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. 

The Secret Powers of Time

From the brilliant mind of Philip Zimbardo and the incredibly talented pens and animation magic of RSA Animate comes this ten minute exploration of how our individual and societal attitude toward time influences the way we view the world, and what this means for things like our sense of collective responsibility and the ways we educate current and future generations.

The concept of time is inherently personal, though aggregated on a societal (or organizational, or community) basis, it starts to have a larger cultural meaning. As the video points out, many of the pressures of modern life have to do with time: how to "spend" it, how to allocate it across all the competing demands for it. Saddest of all is the finding that, if we could add an 8th day, many would choose to spend it on work and other trappings of success, rather than making their lives more meaningful in other ways.

What's your concept of time? Let us know by commenting below!

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.

Societal transformation...maybe?

 

To bring about "Better Futures", knowing that societal transformation is possible makes for powerful ideas and actions.

One of the books that helps to give perspective and context about the complexity of such societal leadership initiatives is GETTING TO MAYBE: How the World is Changed by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Quinn Patton.

As the publisher describes the book:

A practical, inspirational, revolutionary guide to social innovation.

Many of us have a deep desire to make the world around us a better place. But often our good intentions are undermined by the fear that we are so insignificant in the big scheme of things that nothing we can do will actually help feed the world’s hungry, fix the damage of a Hurricane Katrina or even get a healthy lunch program up and running in the local school. We tend to think that great social change is the province of heroes – an intimidating view of reality that keeps ordinary people on the couch. But extraordinary leaders such as Gandhi and even unlikely social activists such as Bob Geldof most often see themselves as harnessing the forces around them, rather than single-handedly setting those forces in motion. The trick in any great social project – from the global fight against AIDS to working to eradicate poverty in a single Canadian city – is to stop looking at the discrete elements and start trying to understand the complex relationships between them. By studying fascinating real-life examples of social change through this systems-and-relationships lens, the authors of Getting to Maybe tease out the rules of engagement between volunteers, leaders, organizations and circumstance – between individuals and what Shakespeare called “the tide in the affairs of men.”

Getting to Maybe applies the insights of complexity theory and harvests the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations – including the ministers behind the Boston Miracle (and its aftermath); the Grameen Bank, in which one man’s dream of micro-credit sparked a financial revolution for the world’s poor; the efforts of a Canadian clothing designer to help transform the lives of aboriginal women and children; and many more – to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world.

More details
Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed
By Frances Westley, Michael Quinn Patton, Brenda Zimmerman
Edition: reprint, illustrated
Published by Vintage Canada, 2007
ISBN 067931444X, 9780679314448
258 pages

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