Jason Jay Discusses the Importance of Authentic Dialogue in Achieving Systemic Sustainability Change

one of the examples that we share in the book is um you know about a a young woman in in in Washington state who was working on um who who was working in municipal waste management and so she was in you know working in and around trash dumps and one of the things that she was seeing was that there was a lot of carpet in landfill um and it turned out that her mom was a uh a kind of executive assistant in interface carpets um and so you know that that's kind of like could be an uncomfortable conversation but um you know she went and like really engaged intensely with her mom um to uh to say look like your company is part of this kind of waste accumul problem and um and and it was it was it was a powerful enough conversation that it moved her to say okay like what is something that I could do here and she started a conversation with her uh boss who was Ray Anderson the CEO of interface Carpets by leaving a copy of Paul Hawkins book Ecology of Commerce in a strategic location on his desk where she knew Ry would see it um and Ry reading that book um was the beginning of his sort of Awakening about sustainability which led to strategies that interface but more importantly I mean when I was getting into this field in 2000 you know starting in in in the very early 2000s um you know he was out galvanizing all kinds of Business Leaders and inspiring all kinds of people um in a for for for a generation of sustainable business work um and so one conversation at a time right so I think we don't always know I I sometimes I think we think about like well what are the dialogues okay well we imagine maybe there's like some special room where we have to get you know all the CEOs and government people together and like hash out how we're going to make a better world kind of davo style um right and and I and I there's a role for that but sometimes it's like these onetoone conversations that have these Ripple effects that you don't know that they're going to have and you don't get to know in advance but if you can authentically share what you care about um in a way that is Meaningful and engaging and not holier than now but but but but powerful um you can inspire people and we can build the conversations necessary for movements which are necessary for change so so I think that um yeah of course there have been various different kinds of you know ra dialogues of a more formal sort from the you know Roundtable on sustainable palm oil between World Wildlife and uh Unilever to um you know the um the Business Roundtable you know conversations that led to this kind of stakeholder capitalism push you know I don't know in the long run how how impactful those are I'm pretty sure this set of conversations that interface was pretty impactful um so I I I what I always do is just try to invite and encourage people to think about who you have access to what you really care about and is there a conversation that you've been avoiding having um because maybe of how you think it'll go or you're not sure it's going to have an impact but just do it and you know if you want to use our our book and the tools in there to help you um that's why we wrote it

Channel: Impact Entrepreneur

Views: 2

Keywords: Impact, Entrerpreneur, Impact Investing, impact economy, social enterprise, sustainable investing, esg, impact entrepreneur

Id: wPav84kYeUU

Length: 4min 2sec (242 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 11 2024