A world of a thousand good leaders
Perhaps like many people, I’ve been thinking a great deal about how we got here politically. To a place where it is ok to crush the weak, to be self-centred, to rest on convenient lies.
Obviously, one manifestation of this is Trump and all he represents. Another is the lump of coal being handed around in Australian Parliament during a heatwave. I could go on. I won’t, because this is not about “the leaders”.
Actually, that’s not quite true. This piece is all about the leaders. As Umair Haque puts it, it is about how we pay too much attention to Great Leaders, and not enough to good leaders.
Great Leaders are disempowering. They are untouchable and unaccountable. We welcome some as a gift from Heaven, and bemoan others as a weird aberration. Great Leaders happen to us.
Good leaders, however, can be any one of us. Each of us can choose to be one, creating a better world in our own way. In Umair’s words:
What working societies really need are thousands of tiny genuinely good leaders . Not one “Great Leader”. A good leader is just someone with a powerful positive agenda and vision for a human organization — as big as a society or as small as a family.
It is a vision of a human world. A civic world, and it has a direct application to waste (my current focus). In the waste world, we have everything we need to be good leaders, to actually change the world from the inside out.
If we choose to pay attention, we understand society deeply. We know how society works because we know what it throws away. We understand economics. Psychology. Politics. Manufacturing. Logistics. We are deeply enmeshed in the world, knowing that everything is connected to everything.
We also know that we can’t change anything by decree. We must be influencers. Nudge rather than force. To take an aviation analogy, we gently change the course of society through small changes to its trim tab. Through actions, not theories nor good intentions. We change things by doing things.
In practical terms, it means letting go of the one solution to fix it all. We cannot have a waste processing technology that solves all of our problems, just as we can’t have an all-encompassing strategy that will guide us forward. We can’t know waste well enough to comprehensively plan for it.
It means embracing a thousand small solutions, about creating networked solutions. About recognising that what works there may not work here. That there is a large and growing need for small enterprise, community enterprise, to step up and weave together a web of waste services that is resilient and creative in its diversity.
It is embracing a spirit of experimentation. Curiosity. Questioning how to do things better, and making space for others to do so too. It is creating a world without waste.
A world without waste is a world rich with stories and character and a lush vibrancy of detail. It draws on many streams of knowledge, deliberately forming mash-ups to propel the narrative forward. Where history matters as much as engineering, psychology as much as law.
A world without waste is a world of a thousand good leaders. Each with their own nuance, their own focus, their own set of beliefs. Each held and valued with respect as we collectively remake a world that is worth passing on to future generations.
A world without waste is a world we create through our actions each day, in our own way, driven by values and purpose and the knowledge that we can make a difference. Where a large and growing group of people assume the mantle of good leadership and dare to dream. A world I want to explore and nurture through both these writings and my actions.
A world without waste is ours, waiting for us to step out as the leaders we truly are.
