This Sustainable Life

Business, based growth, loves the ideas of a circular economy and recycling because both promotes more, but may keep us on track to unsustainability, global warming, plastic, etc.I don't know the answer, but the city of Charlotte contacted me about their Envision Charlotte programI told them I'm cautiously optimistic and am not sure what they're doing is in the long run helpful. I'm not saying it isn't but since few people get the difference between efficiency and total waste, few people are working on reducing total waste.They put me in touch with Amy Aussieker, their Executive Director, and we had a great first conversation where I said the above and she was game for a conversation. I admire her putting herself out there. I put myself out there too, not sure the balance I wanted between promoting someone acting on something important and challenging her forYou'll hear my first time challenging someone on these issues. I'm not sure where it will go, but I appreciate her openness and thoughtfulness. I hope I balanced my competing interests for the listener. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With some guests I have a hard time finding a quote to start the episode with. With Anand, I had the opposite -- at least half of what he said wowed me.When I first saw him speak and saw the title of his book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, I wondered if someone at the elite event I attended would really challenge a community he was in. He did. You'll hear Anand in the first few minutes describe the starting point of the book.His book shows how our society is leading people who believe they are helping. Though trying to decrease the inequities toward classes of people who, through no fault or lack of their own, lose out on society, they end up sustaining and increasing that inequity. That's just the book's starting point.I highly recommend his book, especially if you're interested in helping others and want to make sure your efforts create the results you want. Intent alone is no guarantee. You might be caught by the same systemic effects they are.It's more subtle than we can capture in our conversation, but we talk about the effects since the book came out.We didn't have time to cover a point important to me: how a similar pattern happens in the environment -- that among the people and organizations most active and sincere in their attempts in, say, recycling, a circular economy, and carbon offsets. They too may be not changing the path we're on to more total waste but accelerating us on it.Listen and see if you can identify the pattern and its results. Read the book to check the results of your efforts -- not what you hope results but what actually results. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I met Colonel Read through Colonel Everett Spain, who has also been a guest of the podcast.Two myths about the military have unraveled in me as a result of seeing West Point from the inside and talking to 4-star Generals and department heads. One is that the military practices command-and-control and that someone of any rank can just order people to do things and get compliance. On the contrary, you'll hear Mark share how people lead with compassion and understanding, at least most of the time outside of combat.The second is that the military wouldn't care about the environment or their effect on it. Again, I don't think anyone could hear Mark as faking caring.So far, the military seems to be fixing what it's broken, but I think it's looking toward sustainability, at least in training areas. The military reacts to the nation's values -- that comes from you and me -- and influences us back.They're ahead of many of us in some ways, especially corporate leaders, who could stand to learn from West Point -- one of the nation's top institution for teaching leadership."It makes us stronger," that's a military leader at the United States Military Academy at West Point talking about environmental stewardship. Who would have expected a top military leader talk about woodpeckers and act on it?A major initiative of the military is restoring economies and helping local populations. Stewarding the environment is fundamental. I hope civilian leaders learn from Mark's lead. I can't believe how much American business and other institutions are trailing the rest of the world in environmental stewardship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anna is down to earth for anyone, let alone a gold medalist and Crossfit champion.Watch her videos to see the contrast with what she does, her abilities, and how she doesn't have to be humble. She does something hard, that most can't do, like a clean and jerk or climbing a rope, then does as many as she can in a cycle with other hard things, to past exhaustion. She shows us what people are capable of, mentally and physically.I hear from her that she wants people to develop for themselves what she does for herself, community being a big part of it. She talks about the value of coaching -- the intimacy and vulnerability in it.Number one means reaching your potential. If you're interested in reaching your potential, putting people like Anna in your peer group, not as abstract heroes, I think helps you reach your final goal.If the environment matters to you, your goal is likely far off with no guarantee we'll reach it. Anna shares how to survive such challenges and emerge a champion.As an aside, some guests inspire me, usually on the second conversation, when I hear their environmental activity. Anna inspired me before we spoke. Researching her, I saw that at the 2018 Crossfit games the athletes, not in her division, had to row a marathon on a rowing machine. They all looked happy to do it, so I decided to try it. Never having rowed more than 7,500 meters at once, I first rowed a half-marathon. Then a few weeks later rowed a full marathon.That's what happens when you put gold medalists in your world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kevin and I have been friends since we both wrote for Inc, and before I appeared on his podcast, which always opens a conversation.It's two guys talking about leadership and love with examples of hardball football and basketball coaching and the like. That leadership view isn't the only perspective on leadership, but it recalls my blurb that I wrote for his book:If you want to lead so people love working with you, not just manage so they comply, and the usual instruction isn't helping, you probably need some shaking up. Kevin Kruse wrote his book to provoke you into changing and growing. It's filled with stories, research, and personal experiences that will make you think and point to how to change and grow. He specifies how each lesson applies, to work, home, family, military, and more, but most of all yourself, even when no one is looking.He also takes the environmental challenge seriously and shares views I hear a lot. Water bottles are a challenge for him so this episode features a recognized, experienced leader and teacher of leaders struggling with challenges everyone else does.My prediction: he'll face challenges he didn't expect, he'll feel like giving up, he won't give up, and he'll learn more than he expected. Specifically what he'll learn I can't say, but we listeners will hear how someone who writes about how to handle challenges handles challenges. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I got an email that Bob Langert, McDonald's former head of Corporate Social Responsibility, wrote a book on his experience in over two decades at the corporation.From my view, seeking change, I see places like McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Exxon, and Monsanto, to name a few, as the places with the greatest potential.Many protest them, which I consider important, but I also believe they could use help. I don't know how many large organizations can change without outside help. Am I the one to do it? I'm not sure, but I can't ignore their potential for change.I read the book and scheduled a conversation with Bob. My goal is to understand the man and his experience to find opportunity for help, if desired.I took more notes on his book than any other, a lot critical or challenging. I opted to make my goal with the conversation meet the man, not debate or criticize. If you think I should have acted otherwise, let me know.My goals, as ever, are, regarding the environment: to lower our effects that threaten life and human society and on leadership: for people to find meaning, value, purpose, joy, growth, and so on.I feel compelled to share personal context: I last ate meat in 1990, which would have been about the last time I spent any money on fast food. I've avoid packaged food and food with fiber removed for about four years and counting.I pick up a piece of trash per day and McDonald's is up there with Coca-Cola and Starbucks as the greatest sources of litter. I've watched the McLibel documentary multiple times.I stopped in one the other day to charge my laptop and one of the closest ATMs to my home is in a McDonald's, so I find myself in them periodically. I don't like the place.I worked in a Burger King on the Champs Elysees during my first summer in Paris, in 1989. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katie continues the line of world class sailing champions who have translated their athletic success to leadership in their sport, business, and beyond.What success? How about three America's Cups, including being the youngest member of the first ever all-female boat, two around the world races, as well the famed Sydney Hobart and Worrell 1000 Extreme Catamaran Races.She's also a lawyer and is president of the Rising Tide Leadership Institute.She just got back from Olympic racing in Miami, which followed placing second in the Sydney Hobart race, sponsored by Ocean Respect Racing, who promotes reducing pollution.We talk about seeing plastic in the remote ocean as well as in much greater density closer to shore, especially America's shores. Around the world sailors see parts of our planet farthest from human establishment. Sadly, I've found it's a standard response that they've all seen plastic human junk however remote they've traveled.She also describes waves towering over her boat's 81-foot mast---that is, higher than an 8-storey building. How would you like an 8-storey building crashing around you?Staying calm in a situation like that sounds like a tall order, but what you want in a leader. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is about a simple experiment anyone can do. It costs nothing and takes no extra time or other resource besides carrying a mug with you.Everyone knows how much garbage we're dumping in the ocean. Everyone knows they can pollute less, including me. Probably including you.This episode shares Sean's experience cutting out coffee cups. I'd say you never have to use another coffee cup again, but you may hit challenges. Sean did. This episode shares his experience. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you feel gratitude toward people who have helped you?Do you express that gratitude more than enough, not enough, or about right?You're probably familiar with research that expressing gratitude and feeling it improve people's lives.I loved my exercise of writing ten gratitude messages a day for a week. Here is the Inc. piece I wrote on it: I Wrote 70 Gratitude Emails. Here Are My Awesome Results.Today's episode is Chris Schembra interviewing me as part of his project including Bill Gates, Simon Sinek, and other luminaries. He asks us:If you could credit or thank one person that you haven't enough, who is it?The conversation doesn't directly relate to the environment, but does to leadership. The leadership part of this podcast is about joy, passion, meaning, value, importance, purpose, growth, and so on.And what Vince Lombardi says about winning, that it's not a sometimes thing but on all the time thing, applies to leadership.Too many people say things like that coal miners in West Virginia simply have to accept that times have changed, we can't keep digging coal, and if that means your community suffers, well, you'll be better off after the change. These people then refuse to consider polluting less themselves: we just have to accept that their job or their family requires flying, or they love meat too much, or whatever.So today's post is my answer to whom I feel gratitude toward but don't express it. It's personal but so is leadership.I wasn't sure if the conversation was too personal or distinct from the environment, so I won't mind if you let me know if I should share more things like this conversation or less.Chris also hosts regular dinners, so I feel a brotherhood in how we work, based on my famous no-packaging vegetable stews. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For context for today's guest, those who know I'm avoiding flying might also know I'm learning to sail to explore off North America. When considering acting on their values, most people focus on the part they like of what they're stopping. They don't seem to have trouble ignoring undesired side-effects, like the pollution flying causes.Sailing and the other things I've replaced flying with have given far more than I could have predicted at a fraction what I used to spend on flying. Among its many benefits is the sailing community.In that community, today's guest, Dee Caffari, is off the charts. Once a school teacher, she started sailing to world-athlete levels. Now the international sailing community calls her a legend. Watch her videos. They look like they're from movies but they're her life, which she describes in our conversation.She's gone around the world in both directions, won races, led teams, been named an MBE. She shares her experiences, since sailing spans calm sunsets to life-and-death struggles with forces that can level cities. Her global vision has also revealed to her the growth in plastic, global warming effects, and other environmental problems. She works actively to reduce her personal impact and others'.With the level of change in everyone's lives to reverse the effects we've had on the earth, I find the magnitude of her change and how much she loves it refreshing. Most people act like the smallest change is too much. They want to learn how to keep doing what they're doing and still feel like they're changing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.