If corporate sustainability reports are not the reality, but rather the shadow cast on the wall of Plato’s cave, what comes next to propel continuous improvements in actual corporate behavior across an integrated or triple-bottom line?
Authenticity is the touchstone of trust, the defining characteristic mentioned repeatedly at this week’s James Beard Foundation conference. From Genetic modification of food to mother’s milk, from food service providers to artisan foragers, from Nashville to Portland the exploration of trust and distrust was both deep and wide in this live-streamed conference.
Trust and the American Food System is the theme of this week’s annual James Beard Foundation conference in New York: A Crisis in Confidence: Creating a Better, More Sustainable Food World We Can Trust. I moderate a panel Thursday morning with Sam Kass from The White House and Eric Goldstein, Chief Executive of the New York City Office of School Support Services.
Responding to a comment from Joe Nocera about Howard Schultz’s unique background, both as the company founder and a kid from Brooklyn who grew up in public housing, I reframed the question back to the link between organizational and leadership values – and perceptions of time.
The mega-cities of the nearest future are either hubs of innovation and creativity, as outlined by Richard Florida at the Aspen Ideas Festival, or overrun slums without electricity, transit access to center city, running water and the most basic urban services. Or maybe they are both?
I have spent a significant portion of my career managing research projects, publishing materials, devising marketing and communications strategies and consulting to bring needed information and perspectives to corporate and nonprofit decision-makers. So I would never argue against communications and education as indispensable tools in the battle to address pressing global challenges.
As an approach to resolving some of the world’s most intractable problems, embracing the “Rational Middle” sounds like a terrific concept. Who could object to bringing together people of diverse views on energy and climate policy to discuss reasonable solutions in a respectful manner?
As our civilization struggles to understand both the meaning and making of Stonehenge or Easter Island, others may some day look back and try to give meaning to the immense pie charts that seem to be scattered over the American Midwest.
There is so much to do to “repair the world.” But we had best be sure we are asking the right questions before we put too much faith and resources in the answers.
A sense of change is in the air – and not just the crispness of the Fall air in the bucolic hills of Vermont, where I presented at the Dana Meadows Sustainability Institute.
When I began to unhook from SustainAbility in 2008, after 20+ years, to co-found Volans, Jonathan was working with the US end of SustainAbility — and sent the London end of the Volans team a large cardboard box of multi-colored felt rocks, which initially I couldn't make head nor tail of. I thought he was mad, or overly American.
But I have to say that, over time, those felt rocks have become a central feature of the Volans culture, thrown by team members at other team members (or guests) on the slightest provocation. That aside, he's a consummate professional, creative collaborator, skilled communicator, and keen intellect—and I am delighted both to have had Jonathan as a colleague and to now count him as a friend.
John Elkington
Founding Partner & Executive Chairman of Volans, Co-Founder & Non-Executive Member of the Board of SustainAbility