Herman Gyr: 0:03

The first part of the narrative is to say, we stop believing that the world is basically okay and livable with a little tweak, to say it is not a livable planet. We have to restore. We have to create a livable, planet as we would if we would land on a different planet that was nearly perfect, right? The idea is, hey, what would humans do if we found ourselves in a planet, realizing this could be Earth. This could be this verdant wonderful place, but boy, we have some work to do

Tom Raftery: 0:29

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the climate 21 podcast. The number one podcast, showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice, to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Climate 21 Podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and with me on the show today, I have my special guest, Herman Herman. Welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Herman Gyr: 1:02

I'd be happy to it's really great to be with you, Tom. I've been watching your podcast for, or listening to your podcast for quite a while, and here we're talking with each other now. How wonderful. So, yes, my name is Herman Gyr and I'm the co-founder of the Enterprise Development Group. We're a Silicon Valley based consultancy although we have partner offices in Switzerland and in Germany. And also partners in Slovenia and other parts of the world. We mostly work with large companies. In fact some very large global companies. Mostly on their innovation strategies and practices. So how to face disruptions in the market and how to basically innovate their way into these new opportunities. So strategy and innovation is our thing. And today, of course, the main disruptor for companies is the climate. So that's what our work is now focusing.

Tom Raftery: 1:53

Okay. And I saw on LinkedIn last week, I think it was, you had a post there from your Enterprise Development Group LinkedIn page, talking about a talk that you gave or a briefing at the Dominican University of California's Institute for Leadership Studies where you talked about how enterprises can lean into climate. So it's obviously a challenging topic for large organizations. You're working with large organizations. Tell me a little bit about this talk in the university. You know, what was the genesis of it and how was it received?

Herman Gyr: 2:30

They, they have this talk every six months or so, and they invite, a set of speakers to come in and basically talk to the local community. So it was focused primarily on smaller, medium sized businesses. And what was really interesting is it generated an extraordinary amount of response. So that was quite wonderful. And the basic framing, and maybe we can sort of start to talk about how we address that in general beyond that talk, is that the basic framing of our work now is that we're bombarded with things all the time, radically disruptive notions. So, you know, Antonio Guterres three weeks ago at the opening of cop 27 said we're on the highway to climate hell

Tom Raftery: 3:14

with our foot on the accelerator.

Herman Gyr: 3:16

Foot on the accelerator, right? He says, we're in the fight for our lives and we are losing, right? So we hear these words or we are hearing that, you know, we have to reduce CO2 by 45% by 2030, and we are on a trajectory of plus 10.6%. That's the un reporting to us that this is what we need to do and this is what we're doing. We're gonna be 115% off target eight years from now. Right. We are hearing that 69% of wild animals have gone away in the last 50 years, and then we just move on. Right? So that's what's so confounding is that we are faced with this stunning information and then we move on, and then the next one comes and we move on, and we're held by a sort of a mythology that that's okay, you know, that, that we're gonna somehow figure it all out. And what's so interesting to to me, is that in other circumstances, when we get this kind of information, we instinctively know what to do, right? We, there's a fire in, in my house. I've never had a fire in my house, but I can trust that if something like that happens, you know, I'll know what to do. My nature, my intuition, my instincts are going to drive me to do the right thing, to stop whatever I'm doing and to deal with the situation that I'm facing. And in this situation, in this much larger situation than merely a fire in my roof. We just move on. Really, so that's been the challenge and that's also what we addressed in this talk is how we move from seeing something like that, staying with it, stepping into it, and how does that then inform how we would manage that situation. And then we can talk about that further if, if you're interested about sort of how then specifically move into, into, you know, moving into a different set of actions based on a shift in our notion.

Tom Raftery: 5:13

You raise a good point. And you are right. We are bombarded with information every day, telling us how urgent it is to take action. And the actions, you know, that we need to take. We need to decarbonize, we need to do this, we need to do that. We need to get to, to your point, 50, 55%, reduction in CO2 by 2030. And that's actually seven years and one month away., you know, it's not even eight years. But what can we do? I mean, just from my sake, I drive an ev it, it's renewably powered. Cause I've got solar panels on the roof. I've cut way down on my meat consumption. I've cut way down on my travel. You know, that's not gonna save the world.

Herman Gyr: 5:53

No.

Tom Raftery: 5:54

So I, I had this conversation earlier today with somebody on, on LinkedIn. Where they were posting the same thing, saying, look, you know, I've, I've done everything I can. I still don't feel I'm making a contribution. The CO2 levels are going up. What needs to happen, I think, is that we need to make massive systemic change. And that's not something that you and I can do individually. It's something that needs to be done at a much higher level. And now maybe we're drifting away from the content of, of your talk or maybe not. So tell me, tell me in, in your talk what it was that you guys said needed to be done or could be done or should be done.

Herman Gyr: 6:36

Well, so let me then start with kind of the overall reframing and then move into what should and could be done. So you know, basically what you just addressed with your ev and we have EVs too, and we have the solar panels as well, and we have the backup batteries and it's basically a luxury, I am not living under any illusion that that car didn't take unbelievable amounts of CO2 to produce, probably more than a regular car. Cause it's got an aluminum body, it's got these batteries, it has all kinds of, so you know, there's sort of an interesting mind game we can play with ourselves that, that

Tom Raftery: 7:11

On, on the EV front, once you've driven an EV a little more than 10,000 miles, it's paid off its carbon debt. From there on out, you're saving

Herman Gyr: 7:20

So I'm now in my savings period. But you know, it's still incremental compared to what we need to do. Right. So the, the point I think that we're both looking at is that somehow we need to change the narrative from believing that this is a livable world. We're still stuck in the notion that this world is basically okay with just a a few tweaks we're gonna return to it. Mostly tweaks around emissions, right? And so right now the narrative is that we are living in a livable world and we need to change that to understand that we actually have to create a livable world. So that's what that talk was about as well. It's a shift. From saying, let's reduce emissions into this basically livable thing, and it's gonna be okay, to say no, no, no, no. We have actually arrived on a new planet. We have landed on a different planet from, we're imagining it is. So how do we get that kind of mind shift to say we all need to not only stop doing harm to the, to, to basically an okay planet. That's gonna be fine if we stop doing harm to it. No, we need to actually shift our thinking into repairing, restoring the planet. So the one thing that we talked about in that talk is that they're really, once you realize that the narrative goes from the idea that we have time to, the idea that this is the time, right. the first part of the narrative is to say, we stop believing that the world is basically okay and livable with a little tweak. To say it is not a livable planet. We have to restore. We have to create a livable, a planet as we would if we would land on a different planet. That was nearly perfect, right? The idea is, hey, what would humans do if we found ourselves in a planet, realizing this could be Earth. This could be this verdant wonderful place, but boy, we have some work to do. We would shift from saying, let's tweak this or that to saying, no, no. What this planet needs is we absolutely need to reduce everything that's still going on. That's, you know, continuing to harm, right? But we also need to remove what's in there. You know, we need to actively do things that change the nature of our relationship to that planet where everything we have, our houses, our cars, our become instruments for restoration. Right? So what would a car look like if we would look at it as an instrument of restoration? What would you know an an ocean liner it look like if we would look at it not just a, a thing that transports either goods or people from one place to another, but it would become an instrument for active restoration. It goes through the oceans. It can see all kinds of harm that's happening in the ocean's Nets, you know, dead zones, whatever. Is there something. It could be sensors, there could be some activation of something that would actively turn this ship into a restorative kind of thing. Right? How would we cool things, you know, like, we need to cool this planet. We need to do something actively to cool it. We need to adapt. We can't, we're gonna running outta time. So how, what are the adaptive things? And then the restoring. So there are really five things that we address around Reduce, remove. Cool. Adapt and restore. That's a shift away from the, idea of a footprint, right?

Tom Raftery: 10:25

Mm.

Herman Gyr: 10:26

So we played, I don't know whether you remember it in that talk, we talked about footprint, hand print, voice. How do we, once we see that, we must actively restore the, planet. What's our hand print? What do we actively do to remove things to cool things? To adapt to things, to restore things, right? That's the hand print. And then once we do that, how do we give it voice? How do we connect with others and say, look, this is the new story. This is what we're creating together. How do we join together and actively, continue down that road.

Tom Raftery: 10:59

Mm. And how do we do that? Because you need, for a lot of these changes, you need some kind of incentive. Now, I know we have a big burning platform with a burning planet behind us, but you know, to get societies and organizations to change, there needs to be some kind of financial incentive or there needs to be something and people don't seem to be taking the fact that they're living on a burning planet as a burning platform. So , how do we, how do we incentivize people? And it, it's not people like you and me. Again, it needs to be policy makers, to a large extent, who need to draft these incentives to help society move in the right direction.

Herman Gyr: 11:42

Well, I mean, this is really an interesting and challenging question, right? Because here's the problem the cause of our struggle, of our trouble is the very system that we live in. I think you pointed that out earlier. And so when we talk about incentives, incentive structures, we come at that from within that kind of mindset, that kind of construct. Right. And the interesting challenges that while we're holding on for dear life, to retain the, viability of that cons very destructive construct that's gotten us to this place. The maintenance of that construct, the actual maintenance of that construct means that we continue up that, slope to higher temperatures, more emissions, et cetera. Right. Because you can't decouple the two. Right. As long as we have kind of system that we have where we consume more than we need, where we waste more than we should, where we travel more than it's necessary. We are going to emit, there's no other way. Right? It just, that's in the nature of the beast. We're going to continue to put stuff into the atmosphere that is going to be a problem, and so by definition, if we continue down that track, at some point there will be a breakdown. And whatever this current construct is will fall apart. It'll, it'll become brittle. There will be massive amounts of migration. There will be significant destructive realities, shortages in water, food, et cetera. And then the system will change. By definition, we're all gonna be on the run. So realistically, I think we need to consider how can we reorient the system now? What are the reasonable incentives that are actually. You know, still somewhat aligned with the existing system, but actually are in the direction of some kind of a new orientation to what it means to be alive on this planet. What it means to have a, a community, to have a society, to have a civilization. we must make that civilizational shift, which again takes me back to this experiment we're playing with around another planet. What if we created, you know, sort of a mindset that this is no longer the planet, we think it is. What if we would give ourselves a moment of taking a breath and saying, okay, we just landed in this thing. It's a big trouble, but we are human. We can step into it. What is the system we would create that would make it work? You know, so I think Kate Raworth and her, you know, donut economics idea, there's a bunch of mostly female young economists who are starting to think about, about these kind of things. That's where we really need to go. We need to step into how do we sort of take this moment of brittleness of, things start to fall apart and reorient ourselves into a system that actually has the potential to endure, you know, through this crisis.

Tom Raftery: 14:33

Mm. And how do we do that?

Herman Gyr: 14:36

Well, I think it starts with these kind of conversations. I think we really need to reorient the narrative. The current narrative is kind of insane, right? A narrative that says one and a half degrees are okay. When at 1.2 degrees it's up to seven degrees hotter in the Arctic, and all hell is breaking loose, right? 43 fold thaw slumps in, in the arctic, 28 fold acceleration of carbon movement, right? Methane carbon, it's a fold. You know, we're not talking about little percent here and there. We're talking about massive exponential shifts up there that are based on a 1.1, 1.2 degree world. What do you think it's gonna look like at 1.5 at.

Tom Raftery: 15:21

and we'll be lucky if we can sell it at 1.5 by all accounts now.

Herman Gyr: 15:25

And once we're at 1.5, there's no, there's no slowing it down. We're gonna go to two. Once we're at two we're gonna go, because remember again, those thaw slumps and the methane pouring out of the arctic and the fires up there, and then we're, all bets are off. I mean, we've, we're talking about tipping points we will be beyond many tipping points. And we all know that once these tipping points happen, there's very little, I mean, we're just gonna hold on for the ride. I'm raising that because it, puts to question the notion of incentives today. Right? In face of that reality, how does that inform how we think about current incentives? I'm not quite there yet, but I think we need new, new thinking along the lines of what Raworth's talking about, right? That we need to think of systems that actually take into consideration the breaking of all these boundaries, right? Raworth's model is based on the nine planetary boundaries and takes them seriously, and says, how do we create an economics that on the upper end manages all these broken natural boundaries and on the inner circle deals with all the social reinforcements that we also need to to consider as we think about economics.

Tom Raftery: 16:34

Yeah. I mean it's, we all know that something has to change. Likely everything has to change, but we're not good at change. As a species, we, we shy away from it. We fear it. We we have whole political parties whose name says we don't want to change conservative . We want to conserve things the way they are. How do we get over that?

Herman Gyr: 17:00

Well, again, you know, from my experience with companies, the idea is to reorient the narrative of all the people of the company, you know, and so we do these mapping processes. You know, any, any one of the companies we've worked with have gone through these massive mapping processes with us, where you look at what's happening in the world around us. Right. Where are we heading? Who are we becoming in that world? How does that inform who we need to become, how we need to organize ourselves? What are the kind of innovations we need to do? That's what I love about companies. Is that they are contained, they are bounded, right? They are. They are manageable. From that perspective, you can actually take an enterprise like that and reorient it around the new narrative for itself. And then magic happens, right? Because everybody gets behind that new story in a way that it informs a new type of action, new types of, products. And we're seeing that, you know, so one of our client companies has sort of created a regenerative blueprint for themselves and then goes to their customers and the customer says, wow, you're doing that? That's fantastic. Let's do it now. Can we do it now? How can you help us move into this more regenerative orientation because we need to. Right. So then you have a kind of interesting dynamic starting to happen. At the popular level, at the, political realm. It's complicated. And from my perspective, we need to basically reorient some of the actions that now need to be done critically done around people who can, and people who r eally are on the sidelines of these massive shifts that we need to undertake. Let me see what I can clarify what I'm trying to say here. I think we are gonna see things come out of universities, out of laboratories, out of experiments that governments will do in the Nordic parts of the northern parts of the planet that will not need everybody to get behind it. That are driven by a deeper understanding of what's going on on the planet. And we need to start putting things in place that when things get really dire, we have them ready to, to go. Right? Be it, you know, some kind of climate re-engineering activities some kinds of activities related to feeding people, to creating breathable air. Literally the kind of things that we would do if we landed on Mars, a terraforming type of activities. I think we're going to get more and more intelligence in that space no matter what happens in the general political realm. And I think that we're gonna see a lot of action in that place. Think of, Elon Musk getting into the, and, and, all these other billionaires getting into the space. A the space travel, right space activities. Well that's gonna happen around terraforming type of activities as well. I believe

Tom Raftery: 19:59

Hmm. So you think that if they start researching Terraforming for Terraforming Mars, they could put some of that technology to use here on Earth and actually Terraform Earth, so it became more like Earth again?

Herman Gyr: 20:10

that's, that it's inevitable.

Tom Raftery: 20:12

Okay.

Herman Gyr: 20:13

inevitable. That's the good news about what, what we're doing with Mars is I think all those activities are, that's the, you know, just like the moonshot gave us our modern sort of civilizational reality, including our, you know, microprocessors and things of that nature. I think that's exactly right and we have terraformed the planet Earth for the last 250 years.

Tom Raftery: 20:34

just in the wrong direction,

Herman Gyr: 20:36

Yeah, we didn't know. Right. I don't hold a lot of grudge. I think it was really a noble interest that drove us to this place, right? It started with the looms in England that, you know, were driven by water power. it liberated people. It, clothed them. It was the beginning of a, a kind of new civilizational expression that was absolutely remarkable. Right? Look at where we are today. But then comes steam engines and coal and all of a sudden, hey, that's fantastic. That's a hundred time better than that little river that is, driving our factories isn't that great we can do it 24 7 and then comes oil and electricity and all those kind of things. We didn't know the effects from that. And then comes fertilizers and hey, look at that. We can drive stuff out of, the ground at rates we never imagined, and then the stuff goes into the, the rivers and the oceans, and then we have dead zones. We have all those consequences that we did not know about when we first started

Tom Raftery: 21:39

Or, or chose to ignore

Herman Gyr: 21:40

And then chose to ignore. Right. I actually, you know, I think that, yeah, and it's hard not to ignore it because the benefit is so great. You know, like, how can we, we can't stop this now.

Tom Raftery: 21:54

Mm mm You mentioned about talking to organizations and that they were great because they're bounded and so it's easier to talk with them and and work with them. Do you have any examples you can talk to of organizations either named or not named and any results that have come out of working with them?

Herman Gyr: 22:17

I'm just contemplating names or unnamed, so let me stay with the unnamed first. And you know, I've been in at this for oh boy,

Tom Raftery: 22:26

Three or four years now,

Herman Gyr: 22:29

at a zero, and you're there. And I look back at absolutely remarkable experiences and, it always. Started with a conversation at the level of leadership to say, where's the world going? Whether we go there or not, like, are we still in touch with what's going on in the world around us at the level where you as leaders are reorienting your companies in a direction that is relevant to what's coming? Right? So we created this sort of blueprint mechanism where we help people visualize, you know, kind of put it on the wall and, and throw it all out. To see, where's the world going? Who are we gonna become in that world? Or who could we become in that world? That's a leadership challenge then to go there, right? And then the question becomes, how do we organize ourselves? How do we draw in our people to actually go to that world? So, in every case that has delivered extraordinary reorientation for these companies from, you know, companies like BP to companies like the bbc, to companies like Swisscom. So I can name those companies without telling you exactly what they did. But they all reoriented the company and in certain ways that then allowed them to make critical decisions about how to staff up for what to staff up around what kinds of products to pursue or not pursue. One of the favorite, and I can address that one specifically, that is related also to what we're need to aim for in this restorative, regenerative period is old mutual from South Africa in the nineties where they were in this room that I'm sitting in right now. They came for a visit and we looked at the future and we sort of realized that they're an insurance company, that all the thinking that they had done on the blueprint originally around, the change and the nature of insurance business, et cetera, became irrelevant once they realized that with Mandela coming onto the scene, there could be a dramatic disruption, a dramatic shift. For the company that is, is unpredictable, but potentially very negative, right? With, you know, basically a civil war or people leaving and running away or doing all kinds of interesting things, very similar to the kind of crisis that we're probably entering now. Increasingly with this, this climate reality, and by reflecting on, on this blueprint that was on the wall and kind of going back and forth and, and looking at who are we actually becoming in that world? They basically found a way to let go of the notion that they primarily were an insurance company at that moment in time, and they basically said, we are going to be the corporation committed to the renewal of South Africa as an African nation. Imagine that, right? That changed everything. I mean, we opened an office in South Africa, we stepped in because that gave an opening to a completely different conversation, to a complete different orientation to say, okay, we are addressing the problem at the level it exists, and we're stepping into it. And that's really what we're talking about around this regenerative thing as well, is how can we move companies, but people in general to not avoid the reality of what's going on, of what's coming, but to see it for what it is and to then step into it with the kind of natural mobility that humans have in the face of crisis. Right? There's something remarkable about who we are as a species, that when something existential happens, something dramatic happens. We don't, you know, some of us. And there's probably in all of us, the 10, the temptation to run away, right? There's a part of us that's that whispers into our ear and says, get outta here. But there's also that other part that says, this is that heroic moment. This is the moment to step in and draw from my deepest sources to bring in something that is otherwise unimaginable, right? And so that's what we saw in that story back then, and I think that's what increasingly we're seeing now as well, is that as this crisis becomes more and more clear, we, as I said before, we need to change the narrative from believing that this is a livable world to one, that we have to create that livable world. We have to step into it the way that Old Mutual did into the African story, south African story. You know, we still have time to reorient ourselves to say, no, this is the time. This is the only time, so let's draw from that capability and, come together and, you know, do the kind of things we, we must do.

Tom Raftery: 27:03

Okay. Okay, so. Herman, I am the CEO of Enterprise Inc. We're a multinational company, tens of thousands of employees worldwide. We've got competitors who are of a similar size. I'm listening to you talking about this, saying we need to reorient ourselves, and I'm thinking to myself, Yeah, but reorienting ourselves is going to cost money and our competition are not gonna be doing it. So we're gonna start losing profitability and our shareholders are not gonna be happy. Why in the world would I consider doing this?

Herman Gyr: 27:49

Well, cuz that's not true.

Tom Raftery: 27:53

good. Good.

Herman Gyr: 27:54

So here's how it goes.

Tom Raftery: 27:55

Huh.

Herman Gyr: 27:56

It's actually the biggest market coming, right? Basically, there's an understanding that the emerging market is 150 trillion dollars, that is this new regenerative market. So that's where the market is actually heading, right? Things that used to be so-called impact capital are now just capital, right? So, so it's, it really a massive shift. I mean, Doug McMillan the CEO of Walmart said this is the moment where if we don't step into it, we won't have time to do it later, right? Nestle is investing 1.3 billion dollars into helping their 500,000 farmers shift into more regenerative practices, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a movement here now. Google committed to be carbon free by 2030 and in the process produce an entirely new industry. Right, because they don't know yet how to accomplish that. But by making those kind of commitments, that's where it's heading. Young people don't wanna work for companies that are not aligned with this kind of orientation. You interview any millennial or younger generation z you, you know, whoever they are, that's number one on their radar. Is that company orienting itself to my future? Or are they just, you know, in there for whatever else they've been doing? So we are in the midst of a massive shift. So, here's the interesting thing, humans. Human civilizational shift has always happened because of technology, right? So we moved from agrarian era to the industrial era because of, our engineering minds. We came up with a really cool thing to do, and boom, everything moves in that direction. And then the digital age, right? So digitization has changed everything again, but now we're hitting a wall, right? Nature is hitting us in the face and going, no more of this. Right? You're better aligning your orientation around the needs of, of me, of the, of the planet, right? As Guteres said, we're on the highway to climate hell and you know, we're losing the battle. So that's all becoming real now. 150 trillion dollars is out there to be, approached. When you look at climate tech startups in 2015, there was one unicorn, 20 16 1 By 2021, it was, I think 28 unicorns. I mean, it's, it's unbelievable, right? That's what's happening. So that's the one side is that that's, it's just an inevitable movement. We're in the middle of a transition that everybody get can be part of. But the other thing is that there are entirely new products that can now be done that are actually valuable. Right? So you can construct things with cement that actually sequesters CO2 at about the same price that draws down the co2. And that can be used and is in parts, maybe even stronger than the existing cement, things of that nature, right? Everywhere we look this mythology that going green is more expensive, is being undermined. It's, it's not happening. I told you about this one client of ours that came up with a whole new approach to their, product that was, you know, using much more sustainable materials to build this product and it wasn't more expensive. And when they went to their, their customers, they immediately said, we want it. How can we, you know, participate in this new shift? So I just don't see it anymore. I think we're in a, profound transformation and, it's an old myth that no longer holds.

Tom Raftery: 31:17

Okay. And do you think this is sustainable to , to use that word as in, we've had things bubble up in the past and become fashionable for, you know, five or 10 years and then people lose interest and move on to the next hot and happening thing.

Herman Gyr: 31:32

let me ask you the question. Then back to you. Do you think it's gonna be warmer next year or the year after? You think there's gonna be more, more, you know, the, the oceans will start rising

Tom Raftery: 31:44

yeah. No, I know. I, I've been saying to people that in 2032 that we'll be, looking back on how the cool summer we had in 2022 was,

Herman Gyr: 31:51

That's the point. This one is very different from anything else humanity has ever faced. Right? The, the atmosphere that we're living in hasn't been seen in 3 million years. Never in human history, in humanoid history actually. Has the atmosphere been what it is today? Never. So we're in uncharted territory. But we are also in territory that's not going to get softer and more cuddly and more comfortable. We are moving into a really radically different world.

Tom Raftery: 32:18

Mm. Yeah. Do you think we have a hope of fixing it?

Herman Gyr: 32:24

Well. That's a, so, I think my own view is the hope resides within our nature. Right, that we have capacity to step into unimaginable troubles and somehow make it through it. If we step into it. The biggest risk, the biggest underminer of hope is false hope. Is hope based on some, it's gonna be okay. No hope that the rise from us actually activating the best and most noble parts of ourselves through action. Right? Through seeing it for what it is through thinking about it deeply, 43 fold increase of, phenomenon X. What does that mean? 69% of animals gone in 50. What does that mean for us to, the biggest hope is for us to step into the reality of what we see. Face it for what it is. Come together, draw from our best capabilities and instincts and go to work, actual work. And that's that shift from, this sort of la la, la let's just reduce our footprint, emissions kind of thing. When in fact everything we have is driven by the thousand gigatons that are already in the atmosphere and are not just gonna disappear. No, we need to shift into that activated restorative mindset and, set of actions to actually, restore our our, our planet successfully. You know, that's where the hope resides from my perspective. Are we gonna succeed? Well, hey am I hopeful about that? Well, you know, we'll see, if you look at the political, the sort of political games we play or you know, all of that. We'll have to see, but I see an activation now I see a shift, and that makes me hopeful at that level for sure.

Tom Raftery: 34:25

Good, good. Herman, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question that I haven't asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Herman Gyr: 34:39

Well, so maybe one more small piece and that is, The role of leadership in all this. Right. And I think the way that you and I just talked about this is it's big. It's bigger than anybody ever imagined. It's more profound. It's fundamentally existential. We're looking into the face of the end of life as we know it. Not just our own, but you know, other species as well. And so there's a particular demand on leaders. To be there to, come into their roles at levels they didn't choose that they wanted to do, right? They just wanted to run a company or they wanted to do some kind of political leadership, or they, were driven by the idea that they could make a, an impact, a positive impact on something. They could lead others to fulfill some kind of common goal or. You know, whatever the the reasons were, but now all of a sudden they find themselves in this wild new world that's gonna be with us forever. You know, it's not going to go ever away. So we need a shift in how leaders think of themselves in that context. And there I see kind of three different sort of mindsets, three different orientations. The first is to really back to what I said earlier, face it for what it is, and engage others to make that possible. Hey guys. Hey folks. Hey people. Let's get together. Let's look at what really is going on here together. And that's that blueprint kind of idea that kind of, how can we tell a story that focuses us all, that orients us as a team, as a group, as a company, as a nation to say that's what's going on. Do we all see it together? Let's move in that direction. The second part is then the leader as sort of innovator. Or, or innovation supporter. Now that we see where we're heading, how do we innovate into that space? What are we going to do to actually have the impact we need we need to have in this space we have now defined. And the third is to become an emotional leader. To realize that this is hard, this is emotionally unimaginable, that this is anxiety provoking. This is deep. And to to allow themselves to feel the feelings they feel in the face of this reality, but also engage with others and give them the space to actually do that. So that's, a sort of a closing orientation that I would like to offer is that this is a leadership moment that is really distinctly different from your sort of regular type of leadership that's focused on an existential challenge and there's a fantastic role to play, a really important role to play. And you know, I think something that is part of the hope actually is part of this kind of enobling possibility for humans at this very critical moment in time.

Tom Raftery: 37:31

Nice. Nice. Cool. Herman, that's been great. If people would like to know more about yourself or about the enterprise development group or any of the things we talked about in the podcast today, where would you have me direct?

Herman Gyr: 37:44

Well, so I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. Herman Gyr, G yr the Enterprise Development Group has a really nice website, so join us there. And, let's engage. This is a time for us all to pull together to talk about this and to go into action.

Tom Raftery: 38:01

Fantastic. Herman, that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Herman Gyr: 38:05

It's been wonderful. Thank you so much, Tom.

Tom Raftery: 38:09

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about Climate 21, feel free to drop me an email to Tom Raftery at outlook.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please, don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show Thanks. Catch you all next time.