People Are Like Buildings

Issues Can't Be Seen From The Outside Until There's A Problem

I have lots for you to jump into today. Rather than speaking about the external climate and the latest Corporate Sustainability news, for the 13th edition of Honey Drops, I’m focusing on your internal climate.

This won’t be the last drip of Honey Drops for this year. I’ll be sending through the last one next week before Australia reeeallly shuts down for the Summer holidays.

Feel free to forward this on to anyone you think would benefit from a drop on their toast, a stir in their tea or a well-timed deep breath.\

3 Thoughts From Me:

The past couple of weeks have proven to be more philosophical than normal. This may well be as a result of re-reading Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder, a novel exploring the history of philosophy, which in turn has opened my receptors to a wider range of inputs.

There’s been a family wedding, conducting the first three interviews for a podcast I am launching in January, spending time with old friends & new, insightful interactions with the financial world, and embracing the flexibility necessitated by waking up in multiple cities within a compressed period of time.

I have also been incredibly lucky to be the recipient of multiple podcast episodes and TED talks sent to me by friends as the result of our conversations we’d had earlier that day or due to our closeness and the ongoing discussions we have about these ideas.

I’ve included each of them below so you too can immerse yourself in some ‘thinking about thinking’ time as well.

Eventually, The Two Ends of a Candle Can Meet

I say all of this, as one of the recurring themes within the Corporate Sustainability community has been the growing instances of burnout. In fact, Forbes have just published an article by an organisational coach, ’Running On Empty: How Corporate Cultures Fuel Burnout’, covering:

1. The recent conversational shift amongst Director and VP-level executives from growth and leadership development to now focusing “overwhelmingly on protecting vulnerable workers and managing with limited resources”.

2. Burnout is now considered a ‘workplace disease’ by the World Health Organisation

3. Burnout is more damaging than stress: stress is acute and can be alleviated with rest, while burnout can lead to high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes and depression

The article goes on to discuss the strategies an organisation must put in place to protect their employees, especially their senior leaders. I would extend this especially to your Sustainability leaders, who are often wearing even more hats than their CEO due to the many contradictory demands of their role. If you’re experiencing burnout, there’s a high chance many of these solutions are lacking or missing in your company at the moment:

1. Optimise Workflow Planning and Management

2. Build and Maintain Trust

3. Emphasise Transparency and Communication

4. Advocate and Prioritise

5. Revisit Workplace Culture

6. Move Beyond the Superficial

7. Elevate HR

Look after yourself. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and we truly want the most capable leaders to be here for the long haul.

Speak Their Language, But Don’t Become Them

Which brings me to the world of Finance.

A key neurological breakthrough over the past decade has been unlocking how some people are able to learn multiple languages in very short periods of time.

They even have a name: Polyglots.

Benny from Ireland starts speaking from day 1. He aims to make 200 mistakes in one day. Lucas from Brazil adds 100 Russian speakers on Skype Chat, and then replicates what others have said to him so he can start new conversations with others based on the common conversational structures he observes.

There are countless tactics to learn a new language, but they are underpinned by one common strategy: each polyglot has identified the method that gives them the most joy during the process of language learning, and doubled down on it.

Corporate Sustainability is often a foreign language for many within Finance. They talk about EBITA, debt cycles, mergers & acquisitions, valuations and underwriting. Their job is to have a singular focus on ‘the bottom line’, the return on investment and shareholder value. To not be distracted by ‘non-material’ environmental concerns.

And so as Sustainability Polyglots, we have the opportunity to have fun when speaking their language:

• How much will our insurance premiums increase if we are not able to provide an accurate risk matrix to our insurers, incorporating our current and future physical and transition risks?

• How much revenue is currently at-risk with our ASRS Group 1 customers who require our (as-yet-not-tracked) carbon management data to complete their Scope 3 emissions modelling, and will find an alternative supplier if we can’t provide this information?

• How much financial exposure do we have to fluctuating global oil prices due to current and future geopolitical conflicts?

• How have we evaluated our physical risk exposure to our assets and the disruption of our supply chains?

• How will our shareholders react if we provide a below-standard mandatory climate report to the regulators and are publicly challenged on it?

• What commercial risks do we face from a decrease in demand as customer preferences shift to sustainable products and services before we innovate?

• How will not qualifying for access to cheaper borrowing rates via green loans impact our investment strategy each financial year for the next three years?

If it’s a newer language to you, be like a Polyglot: have fun when meeting your Finance peers on their turf and help them be more successful in their role.

You, Friends and The Secret of Happiness:

Alright, here are three great presentations (one TED Talk, one Fireside chat, one interview) I have been sent this week. We’ll start with the Self, move onto our Friendships, and end on Happiness.

Kinda like a recipe for success.

The Art of Being Yourself:

“My life is my message” - Gandhi

Caroline McHugh commands the stage in this TED Talk and breaks down the four layers we all have. Well worth watching her illustrate:

1. Perception: What people think of you

2. Persona: What you want people to think of you

3. Ego: What you think of you (“self-congratulation through to self-castigation”)

4. Self: Who you have been since you were 7, and who you will be until you’re 107

The Leadership Problem: Friendships, Loneliness, Lost Idealism and the Truffle Pig

You know how sometimes two of your favourite thinkers end up sitting across from each other and having the kind of conversation you’d expect them to have, yet it still blows your mind?

Well, this was that for me.

We are seeing the impacts of loneliness across the board: socially, politically, economically, environmentally. Often as a result of people ‘making sacrifices’ for their career. They can’t sacrifice their family or career, so their friendship network becomes the thing that has to go. Even though friendships are exactly what people need most for their health and happiness.

Friendships do take work, effort and love. And they can easily be taken for granted. Simon Sinek and Trevor Noah articulate this so well, and their resulting conclusions are ones neither of them could have reached without the other.

The Secret to Happiness:

I swear I’m not an official member of the Official Simon Sinek Fan Club, (definitely am unofficially), but this is a fitting way to close out today’s dive into emotional resilience.

Harvard University has been running a research program on happiness for 86 years. Robert Waldinger has been the head of this study for the past 20 years and he speaks with Simon about common trends the study has identified amongst of those above-average for happiness.

My two favourites:

1. The strongest friendships are built on values, not interests. This explains why long-term friends can drift apart over time, while newer friends can become close very quickly;

2. “Engage with things you care about with people you care about”.

You can listen here.

2 Quotes From Others

1. Humility

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, humility is thinking of yourself less.”

Source: Baroness Campbell, as per Caroline McHugh’s TED Talk

2. Unity

“Every one of us is a stone
dappled grey and edges age-worn rough
alone, we are solid enough
but together, we could make towers, mark paths”

Source: A Belfast poet, as retold by Rory Stewart in his fantastic memoir, ‘Politics on the Edge’

1 Thing For You To Ponder

As you can tell by this week’s edition, I’ve been in contemplative headspace this week. I do hope you give yourself the time to watch/listen to the above. In the final stretch before everyone goes on holidays, use the next week to prioritise what must be done now, reach out to those in your life you have been meaning to but haven’t found the ‘right’ time, and remember - nearly everyone you come in contact with is doing their very best.

Credit: Dan Leverington

Until next week,

Dan