Three decades of immersion in leadership and academic conversations globally, has revealed to me that we are often saying the same thing about what is driving decisions that are harming us and about how to resolve issues - but in slightly different ways, various levels of clarity and focused on different parts of the puzzle.

I believe we don’t have a lack of purpose-driven energy for deep change, but a crises of confidence to lead for a future that doesn’t yet exist. This can only be enabled through a sense of unity about where we are moving from and to. This is not about what products or services we want to create but how we want to work to govern ourselves, our organizations and our economies so that they generate and protect the value we value. In other words purpose-driven governance that optimises the long-term wellbeing for all people and the planet.

Along with my colleague Lorenzo Fioramonti, we set out in the diagram below that at the heart of bad decision-making is the deeply held idea that financial income is a good proxy for our long-term collective wellbeing. This has led us to govern for a GDP economy, serviced by profit-driven organisations and powered by financially focused work and lives.

Whole system change is required, but we don’t have to fix everything at once. Systems thinking tell us that we can focus on key points of influence. I have centred in on four strategic pillars that I see as most effective for creating and sustaining the change required: Purpose, Governance, Marketing, and Leadership and Culture.