How do you reverse a legacy narrative?

For purpose leaders and advocates often come up against narratives that are outdated and need to be challenged. How do you do that? Felicity Green explains.

In the pursuit of making the world fairer, safer and more sustainable, for-purpose leaders often come up against unhelpful narratives. There comes a time to recognise where this thinking is outdated and needs to be challenged.

This Strategy Spotlight focuses on the work of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and how it is challenging the narrative that we must choose between economic growth and the health of our planet. Ask CEO Kelly O’Shanassy, as I did for this article, and she’ll argue that we can have our cake and eat it too.

By way of background, O’Shanassy’s origin story for becoming an advocate for nature began at an early age, growing up in the country and experiencing multiple droughts. Witnessing livestock with nothing to eat or drink instilled in her the realisation that everything is dependent on nature. O’Shanassy’s mother was a schoolteacher, her father a policeman, and people frequently came to their door seeking help on a variety of matters. Early on, O’Shanassy learned the value of not judging what’s happened in the past but focussing instead on ‘where to’ in the future. She has carried this through to her advocacy work today, changing what is, to what should be.

In that vein, ACF argues for us to reject the narrative that we need deficit thinking to transition to sustainability, and instead embrace abundant thinking. The loudest megaphones have been telling us the story of nature versus economics for a long time – that protecting nature will cost too much. It’s time to rewrite this story. Mindset is one thing that is 100 per cent up to us, something we can change, and we need to move past the mindset of scarcity and loss. The notion of de-growth is a losing concept, as is that of a steady state economy. For example, we need 2000 per cent more electricity if we’re going to electrify everything with renewables – we don’t want to de-grow the electricity sector. We need a regenerative economy that is good for people and the planet.

ACF argues that our single planet provides everything we need and we:

• Have the technologies and skills by and large for climate change mitigation
• Know what we need to do to stop the extinction crisis
• Acknowledge that regeneration creates an abundance of jobs across industries.

In speaking with O’Shanassy, three key strategies to help combat legacy narratives came to the fore:

1. Shift the context within which business and politics operates.

The approach that ACF takes is to reach the hearts and minds of Australians to build an understanding that climate and the extinction crisis are real. They help people understand that they can play a small role as individuals, but a larger role as a collective. This strategy is aimed at changing concepts from being heavily contested to widely accepted as a mainstream problem, with solutions that are loved and supported by Australians.

Doing this changes the context for governments and business. It shifts the political landscape and creates attention and influence. The climate movement has done this successfully, but there is still a way to go for nature. Engaging with community, building their capacity and creating community is a strategy that embraces the notion of “when the people lead, the leaders follow”.

2. Don’t be afraid of partnering with unusual bedfellows.

To create deep impact, strategic thinking needs to move beyond insular organisational strategy. It even needs to move beyond intra sector strategies. It also means going to events outside the sector and engaging in conversations where the narratives you wish to challenge are being spruiked.

O’Shanassy recently attended the Jobs Summit, to engage in this conversation about economic growth versus the transition to a regenerative economy. Furthermore, ACF is doing interesting work across sectors, which involves collaboration beyond the climate sector. By working with other not for profits, unions and the business sector on plans for the next decade, ACF is able to take to government a sophisticated picture that includes arguments of economic growth, jobs, climate and community.

Of course, adopting this strategy needs the acknowledgment that not all parties will always agree all the time and there is the need to compromise. But the outcomes are worth it, as the narrative begins to change.

3. Develop a long-term strategic vision, but remain agile about execution

Shifting the dial on social and environmental challenges is often a marathon, not a sprint. It’s imperative to have a clear purpose, and to have identified the biggest change to be made and to focus on that. Unhelpful narratives are often centred on short-term thinking and focussing on the immediate and urgent (aka the job loss in unsustainable industries argument).

Instead, we need longer-term thinking. This doesn’t mean locking into immovable strategies, as it’s hard to accurately predict or forecast the future, but it means having a plan, with a light on the hill to keep focus (your goals) , then innovating and trying new things to achieve your goals, remaining agile enough to drop some of the ideas and change when necessary.

To avoid getting disheartened with the long-term nature of reframing traditional narratives, O’Shanassy encourages us to ‘look backwards to dream forward.’ There was a time when less that 3 per cent of our energy was renewable. Now it’s at 1/3, soon it will be over 80 per cent. We need to look at where we came from and acknowledge that change is not linear. Disruptive technologies, policy changes and new funding structure can create points of unprecedented acceleration.

For-purpose leaders across all industries face outdated narratives that are detrimental to their cause. May these three strategies demonstrated by O’Shanassy and the team at ACF add a few more tools to the tool-belt to help change the conversation for the better.