Leadership for Sustainability - Realizing Opportunities in a Time of Great Change

1© 2006 - 2013 Open World Foundationwww.openworldfoundation.org
Leadership for Sustainability
Realizing Opportunities in a Time of Great Change
Christer Söderberg
Open World Foundation
European Professional Women's Network / Oracle Women’s Leadership Network
Stockholm, September 9, 2013

The Big Picture
Where are we now?
Sustainability & Resilience
Quality
Leadership & Responsibility
Classical vs. Quantum Physics
Collaborative Coalitions for a Healthy Planet

”Minds are like parachutes, they
only function when open.”
- Frank Zappa

”To live inside that system and to actually feel it in your body was an amazing experience.
Your body understood that you shouldn’t damage the plants – it was inconceivable, and
you didn’t need to be reminded.”
- Mark Nelson,”bionaut” From the book ”What Has Nature Ever Done For Us?” By Tony Juniper, page 23
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Biosphere_2_-_1998_a.jpg

Sustainable Development
“Sustainable Development meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs.”
- 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, by
Gro Harlem-Brundtland

Human growth
20/80 dilemma
Ecosystems
60 % loss dilemma
Climate
550/450/350
dilemma
Surprise
9/11 dilemma
”The Quadruple
Squeeze”
Stockholm Resilience Center, Courtesy Johan Rockström

Stockholm Resilience Center, Courtesy Johan Rockström

World Energy Outlook 2010, International Energy Agency

•  Shenandoah-2/Gulf of Mexico - 15 billion barrels of oil.
•  Harpoon Discovery/Newfoundland - estimated to hold
between 100 million and 200 million barrels of oil.
•  Offshore Cote d'Ivoire - potential reserves eclipsing 1.8
billion barrels.
•  Gullfaks, North Sea - on 40-150 million recoverable BOE
•  Santos Basin/Libra, Brazil - 12-15 billion barrels
•  Coronado Prospect/Gulf of Mexico - The scale of the
reserves is still under appraisal for commercial viability
150 days
2 days
18 days
1.5 days
150 days
n/a
Total: 321.5 days

(The Guardian, April 26, 2013)
Paradigm Shift ?
”…IMF authors say it’s quite possible that a decent-sized decline in oil
production could have “dramatic” effects that could prove very, very
difficult for the world to adjust to.”

Paradigm Shift ?

Is Sustainability Still Possible?

Name top three ways your company
positively impacts eco-systems.
1.
2.
3.

Resilience:
“Resilience is the capacity of a system to
continually change and adapt yet remain within
critical thresholds.”
(Resilience refers to the capacity of a social-ecological system both to
withstand perturbations from for instance climate or economic shocks and to
rebuild and renew itself afterwards.)
- 2008, Stockholm Resilience Center, Resilience Theory, as developed by Buzz Hollings

”… supply reductions of this
magnitude would require a more
than 200 percent increase of the
oil price on impact, and an 800
percent increase over 20 years.”
- IMF Working Paper: Oil and the World
Economy: Some Possible Futures, Michael
Kumhof and Dirk Muir, October 2012

Acknowledging the effect of our
cognitive biases may be the first step
towards building resilience against a
future perfect storm of economic and
environmental challenges.
-  World Economic Forum, Global Risks Report
2013, p. 20

http://www.solarsystemquick.com/the_sun.htm

Quality?
The standard of something as measured against other things of
a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something: an
improvement in product quality
-  http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/quality
In manufacturing, a measure of excellence or a state of being
free from defects, deficiencies and significant variations.
- http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/quality.html#ixzz2e7ahg1QN
Quality (business), the non-inferiority or superiority of something
Quality (philosophy), an attribute or a property
-  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality

Attributes? Criteria?
Qualities of Quality?
•  The Soil?
•  The Water?
•  The Air?

Example 1: Soil Solutions
BioChar:
•  Waste Management
•  Water Retention
•  Soil Fertility
•  CO2 Sequestration

Example 2: Water Solutions
Plant Trees:
Recover springs
Restore wildlife
Increase biodiversity
Generate income
=
Resilience

Example 3: Emissions
Electric cars
Public transport
Trains
=
Lower costs

Questions:
Infinite growth on a finite planet?
What can we do?

Name top three renewable
resources used by your company.
1.
2.
3.

The Good News:
Transition Towns Movement
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/
Global Ecovillage Movement
http://gen-europe.org
Wiser Earth Movement
http://www.wiser.org
The Internet – the inter-connected world

”We are drowning in information,
while starving for wisdom.”
-  E. O. Wilson, Evolutionary Biologist

Leadership
Courage
Responsibility
(Response-Ability)
Healthy Planet - Healthy People - Healthy Profits

Painting by: Robert Storm Pedersen

Leadership:
Leadership is first and foremost about who you are; know yourself, and
walk your talk,
. . . and be your ultimate potential

P = p – i
What is in your way?
(Performance = potential – interference - Timothy Gallwey,The Inner Game)

”Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its
own solution. It forces us to change our thinking
in order to find it.” – Niels Bohr

Classical vs. Quantum
Mechanics
Classical mechanics consists of the
work done in the areas of chemistry and
physics prior to the 20th century. This
includes the organization of the periodic
table, thermodynamics, the wave theory
of light, and Newtonian mechanics.
Quantum mechanics was born out of
the inability of classical mechanics to
reconcile theory with experiment.
-  UC Davis
http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Physical_Chemistry/
Quantum_Mechanics/Classical_vs._Quantum_Mechanics

Quantum Field Theory
Quantum field theory is the language in
which all of modern physics is
formulated. It represents the marriage of
quantum mechanics with special
relativity and provides the mathematical
framework in which to describe the
creation and destruction of hoards of
particles as they pop in and out of their
ethereal existence and interact.
-  University of Cambridge
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/research.html

”The observer is the observed.”
- J. Krishnamurti

Scene from ”A Beautiful Mind”, 2001. Directed by Ron Howard. With Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer.

Nash Equilibrium:
”The best result comes, from everyone in the group doing what’s best for
himself, and for the group.”
(A group of players are in Nash equilibrium if each one is making the best
decision that he or she can, taking into account the decisions of the others.)

Name top three ways your company touches
the heart of employees & customers:
1.
2.
3.

Collaborative Coalition
A practical example

Name top three sustainability/
resilience projects/initiatives in your
company.
1.
2.
3.

Tipping Point or Turning Point?

Thank You !
www.openworldfoundation.org
www.openworldcafe.com
www.openworldvillages.com
christer@openworldfoundation.org

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