These are the notes from the TED Styled talk I gave at the Bee Inspired Event in April 2021. Enjoy this session.
Katherine Ann Byam 0:01
From what I can tell, we have always believed in stories and narratives woven into the fabric of well-being, and the identity of the society we are a part of. Many societies once thought that the world was flat. This was until philosophers and mathematicians and scientists proved otherwise. Well, for some of us at least. But the process of facilitating this transition of beliefs involved colonisation, slavery, murder, and eventually the reeducation with new stories. There are still tribes in the Amazon forest in Brazil and Venezuela, and other places around the world too to be fair, who believe that children have been fathered by all the lovers a woman takes during her pregnancy. Scientists have proven that this isn't true. But the social impact of that belief meant that all men who had relations with that woman would take a role in that child's upbringing. That child belonged to a community.
For many of us today, we believe that a large house, a powerful car, and the ability to travel in style and in luxury are a sign of success that will attract not only more wealth, but more community and more well-being for us and our families. We believe that we can have infinite growth. We only need to put our minds to it. Growth Mindset they say. But can we really have infinite growth on a finite planet? My name is Katherine Ann Byam and I'm a business resilience strategist and leadership coach, helping leaders design a path to sustainable transformation for their businesses, careers, and lives. I am inspired in particular by one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Goal No. 8 Decent Work and Economic
Growth. And to explain what that means to me, I'm going to have to take you on a trip to 1982 in the suburbs of a tiny island, called Trinidad and Tobago. My parents were typical middle-class boomers who lived a comfortable life in a house with land and space for multiple cars and a garden. My parents did decent work. My dad was a lawyer working for the government. His promotions at the time were primarily based on his time in service. My mom was a High School teacher of Biology and food and nutrition.
My grandparents lived a life more closely linked to nature. My grandmother was not allowed to go to High School, so she lived her life as a homemaker. I never once heard her complain, though. When I was born, my grandfather was already retired. And he was the proud owner of a permaculture regenerative farm. He did not call it that, I assure you, he called it “the garden.” I remember it distinctly. His garden has beautiful fruit trees for as far as my tiny eyes can see. And as an adult, it looks smaller than I remember. But at the time, that place meant the world of adventure to me. He had an area for growing beans and pulses, an area for flowers, an area for chickens to rummage around and to feed off the land. The first time I witnessed a chicken being killed was in that garden.
My granddad would take the chicken and carry it to an area out of the eye range of the other hens and the coop. He would slide the entire chicken into a paint can with a hole at the bottom, and then hold the chicken’s wings and legs in place with that can so he could swiftly separate its head from its body. The chickens don't die immediately with this method. But they also do not suffer for very long. This would probably disturb most five-year-olds who live in cities today. But at the time, although it was difficult to watch, it fit the context in which he lived and in which that chicken lived. My grandfather was a sustainable farmer and sources 40% of his food from his garden. Bread, rice, and fish was still sourced from the grocery. What happened to the chicken felt like a natural part of being on a farm. We eat fresh eggs laid by the chickens who eat a bit of corn and a lot of bugs. My grandfather did decent work. His reward was seeing his garden grow and sharing the fruits of that labour with his family and his neighbours, who in turn also shared the fruits of their labour. Much of the local community with sustainable farmers.
No one would walk past my grandparents while they’re relaxing on their porch in the evenings, for example, without stopping to say hello, having a chat, or coming to collect or to receive or to give food. I'll be honest with you, I didn't know how much I valued that part of my upbringing until very much later.
I wanted to take on the world. When I got my first job at a multinational company, I was earning more money than my mom did. Within a few years, I was earning more than everyone in my family. I was travelling the world and acquiring knowledge of how to make decisions that favour the shareholder of a major corporation.
At one point, I would fly through Miami twice every month, each time asking the travel agent to schedule the connecting flight late enough, so I could take a trip to Dolphin Mall for shopping. My footprint is huge. And even though I donated much of my clothing to charity, I still have four suitcases and Ziploc things that I could hope to wear again. Sure, I have a Finance and Audit background, I prepared financial statements. I sat on the board’s Audit Committee. I travelled to more than 50 International offices to review our business practices. I had decent work and a massive consumeristic appetite. When I joined the company, there were more than 120,000 people globally. By 2010, the number halved.
My grandmother died in 2010. Seven years after my granddad, she was 92. I learned that while I sat quietly on my own in a church in Santiago de Compostela. intervene. I received a voicemail message and I knew instinctively what that message was going to say. At the time, I was actually there because I was beginning to wonder if I made the right decision leaving my family behind for the glamour of life and work in Europe. My view of decent work had begun to fracture.
By 2014. I was on a list, one of those lists that no one likes to be on. There was a list for information and consultancy. There was a chance I would be made redundant. I kept my job. Yet I started to wonder what else I could be doing? That's not this that would bring me more joy, and be better for the planet. Work is decent if you as the individual believe that it is. My grandfather was a police officer before he retired, but his dream was to form a garden. He changed his life immediately and completely upon retirement. And he continued to work in that garden for 20 years until his death.
That garden never paid him a cent. But it gave him a great community and food on the table. My grandmother was never paid for her entire life for her work. But she was fulfilled by raising and caring for her family. She showered us with completely unconditional love. I was paid very well for my work. But I felt a growing misalignment between what I valued and what my employer valued. And when I went off to do an MBA, and during one of my classes, it was the first time I realised that my income was in the top 1% globally, and the top 5% in the UK. Before that, I felt like I wasn't making much money relative to my international peers, for example. I started to understand the systemic inequalities that are creating further and further distance from the richest, let's say 2000 plus billionaires of the world and the poorest 20%. Income inequality is an important subject we need to address.
And sooner rather than later, we tend at times to conflate climate change with sustainability. Yet sustainability could be understood as an entire system of economics and activities that maintains or improves the quality of life of people on our planet. The very foundation of our lives has been disrupted by reality. Yes, reality. Many of us esteem to be wealthy, financially, in real assets, and in our relationships perhaps. Yet we ignore the signs that things are not going as planned. And that while we build toward Maslow's idea of self-actualization, the base of our pyramid is fracturing under the weight of our desires. Food is impacted by toxic chemicals, significant water use, and antibiotics.
Water is impacted by industrial pollution, climate change farming methods, and simply where you live in the world. Air is impacted by toxic chemicals being released by industries and by farms, and shelter is being disrupted by the atmospheric conditions that are causing us to emit vast amounts of CO2 and CH4, and other toxicants into the air. So what can we do? The really great news is that everything, absolutely everything is open to being redesigned. So I want to call you to action today saying, “Start with you!” Recognise that sustainability is self-care. It is the care for your health and well-being. It is the care for your family's health and well-being, and others care for your community. Understand the data.
Do a baseline assessment. You can do this for your personal life by checking the World Wildlife organisation site, for example. And for your business, you can take the free assessment available on the B Corp site. This can tell you where you are across a variety of measures and help you to decide where to celebrate, and where to start taking purposeful action. Collaborate. Look for collaboration opportunities among business units or across your community that design solutions for a problem you see at work or where you live. Diversity created the rich planet we live in today and inclusion will help us save it. Innovate. Remember that innovation doesn't have to be new to the world.
Most of man's best inventions have come from observing nature. Observe solutions and other spheres that can be repurposed, adapted, and used to address new solutions in your area. Do you remember the book, “So You Got Innovation?” It was one of the greatest books I read during my MBA. And in that book, there was an example of an Indian potter, who designed a fridge made simply from clay and water. Simple, elegant. If you have the capital to invest, think big. We live in an age where we have the most advanced tools and data are available. Much of the technology for many of the solutions that we need already exists.
Volunteer to support the transformation of urban spaces into areas for community farming and other forms of integrative activities. This concept of “interbeing” is something that I think is so powerful. We are connected to the flora, the fauna, and the people who live around us. And we need to find ways to preserve that connection. Where should you work? I say work for companies who have taken a stand. But you don't have to. You can do things where you are and change and influence a better tomorrow. The companies who have taken a stand - I can bring some examples for you, Patagonia. They were one of the forerunners in B Corp assessments, and they say that we are in business to save the entire planet. Then we have our favourite bamboo roll company Who gives a crap. This one currently gives considerably to charities to support toilets for places that do not have sanitation, appropriate sanitation in Africa, for example, and also to help them repurpose that waste matter into soil manure for farming. Oatly, the oat milk brand that's disrupting the milk industry.
Then we have the Impossible burger. And that's a company that has found a way to make plant-based burgers smell and taste like the real deal. I want to leave you with this. What we believe as humans have changed and evolved any number of times throughout our history. The more we learn, the better decisions we can make. But this only works if we are willing to be curious enough to suspend our beliefs and stay in the question. We have precedent for being able to make a significant change for the better of our planet. We slowed the destruction of the ozone layer with the Montreal Protocol, for example, in 1987.
The Paris Climate Accord in 2015, has had a rocky fight for six years, with us pulling in and out of it. But we see that nations are recommitting, the global pandemic showed us that we can all slow down and even live with far less than we thought we could. This tells me we also have the ability to redesign the engines of growth. And think of it as much more than wealth in the form of physical capital, we can start to appreciate our natural capital and our social capital as well. The only limit we have in making this change a reality is our imagination. Whatever you believe you can do, believe we can all change and save the world. And we will.