John Elkington

Preparing Leaving

Spent the day at Volans, doing the first round of the selection process of the Phoenix 50 organisations for our third report for the Skoll Foundation.  In addition to Alejandro, Charmian (and her partner Sam, a venture capitalist in the health sector), Smita and I, we pulled in Alexa Clay and Patrin Watanatada from SustainAbility and Molly Webb from The Climate Group.  Really demanding process, particularly on a Saturday when the sun was shining wonderfully outside, but we made a huge amount of progress – and reached consensus on pretty much everything.  Still lots of work to do, though, with several rounds of assessment still to do, but we had previously managed to get 422 nominations down to around 160, with Smita’s help, then today’s session worked on those to get the number down to around 60.  In the evening, JP Renaut (of SustainAbility) and his wife Caroline came to Barnes for supper.

SA team shot 1 SA team shot 2

Went across this afternoon to SustainAbility for a leaving session for Kavita (Prakash-Mani). Extraordinary gathering of some of the people who have been – and still are – involved, though photos show only part of the overall team.  Yasmin (Crowther) showed around a set of pen-and-ink portraits that were done of the team at an away-day some years ago.  Then I managed to catch most people for a group shot in the conference room.

My portrait Elaine’s portrait – she thinks she looks like Hilary Clinton!

Just back from the Responsible Leadership Summit at IMD, Lausanne, where I spoke yesterday.  Very impressed by three presentations at the event: Raji Paway of NIIT, who talked about their ‘Hole in the Wall‘ initiative in India; Kamal Qadir of CELLBAZAAR, with whom I had dinner last night; and Peter Bakker, CEO of TNT  – whose presentation was a quite remarkable example of what big companies can do when they really engage.  Somewhat challenging trip back, though.  Plane from Lausanne cancelled because of snow at Heathrow, so driven to Geneva and then took train to Lyon to catch another plane, which was also then cancelled.  So flew to Paris and thence to London.

Exhibit 1: designed for small representatives of Homo volans

Sam and I trolled across to the V&A Museum of Childhood this evening for the launch of Mayo’s new book, Consumer Kids.  Basically the story of how big business is “grooming” children for profit.  Had a wonderful scuttle around the exhibits, which brought back a wealth of childhood memories.

Exhibit 2: all a bit of a blur Exhibit 3: both Sam and I are in there somewhere Exhibit 4: a different mirror – and ditto Exhibit 5: Been inside for 9 months Exhibit 6: head on a pole Exhibit 7: through a glass darkly

Filming 1 Filming 2

Did a filming session at Volans today, with a team from the Melbourne-based Centre for Sustainable Leadership, in Australia.  At one point, it seemed, four cameras were in play, only two of them under the control of the film crew.

Filming 3