Leadership Stimulating The Growth For Good

The difference between talking about things and actually acting on them is worlds apart. We have all talked the talk instead of walking the walk in certain areas of our lives. But if we truly want to make an impact in the work we do or how we are present in the world, we need to take action in alignment with the principles we live by. We need to be courageous and show up for the things we believe in, and we need to embrace these ideals entirely and completely.

This was a theme that we recognized on a recent immersion experience. Talking about sustainability is very different to adopting sustainable practices and seeing the positive impact they make. Speaking about leveraging the insights gained on an immersion is separate to using that new information as fuel to change and adapt for the better.

We saw this in practice. The benefits of a company fully embodying what they preach and how this can positively impact the world around them. We helped them lean into that while enhancing their understanding of key themes such as sustainability, digital transformation, and diversity and inclusion.

The Client – A Globally Recognised Food And Beverage Company

It was an honour and privilege to host an immersion experience for this global organization that is so sincerely conscious of their positioning in the world and the impact they make. Recognising nature as the thread that ties all life together, they commit to working and living in alignment with the environment and with their communities.

When they talk about being in tune with nature, it goes far beyond the typical sustainability speak and environmentally conscious practices. This organization is wholly committed to this as a guiding philosophy. They already practice the fundamentals of what this means, demonstrating their commitments to the environment and their people.

Their Situation – Leaning Into Excellence Guided By Their Philosophies

With this as the underlying fabric of their learning experience, they sought to accelerate the development of cross-enterprise leadership capabilities for senior leaders in their organization. This was via a program run by a well-known school of business. The immersion experiences were an adjunct to this program that, at its core, focuses on some broad themes:

Self-leadership
Culture development
Innovation
Strategy

Through this program and other initiatives, the company has been working towards the outcome of creating a thriving society built on harmony between people and nature. Their connection and interactions with us allowed them to take that a step further.

What We Did – The Immersion Learning Experience

The Immersion Lab participated in and contributed to the design of the immersion, working towards the overall program goals. We created a virtual immersion with 25 participants broken into five teams, each having an immersion experience aimed at unlocking insights on speciﬁc themes relevant to their objectives.

They genuinely care about how they show up in the marketplace as well as the long-term effects of their impact on community. Finding ways to explore this and improve upon it was a crucial part of their learning experience. They were able to enhance the understanding of key themes such as sustainability, digital transformation, and diversity and inclusion so that their leaders could:

Strengthen their capability to lead in a sustainable and people focused environment.
Deepen their ability to anticipate and shape the future by drawing on external insight.
Increase their own strategic leadership with personal insight and through taking positive action.
Practice and hone the mindsets that transform and accelerate learning.

Seeing challenges and opportunities everywhere, they wanted to keep the energy up and harness the ability to leverage off all learning that was available to them. They wanted to look at the things that most businesses tend to ignore. The sticky bits that are difficult and tedious. They chose to “step out of the classroom”, as it were, which allowed them see how they could apply everything that they learned in an actionable and progressive way.

The Impact – Integrating Insights

They were thoughtfully engaged and enthusiastically involved in all elements of the immersion. It felt like they needed more time to immerse themselves in what they were learning, and the fervour to take in more was unmistakable. It was clear that they recognised boundless opportunities for their company to use its commercial power to effect positive change in the world, especially in alignment with their philosophies around nature.

When a business is genuinely concerned about the space they take up in the world and how that is perceived, they are already on a trajectory towards improving the lives and experiences for themselves, their customers, and the world around them. That authentic concern for being everything that they speak about is an attribute that we can all learn from. Embracing our authenticity, practicing what we preach, and taking action in alignment with our goals. Powerful stuff.