Leadership mindsets to tackle climate change and future-proof your business strategy
During London Climate Action Week last month, we hosted an energising workshop at The Conduit to explore how companies are addressing climate change while future-proofing their business strategies.
The sessions were facilitated by Leaders’ Quest’s Melanie Jamieson and Yasu Mali, alongside notable speakers including UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP29, Nigar Arpadarai; Cedric Demeeus, Vice President at Holcim; Ian Simm, Founder & CEO at Impax; Charmian Love, Global Director of Advocacy at Natura&Co; Vaishali Nigam Sinha, Co-Founder of ReNew; Prof. Mateus Simões, Vice Governor of Minas Gerais, Brazil; and Dr. Kirsten Dunlop, CEO of EIT Climate-KIC.
You can watch the whole session online here.
Here’s what we learned…
1. Collaborate to compete. One of our panelists highlighted the need to shift from a mindset focused on self-interest to one of collaboration. Leaders must expand their boundaries and engage with new partners to drive large-scale solutions.
2. Translate your message for diverse stakeholders. Embrace a broader perspective to engage a diverse range of audiences. Tailor your messages to create meaningful dialogue with different stakeholder groups.
3. Think about risk differently. Separate the concepts of economics and risk. Accurately measure each risk, ensuring you’re focusing on the right ones and weighting them correctly.
4. A new value chain and ecosystem. Developing holistic, long-term solutions requires reimagining the value chain and ecosystem. Collaborate with suppliers and industry partners to enhance climate resilience and open up new opportunities.
5. Spot the devil in the detail. Although climate resilience as a whole is an overwhelmingly large topic, zooming in on the detail can reveal new innovations and solutions. By honing in on hyper-local solutions that are relevant for a specific context, parts of the jigsaw can fall into place.
6. A stretch-mindset. Maintaining the status quo is the most destructive risk. Leaders must push beyond their comfort zones to foster innovation and challenge conventional thinking.
7. Support the growth of others. Leaders should look for solutions through a climate-aware economic development lens, mobilizing entrepreneurs, especially in the global south.
8. Show, don’t tell. Use real examples to demonstrate successful changes in products, business models, or supply chains to overcome skepticism.
9. Commit to the roadmap. Clear commitment to a roadmap – including from the top – must be maintained along the journey. Even when the path is unclear, it’s important to keep moving towards the big vision one step at a time.
10. Celebrate success. Companies need to make many tiny steps into a more climate-resilient future. Celebrating these small steps along the way is fundamental to embedding an innovation mindset.
Want to learn more?
For more guidance on working across your company’s ecosystem, download the Guidebook to Radical Collaboration which was produced by Leaders’ Quest in partnership with Reos Partners, TED and the Climate Champions
Interested in the opportunities for your business in building climate resilience?
As we look forward to COP29 where climate finance – and specifically access to it – will be on the agenda, we invite you to consider how your business is thinking about climate resilience.
If you’re interested in expanding your perspective on this topic, take a look at how Leaders’ Quest uses the Three Horizons Framework to encourage leaders to think further into the future.
Related
Using Three Horizons for climate resilience
