A Message from GRLI Foundation Chair Claire Maxwell

2021 Year-end reflection

‘The future is created one room at a time, one gathering at a time. Each gathering needs to become an example of the future we want to create. This means the small group is where transformation takes place. Large-scale transformation occurs when enough small group shifts lead to larger change.’ — Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging

As I write this year’s message, I am struck by how very different I feel now in 2021 than I did at this time last year. Whilst 2020 was demanding and difficult in so many painful ways, it was also accompanied, for me, by an underlying sense of the prospect that we could be, not teetering, but instead standing firmly on the brink of change, where it could be possible to make real those very things we, in the GRLI, hold as critical for the essential thriving of all that inhabit this planet.

Whilst so much has changed, our GRLI values, essential principles remain constant. In fact, for me they have grown in their importance and magnitude — fairness, freedom, honesty, humanity, responsibility and solidarity, tolerance and transparency. When we meet either in the Pods, during a Deans and Directors Cohort or at our AGM for example, I feel those values and principles are alive. They are nurtured and stewarded by the people I see before me on the screen. I leave gatherings uplifted and energised by the dialogue we have engaged in, the ideas and actions identified and owned. Then I turn away from the screen and face a very different scenario, one in which the antithesis of each one of the principles has prominence and exposure.

Of course, I can blame the media for amplifying the negativity but I have to also acknowledge that the act of being globally responsible in how I live, lead and learn is not easing as a result of more and more people waking up to the health giving properties of nature, feeling the injustice of unequal vaccine distribution around the world or experiencing first hand the impact of climate change, whether or not that be through fire, flood or storm. Rather, it feels as if our work together, the very way in which the GRLI operates and is held, is becoming ever more essential, precious and intensely challenging.

Perhaps that is why, during an unprecedented year of financial pressure, regardless of context, our connections have amplified, the number of Partners, Associates and Individual Associates has grown, and collaborative action has intensified and been made tangible. Engagement in our Zoom room and gatherings has increased, the future is being created one room at a time. And the way we work together and the actions we take are living examples of the kind of future we must create if our values and principles are to have any chance of thriving beyond ourselves.

All of these essential engagements and actions, plus the growing visibility of the GRLI, require support and attention from the centre, to such an extent that our Board and Partners agree we may seek to grow by another five full Partners by 2030, on the proviso that diversity and difference are essential components of the process.

This year has been the year of The Guardians. Under the careful guidance of Vanessa Duckenfield, they have co-created meaningful engagement that has led to innovative practice and change. This is not at all easy when each and every person is already more than fully occupied with paid employment. Our heartfelt thanks must go to the outgoing Guardians, Anne Keranen, Jean-Christophe Carteron, Chris Laszlo and Carlo Giardinetti for all they have achieved. And we offer the warmest of welcomes to Jeff Thies, Director, Institute for Business Ethics and Sustainability at Loyola Marymount University, California and Hanna-Leena Pesonen,Dean of Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics,

Governance has been strengthened by two new additional Board Members, Dayle Smith, Dean of the College of Business Administration at Loyola Marymount University, and Peter Mollegaard, Dean at University of Maastricht, School of Business and Economics. Our thanks go to the two outgoing Board Members, Mary Godfrey and Rob Widing, both of whom have contributed enormously to shaping the GRLI, bringing wisdom, challenge and vision to each meeting thereby ensuring we are fit to serve during this difficult time.

Our Board has also been actively engaged in identifying strategic questions for 2022 and beyond, including how we ensure we are not just talking to ourselves but actively including voices of dissent and difference. We seek this in order to understand more than we do now, encourage discomfort, and learning from those often unheard.

Next year will see the introduction of a series of Courageous Conversations, opportunities to raise issues, ask the questions for which there are no easy answers, and to work at the edge of knowing in order to discover potentially radical and alternative ways of operating. None of what the GRLI stands for, what we stand for, can be achieved in isolation. In that sense, we need to take every opportunity to be together in whatever room we can be in to ensure we co-create transformational action on behalf of ourselves, each other and our planet. We are not a ‘nice to have’ desirable plaything. Our community, our conversations, and actions are vital, borne as they are out of a set of non-negotiable values.

Whilst the door is wide open to like-minded and like-hearted people, businesses, and learning institutions, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to those people and institutions who have remained committed to the GRLI throughout the last year: our strategic partners EFMD and AACSB International, and our ever vigilant and innovative Guardians and Board, including Professor Sheila Killian of the University of Limerick for another year of external oversight on our Audit Committee. No end-of-year message would be complete without recognition of the work of John North as Executive Director who has, himself, directly experienced the challenges of holding together life, leadership and learning in an ever changing context. Also to Claire Sommer for bringing her skills to bear on our communications, the Finance Team at EFDM for their support to our Brussels office, Mareta Strydom for supporting the operations in South Africa, and to Anders Aspling for sharing his experience, expertise and wisdom so generously and to such profound effect.

Last but by no means least, thank you to you, our Partners, Associates and colleagues of the GRLI. You bring so much to every room, to every gathering, embodying as you do the very essence of the GRLI. The coming year will demand much from us but, regardless of whether or not we may be physically together, we will bring our whole selves to bear and what, if anything, could resist such strength and commitment.

With the warmest of festive greetings and wishing you health and happiness in 2022.

Claire Maxwell
Chair: GRLI Foundation