Reflections on the G20 Summit in South Korea
The recent G20 summit in South Korea was still debating the adaptive leadership challenge it promised itself to achieve back in 2006. The challenge then, as it is now, is “Building and Sustaining Prosperity” (meaning for all tiers of society) throughout the planet. For a while the GFC had nations working together, but like the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, it appears that the problems being faced are again being framed only in the context of the individual nation-states and not as a global governance issue which is a symptom of the crisis in global leadership.
In my writings and teaching over the past decade I have focussed on what I term ‘leadership in a futures context’. What I mean by this is that leadership, in my view, is about creating preferred futures for individuals, organisations, communities, even nations, in the now, by shifting the current narrative to a more holistic narrative that is inclusive of all tiers of society, not just the top tier, the environment we live in, both natural and created, and future generations. My observation has been that the predominant G20 narrative is one of making the most of current situations largely, perhaps for many even solely, for financial benefit only, as argued by our global leaders at the G20 summit. Financial benefit is important obviously. But financial benefit coupled with outputs that add meaning and purpose to the betterment of the global community as a whole is both rewarding, necessary, and will go a long way to enhancing sustainability and thus “building and sustaining prosperity” over the long time.
On just this subject a futurist hero of mine, Johan Galtung, pointed out back in 1996 (The decline and fall of empires: A theory of de-development www.transcend.org) that there is little more to fetch from a polluted nature and an impoverished, ailing population (who) also treat their own periphery the way they treat the world periphery, meaning in both cases that they do not have enough purchasing power to buy the products offered on the markets. The result will be overproduction relative to buying capacity, deflation, and recession that may easily turn into depression. How right he was and how timely this is worth repeating for the G20 summits!
I also wrote on similar lines (Global Sustainability: How Can Business Schools Contribute Journal of Futures Studies, August 2008, 13(1): 125 – 136) see under ‘Publications and Articles’.
“Rethinking Success"
However way we view the argument, the overwhelming consensus seems to be that the important starting point is to stop doing a lot of what we are currently doing.
Currently the measurement of success is based on achieving more income from consumers than someone else. The more income you have the more successful you are. This may sound simplistic but in essence it is what the free market economy is based on..................................
This will mean rethinking leadership as leadership is correlated with success which in turn means rethinking what we mean by success.
Perhaps this conflict need not exist if we could somehow liberate our intellect to a higher level of consciousness and being.”
You can imagine then my delight when the Deputy Dean of Mt Eliza executive education at Melbourne Business School, who knows of my interest in this area, sent me an article called ‘Fit for purpose: Remaking our sense of “Strategy in Business”, by Chris Nichols, ‘Thoughts on sustainability’, Ashridge Business School UK. Nichols presents the argument that there are at least three deeply held fantasies that underlie almost all day to day business thinking and which make the current way of doing strategy unfit in almost all organisations. These are:
• The fantasy of limitless growth. First, there is a pervasive belief that our society is only successful if its economy is growing.
• The fantasy of actions without consequences. Secondly we have the fantasy of “actions without consequences”, the idea that we can act in this way and that it will not have consequences that we need to consider or be responsible for.
• The fantasy of separateness (and the crisis of fragmentation). Thirdly, this fantasy allows we humans to believe that we are somehow separate from, and “other than”, the rest of the environment in which we live our lives.
Could it be we are seeing major business schools and universities and other renowned institutions trumpeting the changes needed as mainstream?
It would be great to believe so, and it would also be great to believe that future G20 summits will tackle their 2006 resolution and will realise why rethinking leadership is an essential imperative if we are to overcome the big challenge our current economic worldview presents to overcome these fantasies and develop a more appropriate worldview – sooner rather than later!