Is your lack of imagination killing the planet?

If you are reading this, you are likely in a similar situation to me as I write this, in that you are, wherever you are, surrounded by the outcroppings of human imagination.

The human imagination shows itself everywhere, in the clothes we wear, to the technology we type with, to the chair we sit on, to the floor the chair is on, to the angles in the room, to everything.  All that and we have not even really got started because as you look more closely one can see that the examples are almost endless. And all those outcroppings of the human imagination are the result of education, cultures, compromises and lives lived. Further, they are all influenced by those of us who run staff and budgets.

Consequently, if you run a team or manage a budget, consider for one moment how your ideas and thoughts (your imaginings) are translated into the products or services your organisation provides.  As you consider, you will likely understand and see that you have influence, perhaps even more than you realise in your day to day.  Now your influence is not without limits, we all have a boss, but nonetheless you have influence.

Turning back to your setting and that of this writer, we are both at this time, surrounded by outcroppings of the (our) human imagination. Yet, at the same time, we are also embedded within that which has nothing to do with human imagination. Human imagination has had nothing to do with our requirement to breathe, process food or the veins, arteries, nerves and flesh that constitute us. Nor has it had any influence on, for example, how a tree grows, or the aluminium ore in the earth that was reconstituted as the casing for the computer I am writing this on and you are perhaps reading this on. We humans demonstrate some mastery of our surroundings through our ability to harness them for our imagination, yet we are also subject to processes and systems that are beyond us.

But this gap between the tangible and what we once considered beyond us has shrunk , and our imaginings are now influencing everything around us. If we need to burn more fuel, we impact the gaseous composition of our atmosphere. If we use plastic in particular ways and don’t close the loop on that plastic, we allow it to flow into our oceans, into the animals we eat, into the animals we don’t eat and ultimately into ourselves and even new humans still forming in their mother. We are now active and complicit in what we surround ourselves with, we are no longer passengers on the earth, we are the earth involved in the transformation of itself.

So ponder how we make our world every day. Every day we reinforce patterns, patterns that reinforce particular ideas. For example, we may reinforce the idea that a good way to move around is by burning fuels that impact the air we breathe. When we ponder, we can very quickly understand how we can no longer rise above our surroundings; we cannot rise above the air we breathe, the water we drink.

Are we doing our best? Can we do better?

Our imaginations could allow us to build new industries, new products and new services, and in doing so we might pursue new materials, new transport links, new forms of manufacturing, new processes or new whatevers. Or we might just use more of what we have, more plastic, more burning, more forest clearing, more water, more food, more whatever. It’s a choice.

Some of you reading this now may say to yourselves, but “what can I do, these patterns, these forces are bigger than me?” In so many regards this is true, not one of us is going to change the economic system at the drop of a hat or have a chat with the billionaires and persuade them to share the wealth to tackle inequality.  But likewise, there is no need for resignation and some lifeless desire to go with the flow.

At this time, we are in a place where we have our imaginations and a whole host of new data about our surroundings. Our challenge is what will we imagine now? We can ignore the data or we can accept the data and actually reimagine. Thus, our challenge as strategists and business leaders is to take on board the new data and imagine new patterns, new ways of running organisations, new services, new products. It's easy to proceed without taking on board the new data, that is something we have been doing for a long time now. It’s a nice comfortable non-challenging, (myopic) and non-imaginative place. Truly farsighted business leaders are moving, they are asking different questions of their teams, they are imagining in different ways. They are imagining what it might mean to operate an organisation that enhances our prospects on our planet.

We are in a time of change, a liminal phase of business evolution, the old is being lost and the new has yet to fully emerge. However, the principles are clear and the curiosity and questions you ask as a leader are needed. Questions such as; how do we do this (insert your product or service) in a way that is fair to everyone involved, closes the loop and treads lightly on our planet?  So, as I sit here writing, and you reading, the challenge is to imagine.

I dare you.

Nick is a professor who lectures and researches in strategy and sustainability. His core purpose is to help organisations develop their sustainable mindset and begin the journey of transforming their organisations to becoming FutureNormal.  Nick works at Griffith University where he teaches sustainability and systems thinking on the MBA and researches and provides professional development courses in the same area. Nick also has a role at the university as Dean and Director of Learning Futures and Griffith Online. Prior to academia, Nick worked as a Senior Executive in industry and was a Strategy Consultant for EY.