Strategy Spotlight: Three lessons for change leadership

In Strategy Spotlight, Felicity Green explains three pieces of advice from an expert changemaker on how to bring about change, no matter what area you’re working in. 

The start of the year is a natural time for reflection and forward planning. 2022 was a big one across the board for the purpose sector. Following COVID lockdowns, people emerged with new energy, new initiatives and new directions. Now, as we evaluate the outcomes of the year past, many are also looking ahead and asking how they can scale their impact heading into 2023. To aid this exploration, this first Strategy Spotlight for the year is based on an interview with Linh Do, who helps people with their changemaking pathway on a daily basis.

Linh is a self-professed rabble rouser, working across social movements, climate justice and systems change. Her own changemaking journey began in high school in the realm of climate change and it was in these formative years that a lot of Linh’s values were set. The trajectory of her life was purpose-led before the word ‘purpose’ was common in our vernacular.

Now a board member at Climate Action Network Australia, Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation and a research committee member of the Centre for Policy Development, highlights from Linh’s career include working internationally with Al Gore’s leadership program, co-founding the technology start-up OurSay, publishing articles in Al Jazeera, Vogue and the Washington Post and collecting accolades such as AFR Woman of Influence, Australian Geographic Young Conservationist of the Year and Junior Chamber International Outstanding Young Persons of the World. It’s clearly evident that Linh has successfully leveraged her individual skills to drive various impact agendas.

Harnessing her varied experience, Linh’s current strategic focus involves helping others with their changemaking pathway, as Director of the University of Melbourne’s Wattle Fellowship. This flagship leadership development opportunity invites students across all faculties to explore their interest in sustainability. Linh works with cohorts to help them figure out their changemaking pathway, and to often challenge their perception of leadership and who they are as leaders. Linh describes it as empowering, enabling and humbling.

While on paper this fellowship looks like a student program, its purpose is significant: enabling leadership that the planet needs. The hypothesis goes like this… if we accept the proposition that the climate crisis is a major issue, yet all of the policy and technology solutions exist, then witnessing that we are so far away from the solutions must mean that the crux of the problem is a lack of leadership. Strategies such as this Fellowship are trying to address this gap, by encouraging those who traditionally have never been given the opportunity or right to be in certain roles to pursue positions of leadership.

Linh’s challenge to us all, to help guide our decisions in 2023, is how do we unlock leadership from all different parts of society for the climate?  And taking this to scale, how do we seize global opportunities, such as the hosting of the Olympics or COP in 2026 to make statements in that way that we do that? This ranges from who heads up different parts of the process, to procurement to the achievements that are spotlighted. We have the opportunity, through major milestones, to redefine what Australia means, and we need to developing specific strategies now to capitalise on these opportunities.

Cascading these bold ambitions down to individual contribution, Linh offers the following encouragement to help make decisions about planning for the change:

1. Think through the intersections of where you can have the greatest impact, what you’re going to learn, and how it will be of interest to you. This is not a selfish approach, it’s about recognising the power of your potential contribution when these three elements align;
2. If you’re feeling paralysed by the size of the challenge, just start doing This always feels better than doing nothing, and motivation is much easier after you’ve already started and committed to something and
3. Throw more spaghetti at the walls. And in doing so, recognise that our world is different from what it used to be and the power, privilege and access that may not have been available to you in the past, may now very well be.

It’s unknown what 2023 will bring, however it’s clear that there is opportunity, and indeed necessity, for each of us to find our own realm of leadership to help tackle the challenges of our time.