Composing kids’ stories on sustainable leadership: a voyage begins

It has been striking me for many years how deeply cynicism is rooted in some professional communities around, in general culture and even daily communications. It seems there is very little what could be done about it within a grown-up person, especially when these persons are on the top of the organisational hierarchy. Somehow, by merciless logic of our current societal fabric, higher one is on the top of the organisation which is supposed to deliver, which in most cases means power or “money” in any form or equivalent, more cynical one might become.
It might not be immediately obvious as these people are also public faces for their organisations so they should represent “values”, and possibly not many organisation would put “cynicism” to their non-financial reporting as a prime achievement. Journey of cynicism from classic understanding of living in ‘agreement with nature’ to modern one of ‘distrust and disbelief to ethical and social values’ is thought-provoking in itself. But that journey here is about something completely different.
It happens sometimes that over a period of months or even years little things emerge here and there, they might not mean much at the time, but then pattern develops itself. Something what Douglas Adams’ struggling protagonist would call a ‘holistic way’. Such it was for me when first time I saw a human in the eyes of CEO when he was collecting waste in the park with his son at the “Clean the Planet” annual action day. Sure enough, it was a corporate event, but still it gave some hope that in the eyes of our children we parents position ourselves as exemplary caring leaders.
Another ‘a-ha’ moment happened at the discussions of what sustainable leadership is about where one of the slides showed ‘different spheres of care’ with family being closest one after ‘myself’. So the idea came why not to compose a set of stories which would illustrate for kids what is sustainable leadership and, most importantly, when their parents will read them these stories in the evening, they [parents] themselves would understand this better.
How realistic it might be as a plan? And how to know that it works and really brings difference? This is something which might become more clear on the way, and could be helped with some ‘by-products’. Already before journey has started one of such ‘by-product’ idea has been graciously gifted to me: what about collecting corporate literature for kids which explains sustainability in operations? It might be in any sector and in any language, and for any age of kids and young people from 4 to 18.
Naturally, a future book is not really about ‘what is good and what is not so good’. It is not about education process as such in itself. Although there is a lot happening at the moment in this sphere which is of great relevance to my chosen topic. What this process then should be about and how to structure it to make a realistic one?
That’s hereto decided. For the next one year and a half I am embarking on learning, meeting and discovering journey to dig into:
- an evolution and current state of knowledge about sustainable leadership to be able to understand myself and to explain it without using ‘jargon’ through verbal images and stories,
- kids’ literature, book fairs, lectures and open events with children’s writers to figure out how to make a story interesting and close to them.
With all this precious material once collected it might take me another year to write short stories either on my own or in a partnership with someone more talented in making words sparkle and dance for kids amusement. Future will tell.
This journal is set to be my dear friend and faithful memories keeper. It will see faces of my new and old friends coming up along the journey, will record anecdotes which might make laugh as likely as not, and will suffer some research deliberations of particularly boring nature. So here we go…
