What Part Am I Playing?
6 years, 7 months, 5 days, 3 hours
17 December 2022
I have kept a diary, writing an entry for every single day, since I was 20 years old.
I don’t expect it to end up in the Bodleian Library, or pored over by scholars a hundred years hence; and even if my children or grandchildren choose to keep and dip into it, they will surely declare it deathly dull. The value of it for me is this. As each day flies past in a blur of activity, it is gone. Write about it a few days later and you can enjoy it, or curse it, again, and try to thread some meaning into your life. Today I will settle down with that diary, turn the pages from January to December, surprise myself with things I have already completely forgotten, and write a short summary. And then I will open a new volume, write 2023 at the top of the first page, and then write of my plans and hopes for the year and beyond.
What part am I playing in the unfolding opera, or pantomime, of the world? What about you? Let’s place ourselves above the timeline of the world from 2000 to 2100 and look across, try to understand where we are, where we have come from and where we are going. Do you like the things that life is showing you?
I liked when a colleague recently described the world as in ‘a precarious place’. Precarious urges us to intervene, to help steady, shore-up, stabilise. Today that vulnerability is felt across the world. That wasn’t the case 3 years ago. Today individuals and organisations, public and private, are rallying around to try to help. That wasn’t the case 2 years ago. Today there is a palpable sense of urgency. That wasn’t the case a year ago.
2022 has seen the most extraordinary progress – in concrete things like the European Union’s adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, electric vehicle sales up 68% on 2021 (242% up on 2020), and much greater granularity on transition pathways.
But I think the most remarkable thing about 2022 is the sense of a mindset shift. I believe the avalanche has been triggered. Every sector, every business, every government department, every city is now gripped with the need to act. With the whole world mobilised change can come unbelievably fast.
Many organisations don’t know what to do. Many organisations don’t have the expertise or the capacity to implement the change. Many organisations can’t move fast enough. They need the help of a firm like ours. That is why we are right at the heart of this transformation of our world.
It is exhausting, which is why we all needed to take some time to rest over this last week. But it also offers the most rewarding thing any of us could do with our lives.