Change the System, Business Declares, with Sam Baker

The world is  changing, and the tricky question is whether business is shaping that change or sleepwalking into it. We sit down with Sam Baker, a director at Business Declares, to talk about the 'polycrisis' of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, widening inequality, and the way these shocks reinforce one another in daily life, markets, and politics.

We find out how Sam has moved from consulting and corporate strategy to a deeper reckoning sparked by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. We talk about how “purpose-led business” can stall when it reaches the hard part: changing the business model rather than polishing the story. If competition rewards short-term profit and GDP growth, what happens to leaders who prioritise long-term resilience, real impact, and a just transition?

We also challenge the reflex to double down on fossil fuels during geopolitical disruption, and explore a clearer alternative north star: private sufficiency and public abundance within planetary boundaries. 

If you care about sustainability, ESG, net zero, and the future of business, subscribe, share this conversation, and leave a review. What part of the current system do you think needs to change first?

Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.

Transcript

elcome To Goodgeist

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Goodgeist a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Eusler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hello, hello everyone. You are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability, which is brought to you by the DNS Network, a global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damlo from Reagancy Istanbul, and this is Dave from Creative Concern in Manchester.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they communicated, and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

So in this episode, we're going to talk to Sam Baker, the director of the Business Declares. Business Declares is a nonprofit organization formed by senior leaders with a vast range of experience from the SME, V Corp, and FTSCE. FTSE 100, thank you. With a business members network underpinned by their commitment towards tackling the climate, ecological, and social poly crisis in their business big goals, and advocating for systemic change and just transition.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

So Sam, we'd like to keep the bios going long enough for our guests to feel uncomfortable. So I'm gonna carry on. Sam sign off now. Let's jump done. Exactly. So you're an advocate of this system level change to address the poly crisis, of which there's the poly seems to be getting bigger and more poly all the time. And you're a climate and biodiversity educator and campaigner, 30 years plus of uh experience as a management consultant, including 15 years as a strategy consulting partner at Deloitte, six formative years in Tanzania, this incredible background, three years working as a volunteer with VSO, and you've initiated a number of different campaigns, such as Walk to COC26, you've run workshops, chaired a charity. I don't think there's anything you haven't done, Sam. So uh thanks for joining Dammer and myself.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

So it's not he's uh yeah question is impact, right? Doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter how you know I'm 60 years old. Of course, there's a long list of things I've done. The question is impact.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

I that is still a very big question, Mark.

am Baker’s Path Into Climate Work

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Oh, brilliant. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, well, listen, why don't we talk about that journey, first of all, Sam? So we can talk about your journeys becoming the a director at Business Declares and what what shifted your focus fully towards the climate, sustainability, those sorts of issues.

DGs And Paris Change The Frame

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Okay. Well, what give it give me a sort of speed-up sign, you know, in case I ramble up for too long. But so I I guess first of all, I don't think I was ever necessarily I went to boarding school at a young age. I was never necessarily bought into the system, generally, the broader system. I wouldn't say I was, you know, an insane rebel, but but I was always critical of the of the institutions I was in and and the broader system I was part of. Never particularly political, much more of an individualist, seeking adventure and uh seeking to sort of break any bounds and any ties that were put on me, really. So, you know, got started off traditionally because I was looking for a job after university along with everybody else, sort of, you know, bah, you know, just just got on the bandwagon of joining of Accenture as it was. Wasn't difficult to join. I really, really feel for the people in the UK at the moment who are graduating, who find a very different job market, but then literally you were interviewed by them. Sorry, you were in yeah, you were interviewing them as opposed to the other way around. They were desperate to fill that their coffers. So joined at Anderson, did IT stuff for about three years. Super interesting in terms of how you think and structured thinking and sort of systems in that sense, as opposed to broader world and ecological systems. But they're very interesting, sort of introduction, I guess, to the world of I guess work and business, one I didn't appreciate at the time at all, but subsequently I have. And then after that, I went out to Tanzania to be a volunteer. And that was really in the spirit of something different, venture, you know, excitement. It didn't really, I never used the words like giving back and things like that. I just thought that was a nonsense, right? And it was quite interesting because the volunteers who went out to to Tanzania were split into two, one with the sort of the giving back people, we were typically teachers, and the other half were just like, yeah, let's suck it and see, and you know, not particularly happy in the UK anyway, let's let's head out to Tanzania. Interestingly, so we had a minimum time of two years. I stayed three years, and pretty much all the adventures stayed, and most of the, you know, I want to give back and do something for the world, left early. And I think it was, it's it's just a sort of for me, it's a it's an example of how, yeah, an excess of agency. People talk a lot about agency, yeah. But I think these people felt that they were agents of change. They were going to Tanzania to do good, right? And they found that far more complicated. And in fact, in many cases, they weren't even appreciated or liked because you turn up at a school, everyone's like, you know, you're paid, you don't think you're being paid anything. As a volunteer, we're getting a dollar a day. But of course, for the people, the incumbents, they could be that could be significantly more than they're getting. So you're getting more, you know, you're expecting to be thanked and loved or whatever. And in fact, you're probably, you know, moving somebody else out of their accommodation or out of their position in the school. So it was just an example of that, a reminder of the of the need not to be hubristic if you're trying to quickly make change and to reflect deeply on on you know where you meet the system as opposed to sort of just charge in there. So anyway, thoroughly enjoyed that, stayed another three years, met my wife there, and have strong links back to Tanzania's. Absolutely loved the place. Came back, didn't know me at London Business School. That was to try and get back into the, if you like, the the Western job market. And, you know, because everybody's like, oh, Tanzania, whoa, what a fantastic time. I wish I could have done that, but they don't give you a job. Right. So back I came, if you like, sort of, you know, blensed my my record by going to London Business School, and then got a junior job at Deloitte as a junior consultant in the strategy area. And I think at the time I was that time, definitely I was caught up in, you know, growth, job opportunity, venture capital, technology. I wasn't really thinking about much more at that stage. And I think two years at London Business School had had sort of pushed out all those thoughts about, you know, development inequality that I experienced in Tanzania. I mean, not completely, it was still there somewhere, but it would subdued it for and suppressed it. And I came out sort of hungry to get stuck into business and do well. Ended up staying at Deloitte, and I do think for skills and interest and intellectual challenge, those those types of jobs are super good, super interesting. But they do have a you know finite limit, obviously. Finite limit comes when you know you manage for whatever reason, you you are shocked into taking a breather. It might be somebody died, it might be because you're ill, it might be because you get sacked, you know, it could be all sorts of different reasons. But that I think is the time when you think, oh my goodness, I've spent 15 years doing this, or 10 years, or 20 years. And yes, you know, every day is challenging and exciting and stimulating and fulfilling, and there's a smile on my face sometimes, and you know, maybe a tear at some other times. But the point being is sort of you're living your life, and you don't get that again, and you've used your 10 or 15 or 20 years to work because the work is hard, you know, in terms of hours, it's it's it's intense. You know, I used to leave the house at I don't know, seven o'clock, get back at 10 or 11 very often, work at the weekends. So that's how you live your life, and it's yeah, there are many elements to it which are fulfilling and and can be received in a in in a good way, but it's not enough, I think. And so when you look back and you realize that you need to change. So what happened to me? My my I guess my opportunity to change. So I was I was heading up at the the strategy practice, and that was a practice focused on profitability and growth in large plans, typically. And we did a lot of private equity work. And yeah, that was the that was the sort of mantra. And then in 2015-16, as we many of us remember, we had both two fundamental things. We had the Sustainable Development Goals published, and we also had the but you know, by all the UN participating nations, and then we also had the Paris Agreement signed. And that I was lucky at the uh it was 2015, there was a lady who had done a purpose, it helped Michael Dell create their purpose in the US. And for personal reasons, she came over to the UK to London, she got a job at the GSMA, which is the Mobile Operator Association, and she wanted to, and at the time, everybody hated mobile operators. You know, they were they were, I think they were worse than the bank, you know, RepuTrack, I think they called it, done a messy global survey, and operators were at the bottom. You know, you had things like Meta and you know, all at the top, and everyone who thought these fantastic new businesses were amazing. You had banks pretty low, but you had telecom operators right at the bottom. So she was like, well, you know, not good enough. We want to create a purpose. You know, what is the global purpose of this industry? How do we how do we illustrate that? How do we articulate that? And so the SDGs were published, and then we did this work with the SDGs, and we were the first big initiative to try and build the an impact report. I didn't realize it was an impact report at the time because I was a strategy consultant, but to build an impact report for GSMA for the mobile operators worldwide about their impact through the lens of the SDGs. So we had a strategy team, we took the SDGs on one side, the you know, 17 goals, 169 targets, 255 metrics or whatever they are. And then on the other side, we had this incredibly rich data set of 50 or 60 countries, I forget, you know, 60 or 70 metrics, which would include things like, you know, gender subscriptions split by gender, for instance, and age, et cetera, et cetera. And we tried to sort of make sense of how you parse one to the other. So we created a great, you know, our own methodology. We had some econometrics and economists working on it, and then we put that into a big report and took it to it was the public sector. So basically the GSMA got the opportunity to present it at the public sector day, the UNGC day of U the UN General Assembly in 2016. It's the keynote. Banky Moon signed it. I mean, it was just incredible. And for me, it was sort of it was a for me, moving to strategy from technology was a step up in terms of a breadth of understanding. So technology for me, you know, you're looking at these relatively self-contained problems. I mean, other people I'm sure won't see it like this, but relatively self-contained problems is quite technical. Then to go to strategy, looking at whole companies in markets, and it sort of felt, oh, I can see more, I understand more, I can breathe a bit more, and it's more relevant to my daily life. This was then going out to the next stage, to like the global level, and trying to think, oh my goodness. And now we've got the SDGs, so we've got a set of sort of, if you like, a strat, you know, people called it a strategy for the world, which I loved. We know what we're trying to achieve, and you know, there's some really word and important things here, which by the way, you know, connect me back to my town in Tanzania or whatever else. And then we've got the private sector who aren't really contributing in the way that they should do. And in fact, these a lot of these girls are going backwards. And so it's obvious the private sector has to contribute. And by the way, the exciting thing, of course, is they can contribute and they can benefit because when everybody figures out they're contributing, they're going to get rewarded. So naive little me, oh, I wasn't at the time, you know, thought this was just the most exciting thing in the whole world. So then, you know, wrote purpose papers. A shout out for for one of my partners in crime there called Rafi Adelston. So we did a lot of work together thinking about this. We got jobs with the government to look at purpose-led businesses. We wrote purpose statements for various different businesses. We, you know, it was it was a very exciting time. And yeah, spoke to many, many different different businesses, got access to we never got a strategy consultant. Suddenly everyone was, I remember speaking to the Chairman Shell, the CEO B T, and everyone was like, This is amazing. But when they realized what we were talking about was purpose-led transformation, i.e., change your business to reconfigure it, to deliver the impact against the SDGs, and and then have you know the money thing as either parallel or secondary, then it all sort of fell apart because they didn't quite know who to give it to. We weren't sophisticated enough to explain exactly how that would work. And so, you know, you ended up with a and and also there was a moment of realization you could see in people's eyes every so often, which was like, you know, nodding, excited, yeah, I get it. This is awesome. And then suddenly they'd think, Oh, oh, you mean change my business? You know, and I remember things like, Well, we can't because of our quarterly shareholder calls, you know, we can't because of such and such. You don't understand that. And and af over time and after time, sorry, I'm I'll speed up, but I'm sure I know no, no, you know what's really funny, Sam, is uh I mean, this won't come as a surprise for anybody.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

Damn and I have a kind of set of prompts that we think, oh, this would be a really good conversation. And you're literally running through them, like it's like you're reading our minds.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

It's uh actually, we don't have to do a lot of work now.

hat System Change Means For Business

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Yeah, so don't worry, Sam. Sorry, Damlin, you were gonna jump in there, weren't you?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Because what Yeah, yes, I will. Sam, you're talking about systemic change, and that's what the last decade obviously has been about that for you. So, in today's context and disruption, what does a system level change mean for the business?

rivate Sufficiency And Public Abundance

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Yeah, so so and and just uh just to meet you at your question, I mean, it was evident as I was doing what I was doing before, was that you know, people get asking, well, give me some really good examples of who's purpose-let, you know, where's this win-win you're talking about? And of course, we didn't really have any because for for the reasons I now know, it's because you need system change because you have if you have a system which is fiercely competitive and promotes a particular type of outcome, then it's very difficult to talk about a different outcome as your first priority, and you just happen to do well as well. So that was the issue. So your question then is what does system level change mean for business? Yeah, is that a reasonable paraphrase or not? Yeah, yes. Okay, so so okay, if we take it from the business from a business perspective, looking out, so first of all, obviously it depends on what that system change is, right? And I think that the so what we talk about in business declares is the fact that we have a poly crisis, it is upon us, it is evident every day, yeah, and it's getting worse and it's disrupting pretty much everything. Well, it will disrupt pretty much everything. And for some people, obviously, it's actually existential and they're dying as a result of the poly crisis we face. So it is here and it's getting worse. So we don't have a stable system. So, whenever you know, that is a really important context because I think people sort of tend to say, oh, well, like how can you afford it? Or, you know, that's unrealistic, or living with a status quo is unrealistic and expecting it to continue. It will not continue. And I don't know if you saw the national emergency briefing, Steve, or Damla you're UK centric, but it was super really well put. And I thought that put it as well as anybody, and people are listening to this, do look it up, look it on the website, and a 10-minute bias from about 11 experts, and it's really, I think, a brilliant summary of the predicament we face ourselves in. So, so we have this this this crisis of change. So the system will change. So then the question for business is sort of what does it mean? Well, of course, it depends on how the system changes. And what we advocate is is first of all a diagnostic. So thinking very hard, obviously, about the system and how and sorry, about the polycrisis and these these and for us, it is, as you already said at the beginning, by um, you know, climate, biodiversity, and social inequality and and racial justice. So we try and put those those together. I mean, you can add in other planetary boundaries, for instance, but that's what we we talk about as our as the polycrisis. The second bit of the diagnostic for me is understanding the role of the existing system. By that, you know, I don't know, some people call it late-stage capitalism, or I mean, that's not really, I'm not sure that does it, because it's it's it's a it's a it's an overarching, you know, financially orientated system, which includes, of course, you know, the the China and India, et cetera, and you know, economies which are quite quite different perhaps from the US. The US is quite different from the UK, but you know, many, many different, you know, we'll all seem to be playing into the same economic system, which which is predicated on growth. Um, and and that, and and not just growth sort of blandly and broadly, but GDP growth. So, you know, relatively narrowly defined economic growth in financial terms, which is linked to the debt that's taken on, which is you know, borrowing you know from today to fuel the future, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think part of the diagnostic is digging to into that quite deeply to recognize that we've got to be super careful here, because if we think the existing system can be used, and this is what you know people like green growth advocates would say, well, we've just got to do the right thing. We can live in the existing system, but we've just got to switch, you know, change, you know, bits and pieces. We've just got to switch out, you know, oil and gas for renewables. That would have a huge impact. It's not gonna cure, you know, it's not gonna cure the predicament that we found ourselves in, right? It's gonna, it's gonna address some things, which is emissions and specifically emissions from yeah, so, but it's not gonna address everything. And it and it's only gonna address emissions in the medium term, not the short term, because you need oil and gas to actually drive the transition. So for me, the the thinking about what the nature of that system change is is a diagnostic to begin with, and thinking about the existing system and what's challenging. And then obviously trying to think as hard as possible about how that might then translate and what it might mean. And it seems to me that the it's very trite, I know, but the the sort of the words I guess we've aligned on, which we think about, is some version of private sufficiency, public abundance within planetary boundaries. So this is the sort of the sunny opportunity that is offered that is at least is a yeah, of course you can build that out into a much broader thicker vision, obviously, but at least for me that provides some guides to what we think we need to transition to. And there's lots of bits and pieces within that. Sam, just said a profound impact. Yeah, Steve, please.

SPEAKER_03 19:09

No, no, no. So they but I'm really interested in if you squint some of what you're saying is quite revolutionary. And and you know, because public private sufficiency and public abundance within planetary bandies, is I've got huge echoes of Marx's from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs. And there's and you've already referenced late-stage capitalism. So you're also questioning some quiet fundamentals of of how private enterprise functions here. And I think that A, that's profound and really exciting, but you you must this must lead to some quite challenging conversations with the businesses that you're seeking to join you on the journey.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Yeah, so yeah, and I think that the Yeah, I don't really like the the badges of, you know, left, right, you know, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely good, but but at the same time, you know, they're there for a reason. And unfortunately, I'm not well-read enough generally to understand whether or not I'm I'm actually, you know, talking about somebody else's philosophy. But you know, it does it does feel that part of exposing the role that the existing system has, you know, it would be revolutionary, I think, if we were stable and lots of people were benefiting from what we're doing, yeah, but we're not, and so it's not revolutionary, it's more like you know, a cry for help, a suggestion for an alternative, a deep desire to actually get out of where we are because of my grandchildren, yeah. And then hopefully their children, et cetera. And so, you know, one of the things, one of the defenses when we say, oh, well, you know, the the capitalist model that we have is associated with choice and freedom of choice. And of course, we know now that it is freedom of choice for very few, right? And it's definitely not, you know, a democratized in a production, production sort of machine. You know, it's very difficult to get into business and succeed. And and then the the choices and the shaping of the market that they then sell into, you know, we're hearing more and more about that, particularly through AI and technology at the moment, but about lots and lots of of other things as well. And so I think many of the many of the ways that the different sides, be that sort of left, right, Marxist, capitalist, whatever, have been historically defined are not really true. And and and so, you know, perhaps they're not necessarily that helpful because they just sort of box people up and make people polarized when actually we're trying to dig down into things which are which are really true. So yeah, with all of that, I've forgotten what you asked.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

No, all I would do, I mean, I was just I was just reflecting on the fact that what your summation, be a really short and snappy one, is is actually quite challenging to to what you could call low stage catalism. I and I would just as something to have a read of. Have a look. You probably know it, but Bobby Kennedy, before he deadly Was killed, did this amazing speech challenging GDP. I don't know whether you know it. Wait a minute, but you're not going to be able to do that. And he did this great analysis of in that speech around how you know GDP growth goes up when bad things happen. So if if a child is hit by a car and an ambulance is called, that has a a GDP uplift to it. So I think the the challenges really profound that you're exploring here, and I think is is really important. And I've I'm completely off script now.

hy The Message Lands Uncomfortably

SPEAKER_02 22:44

You said it must come to challenging discussions of the businesses, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We just try and take that. So the answer is absolutely it does. And it's very difficult. So what we think about, business declares, is you know, we try and think about so we've got the what we grandly call our worldview, we should probably call it something else, but it tries to lay out in a logical sequence what we're talking about. Um then we take it out to people in a variety of different guises. Those might be board-level conversations with big business, so that's the very difficult to get, but when we get them, that's we're delighted with that. It might be town hall, you know, presentations, it might be town hall within a company presentation. So we've done all of these, and yeah, something was this long, short over lunch and three hours or 45 minutes, whatever. Yeah. But it's always the same building blocks in the sequence. And and the so uh Change Now. So I did a piece on Change Now last year, that was with the Climate Governance Initiative, as was. So the World Economic Forum, I think they've changed their name now, but the World Economic Forum's Climate Governance Initiative. So we had about you know 20 non-execs in the room for over two days, you know, times two for two different workshops. And yeah, first of all, one of the reasons it's challenging is, and then we also did an away day for a particular business uh yeah, what, six weeks ago. And I think, and and again there was an interesting reaction from the most experienced uh executive in the room, and and it wasn't positive. And I think part of the challenge is that you know, it's rather like my story about being Dolly, you are living your life through the work through the job, you're you're spending so much time, so much thinking in that system. And that's what people talk about being institutionalized. You can see the other stuff, you know there's climate change, you read the FT or some other magazine or um or paper or whatever else, you're intelligent and bright. But the fact is you're seeing it from your your desk. Yeah, and that desk is in a particular place. And so it becomes can become so so very often people have never really or never had the opportunity to reflect on that role that the existing system has. Because you've got to be able to think, you've got to really convince yourself that there is the potential for an alternative. Otherwise, you just think from the you know, oh wow, how maybe we could, you know, we could should incentivize that, tax this, you know, maybe that'll make a change. And i.e. small tweaks or incremental tweaks to the existing system. So when you start presenting the existing system as the issue in itself and a very dangerous thing to back, find the way out, that can become quite unsettling. And so, so I don't I don't ever try and convince people that I talk to, but what I hope I do is provide a sequential logical story. And what tends to happen is people are nodding, oh yeah, yeah, polycrisis, yeah, terrible, yeah, yeah, no, all about that. The existing system, people start to get a little bit uncomfortable. Oh, what? Hmm, yeah, okay, well, that's interesting, but not sure. And then you get to the bit about, well, so what for you as a business? You know, so well, if if all of this is true, you know, if you, you know, you could simply say, look at the two axes of whether or not you deliver to a human need, which is back to the SDGs, yeah, and do your denue pollute. And if you're in the wrong quadrant for that sort of two by two, i.e., you're you're not really selling a human need, but you're doing something, you know, a luxury good, a frippery, or whatever else, and or you're polluting a lot, you're in danger. And you're in significant danger. And so you're asking them to think about it as opposed to try and convince or tell them. And so, but the answer is it's difficult to get access. When we do, it's difficult then to, and we don't really sell, we well, sorry, not we don't really, we don't sell services. So it tends to be quite a short, sharp intervention. And what I very much hope we do is that we provide, you know, the sequence of what we say allows people to go away and say, well, I really didn't agree with where they ended up, but I'm not quite sure how because I agreed with everything that came before it. So at what point did I lose, you know, did I not agree with Sam's logic? Because it seems to work. And we're trying to, I guess, inject that doubt and that deep reflection from the business about what's going to happen, the system change, Damily, you asked about, and what their position is in it. And of course, one is to think about resilience and what you do, but the other thing is to say, well, we have a chance to influence. If we all sit back, we have chaos, and we're experiencing with that chaos at the moment. Chaos hits. So we really need to join together and focus on collective challenges and issues together to make sure that we transition safely to a different future.

eopolitics And The Fossil Fuel Trap

SPEAKER_03 27:17

Because the one and so on that one, with I was the question I really want to ask also, actually, is I don't know whether you come across the inner development goals, but they're the kind of counterpoint to the SDGs and what this kind of transition, the conversation you're having, means for the the kind of soul of the person you're with and and what the what it feels with them personally. But we're almost out of time, Sam. So I do want to finish up on what you just flagged, which is during a time of geopolitical crisis, loads of really interesting lobbying from the fossil fuel industry to say, hey guys, we need to be back in play here because there's some really bad stuff going down. And what is the trajectory the business can take through the polycrisis right now? What are you telling to what are you saying to people in the first quarter of 2026? What's the what's the strategy right now?

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Yeah, so I wouldn't necessarily call it a strategy, but I think it's it's you're right. What's happening is you've got people using the current situation to defend the status quo. And I listened to Acid Rezugs, the is the angry, what's he the angry renewables guy? I don't know if you heard that as that podcast. That sounds great. He's just his hundredth podcast, and that was day 11 of the of the war of the current war. And his point was like, you know, this is absolutely foreseeable, this is, you know, exactly this is what it uh, you know, we knew was going to happen, and it will happen again if we continue down the same line, right? Yeah. And so, so I think that the if we put what's happening into the context of the story that I was sort of roughly outlining, then I think it is super dangerous to double down on the existing system, which is the cause of what's happening and and and the and the distress, to double down on that. It's extremely dangerous. And so when people, as an example, call for, you know, well, let's, you know, let's, you know, dig out everything in the North Sea, let's, you know, let's invest in that, you know, and and recognize that probably won't, you know, result in anything, I don't know, you know, a period of time, 10 years, say whatever. Yeah. I mean, it's just so ridiculous. And it's such a so I think we need to be level-headed, we need to to to recognize the role of the existing system, we need to recognize the siren calls from the existing system to double down on something which has brought us to where we are. Yep. And I think if you're in business, then first of all, of course, you've got you know, short-term, you know, cost, for instance, massive cost spikes that you're having of your inputs you're having to deal with, etc., etc., and your supply chain. So absolutely understand there's a lot of that going on. But at the same time, you cannot not have an eye on the fact that it is possible, if not likely, that this accelerates change to a different world, right? And so, not just to keep an eye on that and sort of, you know, manage the risk, but actually get involved in the conversations which are trying to shape that to make sure that it is a world that we want. And and I do believe back to your point about the inner development goals, I sort of deep down feel that, you know, if people believed that that you know you had, I don't know, the basic needs, uh, peace and happiness and love, then they would sort of go, Yeah, okay, I'll take it. I'll take it, you know, forget all that power stuff and being a nutter and you know, going mad and you know, bombing the world. I'll I'll take if you can if you can give me that. But people get don't see that as an offer, and so therefore they're off doing this. And not only that, they then get just as you get institutionalized in business, we get institutionalized by the system, and then we have all these sort of synthetic wants and needs and imperatives and motives which we need to strip away and take back. And I think you know, working the system change and getting involved in the process is gonna help us strip that back.

randkids Joy And Final Reflections

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Wow. Well, I I really want to go on forever because you opened so many doors that I want to go in and discuss, like doubling down and the soul of a gambler altogether as humanity. I really want to explore that, but I can't because we already run out of time. So I'm gonna go and ask the last question. Our network is ironically called do not smile, because we need to make sustainability a believable and a happy subject that brings happiness into the world. So, what object, place, or person always makes you smile?

SPEAKER_02 31:41

So I mentioned my grandkids always makes me smile. Whenever I'm with them, there's something ridiculous and crazy happens. So yesterday I was with a three-year-old, we went to go and see some pigs in a farm, and the guy feeding the pigs, I was having a chat with the guy feeding the pigs, and sort of saying, Well, you know, how are they so muscular? And you know, how do they get exercise? And he was like, Oh, yeah, no, we move them through the fields and all that. And of course, there's also social enrichment. I'm like, what do you mean social enrichment? It's a pig, you know. It's yeah, no, no, we cycle the sows through, right? So you basically got so basically that was that was his view of social enrichment. So the three-year-old introduced me to a to so many joyful things, so many things to smile about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Oh, that's a beautiful thing, Sam. So, and how many let's let's finish off with the personal vignette. So, how many grandkids? There was a plural in there, wasn't there?

SPEAKER_02 32:32

So I've got two. A third is on the way. This is my oldest daughter who's 25. So, yeah, very much looking forward to that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:40

Well, what better reason to save the bloody world, eh? Yeah, if only we could. Oh, we'll we'll bloody go down trying, I'll tell you what. So listen, Sam, it's been so awesome talking to you. I my summation is that you're a closet Marxist, and I'm going to send you a reading list of Marxist tracts that you have to go through. Seriously, though, Sam, though, I mean, the last the your comment before last was basically describing what's called a critical juncture, which is when the world shifts. So no, it's been really great talking to you. Damn, you better rack us up. We're so over time. I think Sam also wins the award for us running over the longest.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

That's great. That's great. So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Goodgeist podcast brought to you by the Do Not Smile Network of Agencies.

SPEAKER_03 33:28

And make sure you listen to future episodes. We'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, Damla, Sam, see you soon.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Bye.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Yes, thanks so much. Take care. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Goodgeist. A podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Ozler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.