The Dodo Club (61st Edition)- Ghost Ideas, and Resilience

A note from me:

Hi Folks,

I’ve moved from a very busy week professionally to a very full week personally. I guess that I’ll feel pretty worn out physically by the time you are reading this, but with a full heart emotionally! It certainly feels that way at the time I’m currently writing this.  

Last week, I was in London for a few days for a gathering of the advisory group on climate and energy transitions for a colossal international energy company. This was quite taxing but, I must admit, there is increasingly strong and uplifting evidence of evolving mindsets and substantial investment into leading positions.  We helped formulate an improved framework to integrate sustainability into their strategic direction, underpinned by resilient value contributions to primary stakeholders.  This should help guide and boost their attention and investments.  

Following this, I came back to NL to participate in a gathering of Dutch CEOs concerned with organising for resilience in a turbulent world.  Later in this Newsletter, I pick up some points from my contribution.  It was a fascinating engagement and raised discussions about business ethics, personal role modelling, and being prepared to think the unthinkable (e.g. the spread of war) as a route to helping prepare for less dramatic uncertainties.   I gave my presentation in English, but the discussion and facilitation were all in Dutch, which is still quite tiring for me – I understand almost 100% of what is said but it is sometimes a challenge to engage in fast-moving conversations.

On the family front, in the space of just seven days we have had our 46^th wedding anniversary (Mary picked Valentine’s Day so I could never have an excuse for forgetting), and the birthdays of one son, one daughter, one grandson, the niece who lives with us, and the silversmith who more-or-less lives with us as her workshop is in our basement.  With so many birthdays, it makes you think of conditions 9 months before February, i.e. in May.  I guess Springtime friskiness comes to mind!

My Bi-weekly Guide:

Ghost Ideas, and Resilience

In the last Newsletter, we recognised that there are “Ghost” ideas and narratives deep in our minds that shape our behaviours, sometimes in unhelpful ways.  Only if we make them explicit and examine them, share them with others, and refine them, can improved narratives then become better guides for our collective choices.  

Beginning to make these explicit can not only encourage improvements, but it can also unleash the power of shared notions buried deep in our minds.  This can be a two-edged sword.  Such power can be abused, e.g. for initiating populist political manipulation, rather than becoming a starting point for joint examination that can improve our capacity for wise collective choices.   

Nevertheless, invoking ghosts can inspire positively as well as mislead.  The biblical story of Moses leading his people to freedom after generations of captivity is familiar to many.  Enslaved people in the United States identified with this narrative, and abolitionists, ministers, and politicians adopted it to highlight the plight of African Americans.  This continued into the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

The artist Arthur Douglas, from the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, painted the panel “Let my people go” to illustrate the moment when Moses is commanded by God to lead the enslaved people to freedom.  This panel can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  

The narrative invokes sentiments of both resistance and resilience.  Appropriately, the nature of resilience is attracting increased attention in these times of heightened stress in the world.  News headlines are provoking anxieties and reactions from many of us that are rooted in ghost ideas that we would do well to surface to explore their validity.  Our resilience depends on having at least a decent grasp of reality.

Different aspects of Resilience have already been examined in depth across five editions of the Dodo Newsletter (28 to 32).  The three main layers of resilience – structural, integrative, and transformative - were outlined in editions 29, 30 and 31.  I found these useful guides for formulating practical steps to recommend to the NL CEOs I met with who were grappling with organising for resilience in a turbulent world.  I also drew on the experiences of crisis situations with a group of Non-Executive Directors from different organisations, which highlighted root causes related to internal cultural failings, such as the reluctance to communicate or acknowledge difficulties.

The overarching recommendation was to adopt and embed attentive, explicit, systems/scenario mindsets in an organisational culture of learning, sharing and regret minimisation, e.g. by:

1. Leadership role modelling

2. Cross-level engagement (& whistle-blowing mechanisms)

3. Deep and regular staff surveys

4. Refined crisis-management practices

5. Meaningful risk-appetite guidelines

6. Managed de-centralisation and diversification

7. Investing in Social Capital with primary stakeholders

8. Influential teams with external focus and risk-challenging powers

9. Programmed engagements with external expertise

10. Scenario-informed project/business evaluation approaches (SIPEA)

I hope that some of these practical proposals will prove valuable to you in whatever professional or personal circumstances you find yourself.  

Question of The Fortnight

Every fortnight, I’ll be asking a thought-provoking question in hopes of sparking interesting and enlightening discussion.

I’d love to hear your response! You can do so by simply responding to this email.

Today’s question is:

Are there particular pragmatic steps you would recommend to others to help them in organising for resilience in our turbulent world?  What do you think of the recommendations above?  

The Dodo Club Online Course

If you would like to learn more about the kinds of topics covered in these Newsletters, then please consider signing up for the introductory online course.

This covers scenario/systems thinking for grappling with uncertainty, an introduction to energy transitions, and the development of strategic character in leadership.

In the interest of avoiding the fate of that unfortunate bird, the Dodo, this course aims to help us secure our own personal legacies within a changing world and the energy transition - and to leave a healthier planet for future generations.

You can access the course through Udemy using the link below!

A series of follow-up courses that treat the main topics in increasing depth and detail will be provided if there is sufficient interest.