John Elkington

For reasons that will become clearer in 2016, the final couple of weeks of 2015 included a gathering tempo of system change sessions, with key ones in London (on 9 December, which Volans co-hosted with the Academy of Systemic Change) and Amsterdam (on 11 December, where I was part of embryonic conversations around a new system change platform).

More anon, but there’s a new spirit abroad, particularly in the wake of the apparently successful outcome of the COP21 climate summit, which several of the Amsterdam participants had taken part in. The Amsterdam session was hosted by the THNK School of Creative Leadership and Innovation, which I am really keen to get to know better.

Fascinating ride in from the airport early in the morning (had to get up around 04.20 to get there in time), with a driver in a white Tesla who looked like a university lecturer, or a taller version of Lester Brown, and who promptly have me (with no signal from me on what my interests were) a lecture on sustainability.

Among those he flagged as leading champions was Thomas Rau, who he had recently seen in a TV documentary. Once I revealed my colours, we had a very energetic discussion, and exchanged cards. Later in the day I sent a note to Thomas’s wife, Sabine, to say he seemed to be virtually ubiquitous.

I can’t remember which weird American book it was in which I read that as a major change approaches the number of apparent coincidences goes off the scale, though I think it was probably The Celestine Prophecy, but that’s what I’m experiencing at the moment.

So here we are in 2016. Unhappily, some form of mass hack took down elements of my blogging site over the Merrymas season, so many thanks to Chris Wash for both bringing it back online and migrating the whole thing to a more secure platform. Having gone almost a month now without being able to post blogs, I will begin by melding a variety of storylines together to bridge the gap.

But, the spirit of entering the New Year in a blaze of energy and creativity, the painting above is one of my sister Caroline’s sold-to-someone-other-than-me works, and one which I regret having missed.

It’s hard to capture the pace of the end of 2015, where I did something like 17 keynotes in 7 weeks, and ended with a trip to Mexico City to work with Grupo Bimbo (subject of a separate blog). Suffice it to say that I have had a long siesta pretty much every day since the holidays started, except on days where we went to see my parents in the Cotswolds, for example, or entertained Gaia, Hania, Jake and Paul.

One key activity has been reading, something I’ll aim to distil in a separate entry. And writing. In the wake of my most recent column (they go out in GreenBiz in the USA, Monday Morning in Denmark, and Eco-Business in Singapore) of the legacy of the late Maurice Strong, I have been writing around our evolving exponential solutions theme, including evolving the next round of our program outline for the UN Global Compact (on which more anon) and another column, to appear in January.

Meanwhile, here are several images that capture brief encounters during the closing days of 2015 – the Ai Weiwei images stemming from a team day-out, the River Café ones from a delightful lunch hoisted by Will Rosenzweig:

Fascinating couple of days in Mexico City, doing a session yesterday for Grupo Bimbo alongside GlobeScan. Then Mauricio, Paco and I went to the Museum of Modern Art, where among other things we took in an exhibition of ceramics by Francisco Toledo and an absolutely stunning exhibition of photographs by Lee Miller.

Feeling exhausted, after several pretty intense weeks. They included a trip to Lisbon, for a BCSD (Business Council for Sustainable Development) Portugal event in the Universidad Nova and then a session at the new HQ of the energy utility EDP (24-26 November).

The night I arrived, I was taken out by Fernanda Pargana (General secretary of BCSD Portgal) for a wonderful dinner at the extraordinary Pharmacia restaurant. Spoke alongside Maria Mendiluce (WBCSD Climate & Energy Manager) at both the BCSD Portugal and EDP events, at the first after her, at the second before, so we mixed it up a little.

The theme of the BSCD event was the low carbon economy, particularly appropriate given the imminence of the COP21 climate conference in Paris, which is in full swing as I write this.

Once back from Lisbon, a series of meetings and events followed, including a trip to Hill House to see the family on 28 November, the latest session of the admissions panel of the Social Stock Exchange, great sessions with Sophia Tickle and Becky Buell of Meteos and with Lisa Goldapple and Cathy Runciman of the Atlas of the Future, an evening salon hosted at Volans with some 15 people to hear Jeanne-Marie Gescher read from her new book, All Under Heaven, a fascinating meeting with Peter Wheeler of The Nature Conservancy, a key call with Lise Kingo of the UN Global Compact and a lunch with Jeremy Oppenheim of McKinsey.

Unusually, have slept for perhaps four hours today, as the wind beat about the house. Flew in last night, eventually spending a total of 8 hours travelling from St Moritz to London.

Yesterday morning, I had kicked off the 2015 UBS Global Philanthropy Forum in St Moritz, whose theme this year was ‘Daring to Innovate.’ In the opening session I was directly followed by two wonderful speakers: Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen and Ashish Thakkar of the Mara Group and Mara Foundation. Then the three of us did a delightful panel session, chaired by Caroline Anstey of UBS.

One of my slides had featured two wide angle pictures, the first of an early Wright Brothers aircraft wobbling into the skies above Kittyhawk, the second an Earthrise picture shot from the Moon. (It had seemed appropriate, given that the conference documentation started off by saying: “Some laughed when Columbus said the world was round. Others said airplanes wouldn’t get off the ground.”)

Then, on Thursday night, I had suddenly woken up to the fact that the time between that image of the Wright Stuff and the first landing on the Moon (represented here by the image of Earthrise, taken by the Anders, Borman and Lovell mission a year earlier, in 1968) was 66 years (1903 through to 1969), so in my speech I linked that to my age, noting that unimaginable, seemingly impossible things can happen inside today’s human lifespan.

I also used three slides featuring Pilar Puig of the Puig perfume and fragrances group, who I had asked a number of questions around how a 22-year-old Millennial sees the sustainability agenda.

But for me, the highlight of the St Moritz trip was one of the parallel events that followed our opening session. It was run by David Begbie of the Crossroads Foundation, based in Hong Kong.

He divided some 40 participants into two groups, the ‘Alphas’ and ‘Betas’. Each was schooled separately in their particular cultures, languages and customs. When they came back together, mutual incomprehension was pretty much guaranteed. Disorienting, at times very funny, and deeply educational.

I was allocated to the Beta group, which was mercantile, with intense trading of different coloured cards, and assiduous keeping of scores. The other group turned out to be more touchy-feely – and constantly asked how one’s father or grandfather was. (A reference to the source of much of the wealth for philanthropists.)

Uniquely in the group, I discovered that I couldn’t play the game. I found my brain totally refusing to learn the trading rules or the linguistic code. Instead, I sat to one side, outside the process, observing the groups form and interact.

Talking it through with David afterwards, I mused that I had often felt an outsider in life and in work, though I was generally comfortable with that. And this has often helped me move between communities of interest without getting totally seduced by the ideologies of any particular group.

I had suspected that this experiential session would be taxing, which is why I signed up for it, but I had no idea of just how challenging I would find it. That said, David described some of the other sessions that they have done, which sound a lot more taxing.

In one, they had UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (and his bodyguard) take part in a particularly intense immersion simulation, where they were in a setting designed to resemble an Afghan house, where participants were welcomed by a local; headman in Afghan.

This man warned that they would have to leave soon, because of impending threats. Promptly there was the sound of helicopters, stun grenades were thrown into the house and uniformed soldiers broke in with guns. Everyone, including the Secretary-General, ended up on the floor. The bodyguard’s hand was not far from his own gun.

… and now back to bed.

Invited by letter earlier in the week to accept a 3-year extension to my membership of the WWF-UK Council of Ambassadors, I gladly accepted, but titled my email to WWF-UK Chief Executive David Nussbaum, ‘Yes to your extended Council of Ambassadors sentence.’

David’s reply this morning: “I’m sure you deserve remission for good behaviour, but we’re delighted at this acceptance of an extended stay at WWF’s pleasure!”