Journal

A day in the old Paris Bourse

Eiffel Tower from my hotel room Part of the old open cry trading floor area Jay Whitehead points out piece of old Roman city wall Mirrored Mirrored by the ceiling Ditto Later, Jay gives the guided tour again

Across to Paris, City of Lights (and contrasts), via the Eurostar late last night, to speak at the first CRO Summit in Europe.  Bit of a struggle to find my way into the Palais de la Bourse, but when I finally broke in, I was given my own guided tour by Jay Whitehead – taking in the old open cry trading area and the section of old Roman city wall in the main conference theatre. Extraordinary the imagine all those hundreds of traders in full cry, with a huge heap of sand somewhere on the floor, in which they stubbed out their cigars.

Met a whole bunch of people who are potentially going to be helpful for the new book I’m now planning. Chaired a session with Bouwe Taverne (Director of Sustainable Development at Rabobank), Manlio Valdes (President, EMEIA, Climate Solutions, at Ingersoll Rand) and Gabi Zedlmayer, VP of Global Social Innovation at HP).

In conversation with Manlio and Dirk Olin, Editor of CR Magazine and one of the other moderators for the day, we were discussing how the agenda is becoming ever-more complex for business. I mentioned that I had sometimes suggested that it was sometimes akin to C-Suite folk being put on LSD, noting that I knew of what I spake.

Dirk raced off to get a copy of the latest issue of the magazine, where his editorial is called ‘Tripping Over Work’. It starts with Timothy Leary’s six word mantra: Tune in, turn on, drop out. And the basic idea is that, while users of hallucinogens in the Sixties sometimes became paranoid or depressive, people kept in the dark by business can also suffer a form of sensory deprivation – very much akin to being put into a sensory privation tank.

Dirk quotes a study reported in the October 2009 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease which found that many people isolated for as little as 15 minutes from normal sensory stimuli results in what is called “faulty source monitoring” – in which we assume that what is going on in our own heads is coming from the outside.  Companies run the risk that their stakeholders will do the same, assume the worst and “drop out”.

Streets of city wreathed in refuse, presumably a result of the ongoing strikes and mass protests. Also more people sleeping in the streets than I remember, which was a striking contrast with the luxurious surroundings of the Palais de la Bourse. And with the meal I had at Brasserie 1925, cheek-by-jowl with Gare du Nord, as I waited for my Eurostar later in the day.

Swarm grows at 2 Bloomsbury Place

Six of seven today: Amy, Thais, Nadine, Jacqueline, Sam and Alejandro Approximation of fall colours

Volans is really getting into its stride, with the office abuzz with people today – and the trees outside beginning to move into wonderful autumnal colours. That said, I worry increasingly about the long-term fate of the horse chestnut trees, which are all now affected by both the leaf miner and bleeding canker.

First Volans wine-tasting

Tell shoots the tasters Ale in black, Tell skips for joy Amanda, me, Richard Glass-scape

We have resurrected something that we used to do occasionally at SustainAbility: a blind wine-tasting. In the old days, when we are at the Knightsbridge office, we used to do it competitively, with Tell Muenzing (from Germany) championing European wines and Nick Robinson (from New Zealand) New World wines. This time, Tell did it on his own, with four reds and two whites.

Huge fun – and wonderful to look around the room and see colleagues from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, UK and US. There’s a new book out, The Last Lingua Franca, by Nicholas Ostler (Allen lane), who argues that the shelf-life of English (or even ‘Globish’) as a global language may well be limited, with no global language needed by 2050 – thanks to machine translation and related factors. Fascinating thought, but in the meantime I remain keen to build organisations with diverse nationalities involved, to ensure both access to native speakers of key languages and a sensitivity to other cultures.

Looking for a media partner

Front window Shots Printing press

Across to The Guardian this afternoon, with Sam. To discuss possible partnership on a number of projects we have in mind. Odd to think that I first started writing for The Guardian in 1979 or 1980, when I did a piece for their ‘Finance’ page, commissioned – if memory serves – by Hamish McRae. Then I did a series of articles for sections like ‘Futures’ and ‘Technology’, followed, later, by columns in sections like ‘Lifestyles’ and ‘From the Top’. Haven’t written for them for a while, but it looks as if I will be starting again with their recently relaunched ‘Sustainable Business’ website, where I have joined the Advisory Panel.

Interesting to see the Scott Room, in memory of CP Scott, a famous editor of the paper in its early days. Weirdly, many years ago, we arrived in Lagrasse in the south of France to stay in part of a home that proved to be owned by Richard Scott, who served as Chairman of the Scott Trust. As he greeted us at the door, something about his accent spurred to me to ask whether he knew David Layton, whose family had been involved in founding The Economist, and with whom Max Nicholson and I had co-founded Environmental Data Services (ENDS) in 1978. Turned out that Richard and David has shared a study when at Eton.

Graffiti 1 Graffiti 2 Nicholson Building lift operator’s back and braces Elaine photographing in Nicholson Building Kaleidoscopic Retro story in Nicholson Building Sign in Nicholson Building corridor Yarra River, shadowed and sunlit Waste trap – Ian Kiernan would approve Fish sculpture The s-word is everywhere

Started day with breakfast at Rosati, an Italian restaurant at 95 Flinders Lane, which was delightful. Then we wandered across to the Nicholson Building, which Elaine had been encouraged to visit for arts and crafts activities. Weird place. Reminded me of the buildings in the novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which I read almost a decade ago on the recommendation of Tim Delfgaauw.

Fascinating to visit the Immigration Museum. Reminded us of just how lucky we are to be able to fly places, rather than having to crash across oceans in steerage. Then we went back to the IMAX theatre later in the day, where we saw two 3D films, Dolphins & Whales, by Jean-Michel Cousteau and narrated by Daryl Hannah, which struck me as worthy but very dated, the voice-over off-puttingly pious. By contrast, the Hubble telescope film made great use of 3D technology – and the voice-over, by Leonardo DiCaprio, was fresh and modern.

Flight to Hong Kong left at 23.50. Finished William Gibson’s Zero History, which I had been reading alongside a couple of other books, and which got better as it went along – and then slept for around seven hours. Hong Kong was cloudy and rainy, but we saw some spectacular views of Chinese mountains in cloud as we headed homewards. I slept another eight hours, and could easily have slept some more.

Picked up the latest Newsweek as we went through Heathrow, to see how they have presented the green company rankings we worked on earlier this year. Am quite impressed with the results, though aware – as I have been arguing throughout the Australian trip – that we need to be much more careful on how benchmarking, rating and ranking are done. This is the theme of recent work by SustainAbility, spotlighted in their latest report, Rate the Raters.