Vital new role and mission for SMEs – a living document of initiatives

“Don’t fight the existing systems, create an alternative system that makes the old one obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller

Forty days and nights in the wilderness

“Forty days and nights” has great symbolic meaning to Jews, Christians and Muslims. It represents a period of probation, trial, and comeuppance.

And, forty massive Social-Technological-Ecological-Economic-Political [STEEP] ‘tsunamis’ are now hitting us world-wide. Global warming being just one. These forty tsunamis call us, as business owners, to evolution, revolution and transformation.

Founders of small to medium businesses of the world unite!

Here’s the Call… We form into tribes and communities. We take on a different business purpose, role, vision, and mission. We agree to become agents of ‘whole system change’. We collaborate to share ideas, talent, resources, assets, projects, new ventures and equity. We embrace Regenerative Economics. We remain small, nimble and relating face-to-face, as we innovate collaboratively to ride the tsunami waves and make a BIG, positive impact. We transform us and our businesses. We jointly create new, different better, brighter futures – for us, for others, for all.

“Now, it’s no longer business as normal. But business as abnormal.” – a Nevilleism.

A living document

This living, evolving, document – and articles flowing from it – point us to this Call and to new futures. It leads us to new forms of shared ideas, opportunities, resources and assets. It regularly updates, and points to ways various SME leaders are answering the Call. This is our first update.

“As more and more companies start to see the limits of what being ‘less unsustainable’ can deliver, new models of thought are coming onto the radar and finding their way into long-term strategy thinking.

Regenerative Economics looks like one of the more exciting ways forward but it fundamentally means starting new ways of working rather than improving the old ways.” — Brodie Partners.

May I ask you three vital questions?

First, are you a sceptic, acceptor or embracer of the huge impact climate change is having on all our futures?

Second, how many of the 40 major STEEP [Social-Technological-Ecological-Economic-Political] tsunamis now hitting us, are you working on to future-proof your small to medium business and your way of life?

Third, how far have you gone in accepting that the 17 Developmental Goals of the United Nations are also vital goals for Business in general, and your small to medium business, in particular?

Your answers

No matter what your answers, and I genuinely would love to dialogue with you about them… as a serial innovator, serial entrepreneur, life-long futurist and company chairman, I propose the following to you, me, and to the twelve tribes I facilitate.

First: At least 40 STEEP tsunamis, including global degradation and planet warming, are reshaping all the givens of our current ways of life, and our businesses. Fact!

Second: We are now a long, long way from being able to continue ‘business as normal’. Now it is very much ‘business as abnormal’. Fact!

Third: According to massive research conducted globally by Edelman, and expressed through their annual Trust Barometer, some 75% of citizens mistrust the current STEEP system – made up of politicians, banks, big corporations, religious bodies, main media. Fact!

“Less than 20% of us say the ‘system’ is working for us. The rest of us say it is either working against us, or not working for us.”

Fourth: About 75% of global citizens expect the CEO of their organisation, or Founders and owners of small to medium businesses [SMEs], will ‘make it right’, and become with them, agents of whole system change. This is a staggering expectation. And rather wonderful! Fact!

Fifth: In practice, all of us Founders of SMEs already have experience as innovators and change agents. In big or small ways, we have already, worked somewhat outside the current ‘system,’ and changed the world for the better. Fact or fiction?

Sixth: By forming into tribes and innovating collaboratively, SMEs have one of the biggest chances of rebuilding and transforming our world, both ahead of, and in the wake of all the tsunamis. And to a remarkable extent we can create our own interlinking business and innovation ecology that is not heavily dependent on our current systems. Fact? Fiction? Potential reality?

“Way back in 2013, Jigar Shah, founder of Sun Edison, invited entrepreneurs to create the equivalent of 100,000 companies to sell $100 million worth of climate change solutions by 2020, creating a $10 trillion economy and mitigating the climate crisis at a profit.”

So what?

Where this is heading, is that emerging around the world is a vital new Purpose, role, vision and mission for Founders and Owners of existing small to medium businesses.

This new role amounts to a major evolution and transformation of our businesses. It involves us actively engaging in the circular economy, the sharing economy, the regenerative economy, embracing one or more developmental goals of the UN, and acting collaboratively to change the trajectory and impact of global warming, and the 39 other tsunamis.

This new role is revolutionary. It is so important… And is such a sea change… It will take us a lot of rethinking, researching, learning, re-skilling and re-resourcing. And banding together, Forget going it alone!

So, yes, it will take time for us to adjust to, and engage in, our own personal and business transformation. But the time to start is definitely now.

The first block of initiatives for us to consider – as at 13th November, 2019.

Consider these 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN and see which ones strike a chord with you – enough of a chord to bring them into a new collaborative joint venture – different from your current business.

Deep dive into Regenerative Economics which embraces and goes further than global sustainability.

Consider playing an active role in one of more of these 12 tribes interacting to create a global innovation ecology – so you and other existing SMEs can create and sustain innovations that make a big difference.

Analyse Project Drawdown’s list of 80 business opportunities that make a large difference to mitigating global warming,

Work through how you play a specific role in the circular economy.

Join the sharing economy – both as user and supplier. See ShareRing as an Australian example. And companies like Airbnb and Uber, of course.

Follow this 20-step transformation plan as we evolve it. Start with the overview – Your small to medium business flight plan. Then go to the first step: Choose your most fertile big global problem. Later work through as many of the other 19 steps that interest you.

Look at setting up you own unique Strategic Innovation Board.

Contact Neville Christie about your suitability for joining an Innovation RoundTable for SME Founders in 2020 – where with 12-15 of your peers you collaboratively create large-scale new ventures. You find Neville’s contact details below.

Search the web for on-line and off-line transformational and up-skilling workshops and webinares – like those run by Helen Palmer of Questo, and Mikey Ivany and Courtney Krulis of Soul’d.

Have your own initiative posted here, by contacting Neville

To think about now: “As entrepreneurs and innovators we change the world for the better when we become collaborating monomaniacs with a mission.”

Want to know more? Want to dialogue? Want to be part of the sea change?
Contact Neville Christie on +61 420 978 932 or neville@nevillechristie.com

You are warmly invited to send this article to your network.

Next: Ride the waves of the multiple tsunamis…?

#newSMEmission #businesstransformation #changingtheworld #transformativeeconomics