The real power of individual impact
There is some good left in this world Mr. Frodo and it's worth fighting for — Samwise Gamgee
If you read some of my past posts you already know I’m a teensy bit of a sci-fi and fantasy fiction geek. So of course I have read lord of the rings and binge-watched the movies more times than I can count.
These last few months though it seems I see the world through an impact-driven category design lens. And that’s forever changed how I view the Lord of the Rings. What stood out for me is how it wasn’t about one person being the hero and saving the world. It was about everyone doing their part. The humans, the elves, the wizards, the Entts, the hobbits, and even the eagles.
The key takeaway of Lord of the Rings for me now is that there is real power and impact to effect change when we come together, individually. Here’s how I view lord of the rings now:
Sauron — Climate Emergency
Destroying The Ring — Lightning Strike
Frodo — Category Creator
Sam — The Leader/CEO and the moral compass of the impact design
Gandalf — Leading product design
The rest of the fellowship — Company Design
The allies, armies, and the Entts — The Movement
Gollum — the non-believer, the “traditional marketer”
The beauty of impact-driven category design is that each individual can choose to make an impact differently and yet benefit society.
Let me break that down.
If you look at the Lord of the Rings movie, the members of the fellowship were driven by different reasons and ideologies. They choose to act on those also differently. However, the collective impact was achieved.
Greta Thunberg was just a school kid protesting outside of the Swedish parliament. Today she has created a pivotal movement. She has started a conversation.
This is it for us. Crunch time. As Bill Gates said in his new book the acceptable net greenhouse gas emissions is ZERO in every industry. Ironically though he said this via a printed book.
This isn’t about the Climate Agreement, or politicians or personality profiles. This is about us extending the hand across the aisle and embracing our differences. You can’t find a solution to an extinction-level event without us embracing our individuality first.
That’s why companies that engage in impact-driven category design shouldn’t limit themselves to the impact they can make. Or staying true to just their numbers. It's about how a group of different categories leaders that are driven by a singular impact coming together. The paths we take may be different. Each of us will impact the flywheel differently. But all roads lead to Mordor.
The climate emergency is not a problem to be solved by any one nation or group of nations. It's a burden we must all bear, collectively. We created this mess over centuries and generations collectively. We are all EQUALLY culpable.
It's easy to sit on the sidelines and blame the big corporations, the politicians, the policymakers, and the billionaires. But big corporations are big corporations because we used our collective purchasing power. Billionaires weren’t born, we made them. Politicians didn’t just show up at the office one day, we elected them collectively by exercising our franchise.
We the individual don’t get to sit this one out. We don’t get to point the finger. It's time we start making incremental changes that impact the collective.
For example:
According to The Open Planet — the greenhouse gas emissions arising every year from the production and consumption of cheeseburgers is roughly the amount emitted by 6.5 million to 19.6 million SUVs.
What is the individual impact we can have?
“If you eat just one plant-based meal a day for a year, you’ll save almost 200,000 gallons of water (that’s 11,400 showers!) and the pollution equivalent to about 3,000 miles driven in your car (roughly LA to NYC). And, if everyone in the U.S. reduced their meat and dairy intake by just 50 percent, it would be equal to taking 26 million cars off the road.” It's also comparatively healthier!
In a recent Wicked7 working group meeting, Christian Sakar brought up an excellent point. What next for Greta Thunberg? Yes, she has opened up a dialogue, yes she has built a movement. But what is the solution?
The solution to me is us. The individual making incremental changes that have a compounding impact and helps “fuel the flywheel’s energy”.
If we learned anything in the past year of the pandemic it's that if one of us isn’t safe none of us are. So let’s come together and “heal the world”.