Green Smoke & Mirrors: Unsustainable Leadership Lessons from Irish Energy and Football Failures
How many leaders rely on "smoke & mirrors" to fool their fans into thinking their apparent success is more sustainable than it really is?
In what ways have you been fooled into thinking that bottom line results — like the potentially misleading win-loss record of an undefeated sports team — reflect actual potential and long-term viability?
How often have you fallen into the trap of parroting talking points — like the potentially misleading facts & figures supporting renewable energy — that, in turn, lead to short-sighted decisions?
Regardless of your answers to those questions, this episode of The Energy Detox will remind you that bottom-line results don't always speak for themselves, drawing upon 2 green history lessons from the worlds of sports & energy:
1 - Notre Dame’s 2002 “Smoke & Mirrors” football season, during which the 8-0 Fighting Irish — wearing green jerseys at home for the first time in 17 years — were fully exposed in an upset loss to Boston College.
2 - Ireland’s 2022 “Smoke & Mirrors” energy policy that has caused the Irish — who are stubbornly relying on a short-sighted view of “green” energy that has led to a continued rebuke of potential LNG facilities — to be the “worst prepared country in Europe” in terms of their ability to withstand an energy crisis.
Additional Content
Episode 77: “Fueling Sustainable Leaders One ShaleRock Shake™ at a Time”
Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
While trick or treating with my family last night, I was reminded repeatedly that what you see is not always what you get. With plenty of children with some adults running around the neighborhood wearing costumes, it was clear that there really weren't a bunch of superheroes and comic figures and Pittsburgh Steelers running around the neighborhood. No, those were individuals pretending of course, to be something they weren't in honor of Halloween. And with that lesson fresh on my mind, I want to take some time to revisit a topic that we talked about quite often here on the energy detox, and that I encounter quite often in my role as a coach. And that is helping leaders understand that what you see is not always what you get, that the results don't always speak for themselves. That data as polished and as thorough as it might seem, may be misleading. And that concept comes through, again, not just in your day to day role in the world of business, but of course, in the world of energy, particularly green energy. And so today, we're going to revisit green energy and take some of the parallels between green energy and some of the things about green energy that can be misleading, and bring it back to you as a leader. And we're also going to do something we do quite frequently here on the energy detox, and we're going to look to the world of sports as well. But we're going to stick to this idea of green facades and green washing at times. And we're going to go with a team that was clad in all green, when it was exposed as a fraud as something it wasn't when the results for that team up to its given point in the season, 20 years ago, in fact, revealed them to be something they weren't. So a little bit of football, a little bit of green energy. But most importantly, we'll bring it back to you as a leader. So starting with the green energy side of things, we are going to turn to the greenest of all green countries. And that, of course is the Emerald Isle, Ireland, because Ireland is, by some accounts, the worst prepared country in Europe to deal with pending energy crisis. And obviously, a lot of people are talking about Germany's position, but at least Germany has been taking actions to deal with a potential energy crisis. Whereas Ireland in many ways has been pushing back against upon possible options, one of those options being LNG facilities, perhaps even floating LNG facilities off of Ireland that many people have pushed back upon, because while they acknowledge the role of natural gas, of course, to provide electricity and energy for that country, there is still this irrational fear that that aurat that that gas is coming from the process of fracking. And without going down a rabbit hole to talk about the irrationality of pushing back on fracking and leaning on things that are more disastrous for our planet. We do want to point out the fact that Ireland has put themselves in this position of being some subjected to potential blackouts and brownouts due to short sighted policies that may have been rooted in things that look good, and that sound good. But again, like the costumes last night are masking the realities of what's beneath those costumes. Case in point for a lot of countries who have bought into this idea that green energy is the cheapest form of energy on a per unit basis. Many of those stats are, of course, misleading. And again, I don't want to parrot the normal talking points that you might hear for those who are trying to enlighten those who might not have a full picture of all of the different energy options. But suffice to say a lot of those numbers include subsidies. And when you include subsidies and you normalize for those, you will find that many cases green energy is not the cheapest form of energy. And even if the generation of that energy you argue is cheaper, you need to look at the downstream impacts the unintended impacts the impacts of having to have backup systems, at least for now until technology catches up, making perhaps green energy indeed the all in cheapest option. But for now, again, all in cost can be misleading. Similarly nameplate capacity, another big misleading item. When you read about Ireland's energy future in particular, they talk about all the gigawatts of power that are going to be put in place using offshore wind energy, onshore wind, energy and various other sources. But again, when you look at the gigawatts needed to replace existing power generation, in many cases from natural gas, again, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you need consistent power, consistent energy and simply having nominal energy generating capacity and not being able to store it and not being able to consistently produce it again, setting you up for disaster. Again, for many people who are listening to this I know you know these facts, but the question for you is, are you doing the same thing? Are you making the same mistakes as a leader?
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Are you ingesting data are you looking at The nameplate capacity of if you will of your team and of individuals and making decisions based on their suppose that value their suppose that output without understanding that that output is perhaps not sustainable. It can't be maintained for some period of time. Yeah, they might be working their butts off to get something out the door. But what is that masking? Is it masking tremendous inefficiencies is it masking the fact that they need a tremendous amount of backup from other people that you might not see, just as green energy in many cases, requires the backup of hydrocarbons to ensure consistency? So again, that's another question you need to ask yourself. keeping with that theme, again, of green energy and potential data and decisions being somewhat muddy or murky, if you will, you also need to consider the carbon footprint, of course of green energy and ensure that you're looking at the all in carbon footprint. Again, not just the tailpipe emissions, of course of an electric vehicle, but the all in impact on not just carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. But of course, the whole from an ESG standpoint, the whole supply chain and everything that goes into those, again, can go on and on. But bringing it back to Ireland bringing it back to green energy. The big question for you is, are you doing the same thing when you're making decisions about your business? From an economic standpoint, from a personnel standpoint? Again, with Elon Musk in the news this week, we can talk about his decisions in terms of cutting employees, and what data are they using to make those decisions? Clearly, there's no way that the people making cuts of again, supposedly 25% of the workforce have everything at their disposal to make an intelligent decision. But one doesn't matter. And two, how could a short sighted decision have unintended consequences? So a lot of questions for you to ponder as we move on to the other parallel that was promised at the beginning. And that was another green themed, potentially misleading situation, and that involve the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team not to be confused with those in Ireland who will be fighting perhaps to keep the lights on this winter or going into next summer next winter. But the Fighting Irish 20 years ago this week, Notre Dame, clad in green jerseys was a no as they took on Boston College, big underdog with Notre Dame having gotten to that point in the season undefeated, eight you know, a favorite, of course, against Boston College at home. And what happened in that game? Well, Notre Dame was exposed as essentially being a fraud. There ain't no yes, but many people had up until that point, continue to refer to that as the smoke and mirrors season. Much like Halloween last night, there was a lot of things that were kind of behind the mask behind the record, the rate, you know, record was misleading. The results did not speak for themselves, those results were misleading. This was a team who in fact, when 10 quarters to start the season two and a half games without scoring an offensive touchdown. So again, that data is is and probably was more telling about that football team than there ain't no record up until that point, somehow they managed to scrape by, which brings us back to you as a leader. Are you in the same position where you're looking at what people have achieved, you're looking at the surface level results, you're looking at the bottom level results, which again, from a macro standpoint, and over a long period of time doing detail a story? Certainly if a team will take baseball again, we're in the middle of the World Series. If a team has won 100 games, they're pretty good. Now again, well that translate into postseason success, as we've seen so far, no, not necessarily. But you need to be careful about making short sighted decisions on a couple games streak or an individual player who goes on a streak. Those results do not necessarily speak for themselves. And the same is true with you as a leader. And again, if you've gotten to this point, and you're still listening, I am sure I would hope you've gotten to the point where you agree that all of this sounds like common sense. But why is it that so many leaders that I work with fall into the trap of looking at those bottom line end results and making all of their decisions based on those instead of looking at those underlying pieces of data, the underlying leading indicators, whatever you want to look at the statistics behind the scenes, the individual offensive defensive statistics of a team that might indicate that they are not as good as they're at no record makes it out to be. And so again, why do I bring this up today? Well, again, tying together the green energy stuff and the green jerseys that Notre Dame wore on characteristically in that game. It was the first time in 17 years that they had done green jerseys at home. And again, the result has since stained
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the idea of wearing green jerseys even though they've won in them since then. But again, the friendly reminder for you is that one green energy is not always as green as you might think it is and the results that you're Seeing from your company, from your employees from your team, perhaps even from your service providers, the statistics that you might be looking at may be misleading and not be telling the full story. So with that friendly reminder for you, I challenge you today as you go through the week to make sure that you're not just taking things at surface level, that you're challenging the people bringing you the information, bringing you the data bringing you very polished information that might even sound too good to be true. Is it too good to be true that this newer energy that's only been on the scene, at least that at any sort of reasonable scale, is really as cost effective and reliable as people want you to believe? Question it, ask for more data behind the scenes take the mask off of what you're being told, essentially. And so too, as you're looking at sports, and perhaps watching the World Series, right, you're gonna watch some things, some short sighted decisions that you can apply to the rest of decision to the rest of the season, right? When you look at pitchers who might be pitching on three days rest in the World Series, those are decisions that would be foolish back in April, when you would never pitch a pitcher on three days rest. But in the World Series, you're making good short sighted targeted decisions because your goal is to win the World Series, you need to make sure that you're not conflating decisions that make sense for 162 game regular season with decisions that are pinpoint for the World Series. Because again, if you fall into that trap of just making decisions based on the same data that everyone else is going to do under normal circumstances, and a world where things are far from normal, you're setting yourself and you're setting your team up for unsustainable results. And so with that, as you move along and kick off the month of November, I wish you the very best and again, I continue challenging you even though we're past Halloween now, to pull the mask off of whatever people are bringing you to make sure that you understand that the surface level results are not always the best ones and to remember that the results don't always speak for themselves.