Better Leaders. Better Futures.

The Time for Societal Leadership is Now!

For many, 2010 was a sobering and thought-provoking year, and the early months of 2011 have been little different. Never, perhaps, has humanity been so in need of profound, insightful leadership in all walks of life. And yet, we've fallen considerably short in meeting the need as individual and collective societies.

Reflecting on the significant challenges of the past year, and the growing buzz (or outright doomsaying) about the forthcoming challenges that humanity will face on many economic, social, and environmental fronts in 2011, we are struck by the fact that many of these issues come down to changing our attitudes toward what the Foundation terms "societal leadership".

Societal leadership is not yet another formulaic approach to learning leadership, but a call to change the way that we -- as individuals, communities, organizations, and nations -- think about the role of leadership in society. Equally important, societal leadership includes what responsibility we accept for changing the way our social fabric works. 

Leading The Way: Reflections

On Thursday November 11 and Friday November 12, I had the privilege of attending a conference in Calgary hosted by Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley on the topic “Leading the Way: Building a Sustainable Future.”

As has been my experience with all of their published work, this conference was nothing short of inspirational and, in some cases, transformational. The conference was a beautiful and comfortable space of learning and dialogue, consequently unlocking the collective intelligence of the group through techniques employed by the Art of Hosting such as: check-in, Circle, WorldCafe and OpenSpace.

The depth, meaning and diversity of the discussions were indicative of the overall passion of the 450-odd participants. To reduce this conference into a short blog piece would not serve it justice, but I have chosen to reflect over a few posts on one area of each of Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley’s presentations, pieces that really stuck out to me.

How much can we gamble?

Without doubt, one of the most critical looming issues for the concept of Better Futures is what will happen if we don't enact significant changes in human consumption patterns worldwide, and act in time on a global policy level to quickly curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The Foundation's viewpoint is that the potential for catastrophic climate change is a real threat, no matter what the specific mix of natural and human causes. As humans, we don't have the luxury of continuing to deny the probabilities of climate change impacts, nor of assigning greater or lesser blame to particular industries or countries. Both are counter-productive behaviours, as neither does anything to build awareness and acceptance of taking responsibility for our own part in the problem, or to move us toward more effective action on the immediate issues.

Even if the threat of climate change were considered moderate to low on a risk basis, the scope and scale of potential impacts means that we would have to accept responsibility for our human role in the evolution of the global climate and make necessary changes. Similarly, even if greenhouse gas emissions weren't on the table as a threat, we'd still have to deal with the profound impacts of our many other over-consumptive behaviours, such as excessive water use, destruction of natural habitat, and loss of bio-diversity due to human intrusion and over-harvesting of key species like fish.

Now, a new series of climate change models out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provide a starker picture of what odds we will face if we don't act quickly on several key issues of climate change. The models assess the potential impacts of various economic growth and non-action scenarios, highlighting that global policy makers are spinning a very unpredictable roulette wheel of chance (see graphic, above) if they continue to debate the issues or seek an optimal (or, to some, more economically preferential) solution, rather than take immediate action based on existing protocols like Kyoto.