A few months ago, I was invited to share some thoughts with a local sustainability group for the occasion of their annual fundraiser / celebration. Here is what I said:
We shape our self to fit this world,
And by the world are shaped again
The visible and the invisible working together
in common cause to create the miraculous.
It was August of 1994 and Ray Anderson had a problem. Over the previous 25 years he’d built a company from nothing to the Fortune 500 list selling carpet tiles. But earlier that summer he’d lost a huge order in California because his sales team couldn’t say what the company, Interface, was doing for the environment. A task force had been convened to figure out what was going on, and he’d been asked as CEO to give a speech to lay out his environmental vision for the company. But he had no idea what to say and was desperate for something, anything beyond “we obey the law, we comply…”
Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to him, the daughter of an executive at Interface had just completed a college course on business and the environment and she was angry. She’d read a book by Paul Hawken that showed that every one of Earth’s life support systems was in decline thanks to petroleum intensive companies like Interface, and she let her mom have it, insisting that she read the book and get her boss to read it too. So she put the book on Ray’s desk and he took it home that night…
If you haven’t yet seen Beyond Zero and if you don’t already know the story of Interface, what happens from there is the stuff of legend.
Ray showed up at the task force meeting acknowledging all of the environmental harm his business and business in general had perpetrated since the Industrial Revolution, he laid out a vision for how Interface could lead a second Industrial Revolution to bring capitalism in line with ecology so that business would have a sustainable and even a regenerative impact on the environment. And over the next 25 years, Ray and thousands of people at Interface proved that it was possible.
This is a piece of a carpet tile that is so efficient, it actually has a negative carbon signature. This is Beyond Zero. And they are selling these all over the world.
But more than that, what Interface has really done, is to create a roadmap for change that shows us how to build a world in which 8 or 9 or even 10 billion people can meet their needs within the boundaries of a healthy global ecosystem.
If you haven’t already seen Beyond Zero – I really hope you will.
But tonight, I want to focus on three key lessons I’ve learned that I think are relevant for any gathering of environmental activists, advocates, and change leaders.
#1 – Face the facts
Ray was an engineer by training so when Paul Hawken opened his eyes to the systems that support life on Earth, Ray got it right away, and he also got all of the systems that made his company work. He knew that the problem could not be solved by marketing, greenwashing, or “giving back.” He would have to get everyone in his company to dig in, wrestle with the systems that were doing damage, and figure out how to fix them in ways that worked within the context of the company. In short, he had to get people to face the facts of what needed to be done. Does that sound familiar?
But I think you already know that. But you might not know this: As they got going, they found a unique way to communicate their progress. They focused on celebrating every small win they could identify, but always in context of the big goal to be achieved. There would be a party and spot bonuses for a team that reduced waste to landfill by 10%, but always followed immediately by a brainstorm on where the next 10% would come from, and the 10% after that until nothing was going to the landfill. It made people feel like they were winning and it made them hungry to reach the next goal.
Now, I don’t think I need to spend any time here on the latest climate science. And I’ll admit, I find it really hard and frankly, disempowering to face those facts sometimes. But those aren’t the only facts we need to face. We also need to face these facts:
Fact: In May of this year the US produced more electricity from Wind and solar than from coal.
Fact: Even in Texas, half of energy now comes from renewable sources, and its now installing renewables and batteries faster than California, where – as in Europe – Solar has now supplanted fossil gas as the largest source of power.
Fact: China added 105 GW of solar in the first four months of the year—more in 120 days, than the total installed capacity to date of nearly every other country on Earth. It appears, that china’s emissions peaked in 2024, and they are now starting to fall.
Fact: Almost all of the renewable power projects commissioned in 2024 were less expensive than their fossil fuel equivalent. Solar was 41% cheaper on average and land wind 53% cheaper.
From the invention of the photovoltaic solar cell, in 1954, it took 68 years for the world to install a terawatt of solar power; the second terawatt came just two years later, and the third might not even take one year.
That is where we are. In fact, people are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels every fifteen hours. That’s a coal-fired power plant worth of solar energy going up every 15 hours.
Fact: We are now on track to a net zero world in 16 years, by 2040.
And if you’re skeptical about these facts – as I would be too – I got all this from something called “Fix the News” which I consider to be essential reading if we’re going to face the facts.
And the fact is: there is real hope and there is a lot more work to do.
But how we do it, matters more than we know.
Lesson #2 – There is no them.
As Beyond Zero began to get out there, I found myself frustrated that I couldn’t see real changes happening at the companies that screened it. I asked one of the characters in the film that played a pivotal role in the story why there are not more companies like Interface, and she told me it is because most people misunderstand the process of change. She told me to go find a woman named Leith Sharp so I did.
Leith was the person who brought Harvard University from being opposed to leed certified buildings in the early 90’s to have more leed certified buildings than any other institution in the world just 10 years later. The story of how she did it is incredible, but I’ll have to share it another time.
But what I learned from her is that change is never a neat liner path – it’s always a squiggle. If you go in expecting that you’ll make a speech at a board meeting and win a vote and change will happen – good luck. That’s just not how change happens, and when it inevitably doesn’t happen that way, a lot of people give up. But we can’t give up, so how does change really happen?
Change, especially lasting change, isn’t about overpowering or defeating “them” the opposition. It’s about De-Risking the change for everyone that will be affected by it, us. To do that process of leading change is much more about asking people what their concerns are and dealing with those, than it is about selling, promoting, or advocating for what you’re trying to get done. The best change efforts bring people together, and build connection and trust across a community. The change idea itself transforms in ways that you can’t predict to find a form that will actually work in the context you’re in. But you have to start from the assumption that there is no “them”, there is only “us”.
And this kind of change leadership is actually critical because it reduces the friction in the process and creates a kind of flow. There is a lot we have to get done together, and if every change effort is a huge fight, we’ll never meet the challenges we face. But if we can lead change in a way that creates that flow, then each subsequent change effort gets easier and it builds the capacity to work together, to effectively meet challenges together, into the fabric of a community. And against the backdrop of our national politics, this way of leading change is more important now than ever.
I think this is so important, that I’m working with Leith to stand up a training program that teaches what she calls “flow leadership”. It starts in March, and if you’re interested in learning more, come give me your email, or check it out at flowleadership.com.
There is no them. There is only us.
That brings me to the last lesson – which is really a key question we all have to answer for ourselves.
#3 – What’s yours to do?
When Ray had his epiphany, he didn’t quit and go try to save the whales. He started with what was right in front of him. That is what was his to do. But he couldn’t do it alone. So Ray used to tell everyone at Interface to “brighten the corner where you are.” Even if that thing does seem that grand or important, he’d ask: what if everybody did it? What if everybody got to work on brightening the corner where you are? At Interface, not everybody did – but enough people did, and they produced the miraculous.
In an Interface carpet tile, about 60% of the carbon footprint comes from the nylon yarn. And Connie Hensler, one of the top technical people at Interface knew they would have to tackle that to reach their goal. So she tried other fibers, but nothing would work in a commercial environment. So she began to focus on closing the loop and getting nylon yarn from old nylon yarn instead of making it new from oil. The problem was, the material science back then said it was impossible.
To make matters worse, Interface doesn’t make yarn, they buy it from somebody else. So she enlisted her team and they began to tell their yarn suppliers they were interested in recycled content in Nylon. Some didn’t even want to try, but an Italian company called Aquafil saw what was theirs to do and got to work. And slowly, a few percent at a time, they figured out how to do it. It took a decade, but now, thanks to Connie, Aquafil, and everybody else who did their piece of it, that one is solved. And now 100% recycled Nylon is available, and affordable, for everyone.
I think that’s how we’re ultimately going to win. Individuals or small groups are going to decide to focus on something that needs solving. They’re going to focus on it, they’re going to face the facts, engage “them” and figure out a better way And when they do, that better way will exist for all of us. But we all have to find what is ours to do, and focus on it, until it’s done. If your not sure what your thing should be, All I can say is that its’ probably right in front of you.
In closing, I want to repeat the poem that I opened with – but I want to share the whole thing this time. It’s called Working Together, by David Whyte.
Working Together
We shape our self
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again.
The visible
and the invisible
working together
in common cause,
to produce
the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way
the intangible air
passed at speed
round a shaped wing
easily
holds our weight.
So may we, in this life
trust
to those elements
we have yet to see
or imagine,
and look for the true
shape of our own self,
by forming it well
to the great
intangibles about us.
Face the Facts
There is no Them
What’s Yours to Do
Y’all are doing the work – and it’s working.
Congratulations. And keep it up.