Are you a Leadership Divestor or Investor?
What's your favorite and/or most nauseating leadership cliché?
"Do more with less?"
"Think outside the box?"
"There is no 'I' in team?"
"There are no stupid questions?"
Or is it, perhaps, "Don't run AWAY from something...run TOWARD something,” which is the focus of today’s episode of The Energy Detox, which is driven by a recent Hart Energy article that points out how running AWAY from fossil fuels via divestment is a short-sighted and counter-productive approach for those who erroneously THINK they're running toward a more rapid energy transition.
The reality is that a "divestment mindset" will make it more difficult to meet the growing energy needs of our planet, a goal that all "runners" should be focused on.
And, as Citi's Chief Sustainability Officer Val Smith notes in the article, "We are going to have a very disruptive transition if divestment is part of that conversation."
So with that in mind, take a moment to ponder whatever professional and personal transitions are brewing in your life and ask whether you've become overly focused on "divestment" or whether you're truly excited about investing in something new.
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Is there one cliche that leaders use that makes your stomach turn a bit? Is there one overplayed line that flows freely from the lips of certain managers and those in power that, again, makes your eyes roll back in your head and makes you kind of question how strong of a leader that person actually is? No, maybe it's the recitation of something as simple as there's no I in team or there are no stupid questions, or we should be able to do more with less or a whole host of again, cliche, trite overplayed sayings that have value that can make people think can can kind of reset people and get them on the right track. But I've lost a lot of that value over the years because of how often they've been used. Well, for me, one of those sayings that maybe isn't as overplayed as some of those other ones is the idea that you should be running towards something as opposed to running away from something. And it works. Because it's a pretty good visual, right, you can see someone who is running with their head turned behind them and running away from something, whether it's an animal, a scary monster, they're they're running out of a burning building, or, again, more figuratively, they're running away from a job or a relationship, or a company or a career in industry that, again, a lot of negativity behind. But the reality is for a lot of the people that I work with, that's one of the things that holds them back, it's this focus this over focus, if you will, on what they don't want anymore in their future. They don't want X, Y, or Z, because it it again, it made their stomach turn for, in many cases, years, working through some issues at a company or role or job or whatever. And what they should be focused on, of course, is what they actually want, defining some positive goal that they should be running towards with their eyes focused forward. And again, this is a very cliche idea that you can hear from any number of other coaches. But the reason I bring it up today is because there was a great article in heart energy this morning. And the idea was that divestment from fossil fuels is not a sustainable approach, that the idea of focusing on the negativity of the oil and gas industry and squeezing them out of any access to capital is not a logical move. Even if you're dead set on having that energy transition happen as fast as possible. And moving as quickly as possible towards renewables, the worst thing you could do is squeeze the fossil fuel industry out of any access to capital, thereby causing oil and gas to suffer, thereby causing access to hydrocarbons to be diminished. And thereby causing a lot of pain and suffering for the people that you're actually trying to help through the energy transition. Assuming, of course, your ultimate goal is to help people and to give them more access to the energy that is needed. And that will continue to be needed. And quite frankly, the energy that is is increasing in need as the population increases, and as other countries tried to move closer to the standard of living that we enjoy in the West, so energy will continue to be needed. And if you divest and if you force divestment and you preach divestment of fossil fuels, too quickly, you're going to have people suffer, and what happens when they suffer, how they're going to go back. And they're going to say, Well, why all this pain? Why is this transition so horrible? Well, again, it's because you were so focused on the negative aspects, or the supposed negative aspect aspects of the oil and gas industry, that you lost sight of what your ultimate mission was your ultimate goal, which, again, is to provide clean, reliable, affordable energy to the world. And a divestment mindset, if you will, or a divestment only approach is in many ways short sighted, because again, it doesn't acknowledge the fact that a transition, a sustainable transition, a transition that is not plagued with, again, negativity and unnecessary angst and anxiety is dependent on oil and gas. So yes, you can be absolutely focused on what you think the future should look like in 2050, or the year 2100, or whatever, you can have a clear vision of what that looks like. But the transition to get there shouldn't be based on merely running away from fossil fuels, and running away from the, quite frankly, the things that have transformed the world over the last 160 years. It's a short sighted approach. So the question again, is coming back to you in this cliche idea of are you running towards something or away from something is to ask as you go through transitions in your own life? Are you focused on something positive?
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Do you have clarity around what that ultimate goal is? Or are you spending all of your time looking backwards and basically slapping the the idea of your previous life across the face and trying to run away from it and trying to say, I'm done with that I'm moving on to something else, or are you recognizing that to get to what your ultimate goal is you need to leverage some aspects of your former life. You need to make sure you're extracting whatever investments you had made previously, so that the investments that you need to make going forward aren't as onerous aren't as taxing on you as an individual. And again, this applies not just for people that are in career transition, although in the people that I work with, this is certainly more front and center in those who are trying to switch jobs or switch industries. But it plays in your personal life as well. It applies to any relationships that you have, it applies whether you're looking to, to move from one house to the next, it applies whether you are trying to, you know, change things up in your company, maybe you're looking to go down another path and add a new service or whatever that transition is, is what's driving it the fact that you're sick of what you were used to before. Are you sick of your old house? Are you sick of the old service? Or is Is there something negative that you're trying to run away from? And if so, are you running too quickly and ignoring the fact that whatever negativity existed has value? So again, the question for you is, are you extracting the most value from some of those negative situations? And are you moving forward towards some ultimate goal? And so with that, again, I encourage you to ask the questions. I encourage you to continue offering feedback to me as we go through these iterations of the energy detox that are all aimed at helping you avoid getting stuck. Because if there's one way to get stuck, of course, it's to start running with your head turned backwards, focused on what's behind you as opposed to what's in front of you. And lest you fall into a ditch, lest you run into a tree lest you have some other major issue. Well, let's not get to that point. All right, let's avoid it by looking forward, moving forward, having a goal and not divesting and not having this divestment mindset that is based on what happened before and what you're running away from. So with that, I appreciate the time and energy you continue to devote to listening or watching the energy detox. I hope you have an excellent rest of the day.