My Life as a "Survivability Consultant" | Tim Riedel, Planetgroups Founder

How to Get Companies to Tackle the Climate Crisis with Intrinsic Motivation

Why do we destroy our planet as human beings, despite all the knowledge on the table for decades? We know everything that needs to be known about the risks, the tipping points, and the potential irreversibility of all the harm we are doing not to the planet, or “the climate”, but to ourselves.

Per Espen Stoknes, in his book “What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming”, gave four reasons for this, and I would like to add a fifth. They are: Doom, Distance, Dissonance, iDentity, and Deceit. The truth about our path to self-extinction is hard to sustain. Accepting that our lives are in danger, that it will happen at some unknown time in the future, that we are causing this danger ourselves with our established lifestyles and jobs, and that no one seems to have a solution for reducing these existential risks, causes an unbearable cognitive dissonance. We react to it with any one combination of psychological defense mechanisms, like denial, compensation, projection, suppression, or others. This is especially true since powerful forces in industry, media, and politics are doing everything they can to make us even more scared, doubtful, opposing, and passive with regard to the changes that need to be made.

However, these defense mechanisms are socially organized, so they can and must be socially overcome, in groups, together with others. We have to mutually turn the negative messages of distance, doom, dissonance, and a threatened identity into positive messages of closeness, hope, connection, and self-appreciation. And the workplace is a perfect place for this to happen. We are socially organized there, we have agency not only to reduce huge corporate planetary footprints (much larger than anything we can influence as individuals), but also to build (and sell) the solutions we need to survive and thrive in a community on a healthy and prosperous planet in the future. We can talk about – and act on – something very positive and impactful here that we can do for our company, for ourselves, and for a better world collectively.

That is the kind of positive thinking I spread in the companies where I consult with my company planetgroups. I support Employee Climate Initiatives of any sort, and I help HR or Sustainability Departments to get ownership and engagement for climate action from employees and managers.

When they ask, “How can we survive as a company and still make money in times of climate transformation?”, I tell them “By being proactive about it and making it a success!” Use the skills and talent you have and develop the solutions that will be needed in the new economy. 1) Transform your business models towards Regeneration, so that any growth of your revenues also makes regeneration grow. 2) Degrow your footprint. And 3) Drive system change in the sense that as much money and regulation as possible is geared towards regeneration instead of further extraction. Make your competitors have to follow you.

In the illustration below you find eight areas that will be of crucial importance in order to survive and thrive on our planet in the centuries to come. I call them “Eight Pillars of a Regenerative Economy”. If you are not using and offering any of these, your company will have a very hard time surviving.

So sometimes I call myself a Survivability Consultant. I help companies and humanity survive, by helping them transform. Not because they must, but because they want to. They see the value in it. That dissonance and fear turned into consistency, purpose, and hope.

However, of course, there are setbacks, and I read frightening data all the time. How do I prepare and align myself emotionally for this? I have developed five “mantras” that usually help me recollect myself:

1) I do not attach my hope to an outcome, but I see myself as part of the social tipping points we want to reach. I change the dynamics, I shift the goalposts and frames of reference for everyone in the system. By doing so, I am always effective, even if it takes time.

2) I don't work for the future - I focus on improving the present. Because that's what I can control. And if I succeed in improving the world today, here and now, then it will be better tomorrow as a result.

3) Most of us don`t have the opportunity to choose a new economic system. So we have to use the levers we have, and influence what and whom we can. Every one of us has to ask himself or herself, what we have “agency” of. I try to influence people and organizations wherever it is in my power. I have to accept that my power is limited. But that should never stop me from not using the power and leverage that I actually have.

4) I don't think we need to do "more" to save the world. How could we ever do more, most of us are at our limits to deal with the daily pressures of our lives. How can “more” be the way out of the climate crisis? So I am looking – and consulting - for ways how we can do less, but better, together with our customers, and still prosper. In that sense, "sustainability" also starts with myself and is not a state, but a process and an attitude.

5) Last but not least, it is the community of like-minded people that gives me endless strength and energy. After all, it makes no sense to be so committed to saving life on this planet, and then not enjoy life. Life is beautiful. And it is most beautiful for us humans in communities. The motivational system in our brain spits out the most happiness hormones when we give and do something for others. That's why I love working to make companies sustainable by default. It fills my life with meaning, I have a lot of fun.

Tim Riedel, Founder, Planetgroups

About the author: After a 20 year career with his own company in Skills Assessment and Talent Acquisition, Tim decided to dedicate his further career to Climate Action and Sustainability in April 2020. He did so by founding his current company planetgroups. Planetgroups is a profit-for-purpose consultancy supporting Employee Green Teams and Sustainability Ambassador Programs in companies through a guided process with a recurring routine of workshops, his Climate Business Challenge Simulation, and process facilitation. Tim studied Political Science and Law some years back, is 55 years old, is based in Berlin, and has 4 children. tim.riedel@planetgroups.net