Mattel for several years to get a “Barbie for President” into toy stores. Culture change was just as important as training women to run for political office. When any of our young feminist colleagues asked why we were collaborating with Mattel, our co-founder reminded us, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

In the copy that Mattel uses to describe the Eco-leadership Team Barbies, they state, “When kids play with Barbie, they imagine everything they can become.”

As she launches her own corporate sustainability career, maybe Barbie offers something meaningful to women and girls after all. 

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We mean everyone: Bringing adversaries into the climate action conversation

60 years and counting: The climate drumbeat goes on

Sustainability

60 years and counting: The climate drumbeat goes on

My first awareness of our changing climate dates back to Ms. Norton’s class at Mathews Elementary in Austin, Texas. I was in 3rd grade and it was a roller coaster year, as I recall. It was the year that the Challenger Shuttle exploded in front of our eyes, on live TV. Our teachers had been silent and emotional that day. So were we.

A few months later, on April 22, the vibe was more joyous. Earth Day involved tree planting and felt very Kum Ba Yah. I remember green posters in the hallways, construction paper cut-outs of children holding hands circling the round orb of planet Earth.

Perhaps the Earth-y joy was warranted back then. We were winning a major behavior change campaign around the elimination of CFCs—chlorofluorocarbons. To cut down on CFCs, my dad needed to stop using spray-on deodorant, and my mom needed to find another hairspray delivery mechanism. Doing this— and removing CFCs from refrigerators, freezers and air conditioning systems — would stop the degradation of the ozone layer.

Saving the planet in the 80s seemed pretty easy. Simple consumer choices helped us change course. By 1987, when I was in Ms. Primmer’s 4th grade class, the Montreal Protocol, a global agreement to protect the ozone layer by phasing out ozone-depleting substances, had been agreed to. Big hair had had its heyday and the ozone began to repair itself. 

Climate awakening moments

April 22, 1986 was the first day I remember being aware of the environment and the need to protect it. Perhaps you had your own climate awakening moment?

A nature walk. A beach clean-up. A documentary. A trip to a faraway place.

Whatever it was that brought your awareness to our environment, I’ve no doubt you felt a sense of concern at some point: we must act now to protect our planet. So, when did climate action begin?

It feels very much in living memory for many of us. But there has been a steady drumbeat of climate crises, research reports, policy moves, and climate action since way before I was born, and probably before many of you were born. Yes, really that long ago!

Early alarms

Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson in 1962, was a call to action against the use of pesticides, highlighting the devastating impact they have on the natural world. Carson’s book was controversial and the chemical industry criticized her work; however it had a significant impact on public opinion and policy, and led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969 due to heavy pollution from industrial waste and sewage that had been dumped into the river for decades. This wasn’t the first time the river had caught fire but this time it received national attention and helped to spur the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

The Chipko movement was established in India in 1973, sparked by concerns over deforestation, soil erosion, and water scarcity in the region. The movement was led by local women who were concerned about the impact of deforestation on their families’ livelihoods and the environment. Peaceful protests and literal tree-hugging campaigns helped to raise awareness and led to policies aimed at protecting forests and promoting sustainable development.

These canary in the coal mine moments happened more than 50 years ago. There are many more examples, and in a workshop that I run with Leaders’ Quest, I chart the timeline of momentum building from the 1960s to today.

Playing our part now

Still the climate emergencies keep coming. The Pakistan monsoons in 2022 affected 33 million people. The ongoing megadrought in the US is causing drinking water shortages and raising debate about how we share natural resources. The heatwave in Europe in 2022 led to the worst drought the continent has suffered since the Middle Ages.

It feels daunting as we listen to the mounting drumbeat, and particularly as we read this week’s headlines about the ticking clock with the IPCC’s warning of the need for serious and immediate action if we are to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade. How is it that Rachel Carson knew that we needed to do more to guide industry in 1963 and here we are in 2023 with scientists again sounding the alarm?

What’s it going to take?

Perhaps we thought it would be easier than it is. Did repairing the ozone layer give us a false impression of the ease of repairing our environment? The ozone issue responded to behavior change and a coordinating shift in national policy.

Our current situation is not as isolated or as simple. Changes in consumer habits just aren’t enough. This is the year, the decade even, of “everything, everywhere all at once”: consumer behavior change, business model innovation, turning our energy system upside down, and policy that actually means something.

Working in the climate sphere can be a slog. But one of my core beliefs about climate action is that we have to do the work as if it is going to save us – and then it will. Those early activists sounded the alarm, and it’s helped to build the drumbeat that we’re hearing today.

We need to keep plugging away. As the proverb goes, ‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.’ It feels messy and people can start to feel conflicted or despondent, but at Leaders’ Quest we’re happy working in this ‘messy middle’ where people are finding their way, many years after their first memories of climate change.

How about you?

What is your first memory of being aware of the environment or climate change? Did it catalyze a change in your life or even shape your career as it has done mine?

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Who wants to be a Chief Sustainability Officer?

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Who wants to be a Chief Sustainability Officer?

From my very first encounter with the B Corp movement, I was smitten. The B Corp model drew me in.

As a founder and former CEO of one of the earliest Certified B Corps and more recently a Global Ambassador for B Lab and co-founder of the B Corp Climate Collective, I’ve always believed in the promise of the B Corp movement, that it could move companies – and even whole economies – towards being a force for good.

But what does the future hold for it? A recent article in the Financial Times important questions about B Lab and its community.

The movement, which began over a decade ago with just a handful of visionary pioneering companies now has more than 6,000. As the movement has grown, B Lab and the B Corp community have been grappling with their future.

The B Corp movement at an inflection point

Much of the recent criticism leveled at B Lab and the B Corp movement has centered around the certification of large multinationals. Understanding that plenty of large multinational and public companies are making progress on the journey but are still way off, the question has been raised whether multinationals should be aspiring (or even allowed) to be B Corps.

Critics have also argued that the B Corp standards have become too broad and bloated, and do not do enough to tackle issues like climate change or economic inequality. Others have argued that the standards focus too much on individual company practices rather than broader systemic changes.

It’s clear that the B Corp community is at an inflection point.

What do we need from B Corps and the B Corp community now?

B Lab announced a review of the B Corp Certification requirements in December 2020. The new standards, expected to go live in 2024, emphasize 10 universally applicable topics and define non-negotiable requirements for achieving certification. These include taking concrete climate action, paying workers a living wage, and using a business’ brand voice and power for collective action and advocacy.

The original standards put forward a set of good/better/best practices that enable a company to take a holistic approach to using its business for good. The new standard provides a set of non-negotiable requirements for achieving certification. My view is that these new expectations are long overdue and will keep the B Corp movement relevant into the next decade. In the world of ESG and sustainability, there’s no perfect standard. Despite my impatience for the new B Corp requirements to “go live,” I still believe the B Impact Assessment – both the old and the new versions – is the closest thing that exists today to a roadmap for businesses of any size to transition to a regenerative business model. 

Just like no standard is perfect, no company is perfect. We need companies of all sizes to make progress towards a better future. I believe that we need B Corps now more than ever. We need more of them, and we need them in ALL shapes and sizes.

As part of my work with Leaders’ Quest, I have the privilege of working closely with a wide range of large multinational and public companies. Last week, a multinational client asked me whether the B Corp path is something they should still pursue in light of the Financial Times article. My answer was an unequivocal yes.

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We mean everyone: Bringing adversaries into the climate action conversation

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In May, I attended ChangeNOW, the world’s largest conference for the planet aimed at spotlighting 1,000 innovative solutions over three days. It was a hive of activity. A glimpse into a fast-growing ecosystem of initiatives with the aim to reach a healthy, sustainable world with speed, scale and justice.

I was asked to share my thoughts on what’s needed to turn these creative solutions — alongside myriad commitments, pathways, and partnerships that are announced every day — into collective action at scale. 

I think we need an upgrade in our human software — in the way we lead, and how we collaborate. 

For millennia, human beings have evolved at a slow and steady rate that’s served us well. We’ve become good at working with people who look like us and think like us; on local issues that we can see, touch, and experience.

But this pace of evolution is out of sync with the rapid change we’re now grappling with in the Anthropocene — the period in which human activity is the dominant force of change on Earth’s ecosystems.

To limit global warming to 1.5°C, we need an unprecedented level of collaboration across countries, citizens, corporations, industries, and civil society. This kind of radical collaboration is hard because it involves working across divides — borders, sectors and communities — with people who see and experience the world very differently from each other.

This ability to work effectively with difference is a leadership muscle that human beings need to evolve — and fast. So how can we speed up our own evolution?

At Leaders’ Quest, we’ve learned over the last 21 years that the fastest way to grow as adults is through experiential learning. Based on this philosophy, we take leaders on ‘Quests’ to immerse them in unfamiliar environments, and spend time engaging with inspiring changemakers driving impact across business and society.

We think of a Quest as a window to the world, and a mirror for oneself. Exposure to the forces shaping the future, coupled with time for deep reflection, opens the doorway to personal insight. It creates the chance to reflect on our ‘inner game of leadership’, as Bill Adams and Bob Anderson describe it.

Our ‘inner game’ is what we hold in our consciousness. In other words, it is our interior operating system — what drives us, how we define ourselves, what we believe. It’s what we use to make sense of the world. It informs how we act, and how we shape life around us. 

“Great leadership transcends skill, capability, and competence. It includes integrity, honesty, passion, vision, risk-taking, compassion, courage, authenticity, collaboration, self-awareness, selflessness, endurance, humility, intuition, and wisdom. These are qualities of the inner game.” Bill Adams & Bob Anderson

However, in a fast-changing world, there are fierce demands on our ‘outer game’ — our knowledge, skills and technical expertise. It’s the dimension that we spend much of our lives honing in education, training and leadership development. It’s also the one that leaders in sustainability typically focus on as they come to grips with how to transform their companies, cities and communities.

Yet our inner game RUNS our outer game. What’s happening on the inside shapes how we experience the world, and the actions we choose to take. This means that innovative technical solutions won’t solve the climate crisis alone. We must put equal focus on how we lead and collaborate (our ‘inner game’), so we can turn powerful ideas into implementation at scale.

For me, this means evolving our inner game in two key ways:

Firstly, we need to shift our mindsets to a regenerative worldview that puts life at the centre of all decision-making. Becoming regenerative is about asking ourselves how we can leave things better than we found them. It means “reimagining a world where the human economy and the natural economy work in harmony with each other”, as Futures Practitioner Bill Sharpe says. In practical terms, it means leading from a mindset of ‘doing more good’ (instead of ‘doing less bad’) in our companies, cities and communities.

Secondly, we need to develop inner qualities to work more effectively across divides. Adam Kahane, in his book ‘Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree With or Like or Trust’ says effective collaboration alternates between the polarities of engaging and asserting. 

Through this lens, I see radical collaboration as a dance between building human connection and driving bold action. In practice, this means flexing our inner game across a spectrum of qualities that build empathy (respect, humility, generosity) and propel action (courage, purpose, resilience) to help people move forward together. It’s these ‘inner game’ qualities that we need to scale if we are going to step up to the challenges humanity is facing. 

So, as I looked out across the ChangeNOW conference, I was asked what small (or big) action everyone should take. The 1% change that scales if we all do it. 

My invitation is that we each build a bridge with someone who sees the world differently — perhaps even someone we don’t agree with, like or trust. Take the time to listen deeply, build empathy by sharing stories, and spend time seeing life through their eyes. Build a foundation of respect and connection — even if you don’t agree with everything you hear.

Climate action at scale requires wise leadership… and only by maturing our inner game can we build the radical collaboration skills to get us to a healthy, sustainable future for all.

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Who wants to be a Chief Sustainability Officer?

The market for carbon offsets is booming, and a series of efforts have sprung up to define rules and standards that will tackle their often dodgy reputation. Global agreement on those rules is crucial to achieving a net-zero future and essential to helping avert the looming climate catastrophe.

In an Op-Ed for TIME Ideas, TED Global Curator and TED Countdown co-founder Bruno Giussani and Gabrielle Walker, founder of the climate consultancy Valence Solutions, highlight how carbon markets can bring about meaningful climate action.

Read the full article.

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We mean everyone: Bringing adversaries into the climate action conversation

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Who wants to be a Chief Sustainability Officer?

Each of us has a vital role to play in ensuring society can thrive at every level.

But what if each of us could actively engage in behaviors that put life at the center of everything – where individuals only contribute to activities that have a positive effect on the patterns and systems of which they are a part?

In this video, we explain what Regenerative means, and the steps we can take toward leaving things even better than we found them.

For more information on Three Horizons, visit www.futurestewards.com/3h and download our 10 Tools for Systems Change.

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We mean everyone: Bringing adversaries into the climate action conversation

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In any conversation about the future, you’ll probably notice three voices showing up: the manager, who is responsible for the success of the current system and keeping things going as they are; the visionary who speaks for a radically different world; and the entrepreneur who is impatient with all the talk and just wants to put new ideas into action right now.

We call these the voices of the Three Horizons.

In this video, we explain how to recognize these voices and see the value each one brings, and how they might work together to navigate conversations about the future.

For more information on Three Horizons, visit www.futurestewards.com/3h and download our 10 Tools for Systems Change.

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Three Horizons (3H) is a simple framework to help guide conversations about the future towards meaningful action.

The framework acts like a map, helping us work out where we are, where we want to be, and how to get there.

It charts Horizon 1, the dominant way things are done today that show signs of strain and lack of fit to the future; Horizon 3, our visions for how we want things to be in the future; and Horizon 2, the innovations we can establish to help make our desired future a reality. This introductory video explains Three Horizons using the food system as an example but you can apply this framework to any topic of concern.

For more information on Three Horizons, visit www.futurestewards.com/3h and download our 10 Tools for Systems Change.

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Nigel Topping, UK High Level Climate Action Champion COP26, joins Lindsay Levin, CEO and Founder of Leaders’ Quest, to chat about the top 5 ways in which businesses can accelerate their action on climate, in the build up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), happening this November in Glasgow, Scotland.

At Leaders’ Quest, we’re very well placed to offer advice and guidance in this crucial year.

Watch the interview.

To find out more, get in touch with us on info@leadersquest.org

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