Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Reimagining Business Through Systems Thinking with Dr. Wayne Mayer

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 295

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Dr. Wayne E. Mayer, CEO of When Everything Matters (WEMCo), is a Strategic Sustainability Consultant who advises global companies, governments, and non-profits. He helps organizations transform business models into authentic Sustainable Development partnerships. He brings over 20 years’ experience designing and leading Corporate Sustainability. Dr. Mayer helps clients embed Sustainability into governance, culture, and leadership. He works across industries and offers extensive involvement in the mining sector. 

His approach tethers company practices to megatrends and positions companies as leaders in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices. Dr. Mayer also works as a Duke Corporate Education Educator and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Duke University Center for International Development, and has taught for the Duke Environmental Leadership and Business & Environment programs. He also teaches graduate courses for the University of Denver’s Environmental Policy & Management and Global Community Engagement programs.

A Quote From This Episode

  • “Sustainability is really a mindset as opposed to a department.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode 

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About  Scott J. Allen

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  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.


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Scott Allen:

Okay, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Today I have Dr Wayne Mayer. He is the CEO of when Everything Matters and is a strategic sustainability consultant who advises global companies, governments and nonprofits. He helps organizations transform business models into authentic sustainable development partnerships. He brings over 20 years' experience designing and leading corporate sustainability. Dr Mayer helps clients embed sustainability into governance, culture and leadership. He works across industries and offers extensive involvement in the mining sector. His approach tethers company practices to megatrends and positions companies as leaders in environmental, social and governance practices. That's ESG. Dr Mayer also works as a Duke corporate education educator and serves as a senior fellow at the Duke University Center for International Development and has taught for the Duke Environmental Leadership and Business and Environment Programs. He also teaches graduate courses for the University of Denver's Environmental Policy and Management and Global Community Engagement Programs. Sir, thank you so much for being with me today. Appreciate your time. Anything else not in your bio that people need to know about you.

Wayne Mayer:

I think you covered it quite well and I'd like to say thank you, Scott, for inviting me to your show. It's a pleasure to be here. I've enjoyed several of your conversations and indeed discovered practical wisdom.

Scott Allen:

Well, I joke sometimes. I don't know how practical the wisdom is sometimes, but we try.

Wayne Mayer:

Yes, it can often be a bit abstract, but you can find kernels of great pragmatism.

Scott Allen:

So you know we had spoken. Obviously listeners kind of have a sense of your area of expertise here. I've had a few conversations Steve Kempster, a little bit of Margaret Wheatley and Ryan Satterwhite with Kathy Allen, just kind of about this general space. But maybe, if you would, I know that sustainability is a passion of yours. How are you thinking about sustainability leadership? How are you defining that?

Wayne Mayer:

It's interesting. I've been thinking a lot about how organizations think about issues beyond their core focus and whether that causes mission drift or whether that causes productivity. And if you think about it at the high level the chief sustainability officers they're trying to build environmentally conscious firms through strategy and influence, and so I've been thinking a lot about how influence is used in leadership and they're also trying to interpret changes in the external environment and work out the strategies and opportunities and impacts for their companies as they look at that external environment. So outward in looking, as well as inward out looking.

Scott Allen:

Yeah Well, and so that's interesting. We've got a few different kind of bodies of literature, so to speak. We've got the sustainability, we've got the strategy, and then at least one way I define leadership is the process of influencing others toward a common vision. So leadership and influence, and so kind of the convergence of these three spaces.

Wayne Mayer:

Yes, in fact I want to pick up on the thread a little bit, from Steve Kemster his ideas around a regenerative approach to business and leadership, and then Kathy Allen's ideas of leading from the roots and that conversation that you just mentioned about, where Kathy and Ryan Satterwhite were speaking together again on this idea of regeneration.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

And the thread I wanted to pick up on is the idea of looking at business as systems.

Wayne Mayer:

And how do we take systems thinking into that to bring this regenerative pattern, how do we bring this idea of freshness and newness by looking at things through systems?

Wayne Mayer:

And what occurred to me that I thought I would offer to you is that I actually studied forestry in the Pacific Northwest, in the state of Washington, and you can't study forestry there without learning a little bit about Chief Seattle, and so he was the leader of the Duwamish and the Squamish people and famously he's credited with a speech about ecological responsibility and how do you sell land if you're part of the land?

Wayne Mayer:

And to sort of paraphrase what he was getting at, he says that all things are connected like blood that unites us all, and that people did not weave the web of life. We merely are a strand in it. Okay, and so whatever we do to this web, we do to ourselves, and I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically the chief Seattle perspective. And so then you get this idea of a web, and in ecology we often talk about ecosystems and this web of life, and in fact the modern concept of systems thinking emerged out of environmental science, which is an interdisciplinary field beyond the categories. So you weren't just thinking about biology or anthropology or chemistry, you were having to learn how all of those disciplines actually interact.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Wayne Mayer:

And so the late environmental scientist, donella Meadows. She explains that systems contain three main components elements, interconnections and a function or purpose. Okay, and you can see systems then in nature and you can see them in business, and I thought it would be kind of fun to explore that with you. Around this idea of influence and appreciation, we start looking at this idea of how do we use this idea of systems to identify elements, interconnections, and in physical or ecological systems we would talk about a function, okay. Or in human systems like your digestive system, there's a function, but then in business we might actually think of elements, interconnections and a purpose. What's the purpose of our system? What are we trying to accomplish?

Scott Allen:

I love it. Let's do it. I like it, all right.

Wayne Mayer:

So a quick way to comprehend systems thinking. I love it, let's do it, I like it, all right. So a quick way to comprehend systems thinking. It comes from this idea of ecosystems, a community of living organisms interacting with each other in their physical environment, and so, in a nutshell, that would be an ecosystem. But one way that I think we can frame this that will make it easy to comprehend is sometimes it's helpful to look at these elements by doing the reverse. Okay, helpful to look at these elements by doing the reverse. So we're often looking at what happens to a system if we change this or that, and what I mean by the reverse is well, if you take an ecosystem and we think it's a natural, intact ecosystem, what happens if we reinsert a species that was absent? And so what I thought would be useful to illustrate this is just talk about the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park, because it's big, it's grandiose, and I think people get it right away. And then we're going to take that and we're going to think about how that offers us insights into the way we can provide sustainability, leadership in business by using this method of systems thinking. And so, in 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park after being absent for about 70 years. And ecologically it's one of these conservation stories that's quite remarkable because when they reintroduced the wolf it kind of fell right back into its old role. And what happens is it triggered what scientists call a trophic cascade. A trophic cascade. A trophic cascade is sort of this top-down influence where you've reintroduced a species, usually a top predator, and it has a cascading effect on different levels of the food chain.

Wayne Mayer:

Okay, so in Yellowstone it starts with the wolf's prey, the elk and the wolves start feeding on the elk, bringing the elk population into balance. So before the elk and bison populations had ballooned over that 70-year period, really so by the 1980s the park was so overrun by elk and bison that they were also changing the landscape, they were keeping vegetation low, they were doing a lot of grazing, and so with reintroduction of the wolves we start seeing the wolf population is putting back into check and into balance the elk population. And as the wolves start feeding on the elk, the downed elk also feed the scavenger community of the wolves, the bears, the coyotes. But it doesn't stop there with these big animals. We start seeing hundreds of beetles and insect species also benefit from the wolf kills. Then there's this incredible ripple effect through the plant life.

Wayne Mayer:

So before the reintroduction, as I was saying, the elk had no one attacking them, no one hunting them, so they chewed on willow bushes a lot and they brought the willow trees down to very low levels. So the willow stands didn't grow tall and with the reintroduction of the wolves, the willow trees began to flourish and that attracted more songbirds. It also provided food for beaver. The beaver used the willow trees to build dams, which created ponds and wetlands, which created habitat for fish birds, amphibians, small mammals, moose, mink otter Habitat for fish birds, amphibians, small mammals, moose, mink otter. So once a meadow turned into a pond, it created a lot of opportunity for life. Wow. And so now we can take this idea of an ecosystem, of a trophic cascade and we can start to apply it to the way we do business.

Scott Allen:

Okay, Interesting. So one parallel could be we get a new CEO and the cascading impacts that has on the organization. Would that be one simplistic example?

Wayne Mayer:

Exactly right, exactly right. And when you start thinking about that then you say, okay, if we get this new CEO, what's that CEO's leadership style? And in the leadership literature there's a lot of different ways. Somebody comes in. Maybe you have a command and control person, maybe you have a servant leader style, maybe you have a people-centric leadership style, and so that's going to then have a cascading effect on the whole organization.

Wayne Mayer:

And so with sustainability, again, it's really a mindset. I like to think of it as a mindset as opposed to a department. So a lot of companies now will have a green team or they will have a community relations team, and these small groups tend to do fringe projects or what they'll call initiatives on the side, on the fringes of whatever the core business is. Yep, and when that happens, I call that a bolt-on approach to sustainability. That a bolt-on approach to sustainability, we're just bolting it onto the company because we feel a moral imperative to do so or we feel that there's some regulatory pressure or stakeholder pressure for us to do so. But it really doesn't have much to do with what we do as an organization.

Scott Allen:

Okay.

Wayne Mayer:

And so for a leader then in sustainability to have that cascading effect, that leader would want to come in and say okay, we're going to try to embed this sustainability mindset, social and environmental thinking, into everything we do.

Scott Allen:

Okay.

Wayne Mayer:

And that will guide how we make our decisions and that brings it into the strategic realm.

Scott Allen:

Okay, okay.

Wayne Mayer:

And then, in doing so, we're going to be looking for well, how does what we do affect what others do? So, looking for that idea of systems, where are these systems? A team of people working together is a system, and then you can have systems within systems, and then we're going to look at that external environment. We want to start from that external environment and then work our way back in.

Scott Allen:

So I'm seeing a really, really nice parallel to leader development right now. So let's see if this, if this lands, it may not. Okay, we're going to try. Yeah, yeah, you know, at times I think DEI can be this way.

Scott Allen:

I think leader development or leadership can be this way that you have a leadership program and, you know, oftentimes the decision makers feel that leadership program will have some type of impact. You know, unless leadership is connected to any number of systems performance management, succession planning, of course, training and development. But there's a whole host of other elements, whether it's aligned with the 360 that we're going to do, whether it's aligned with how we recruit people to certain values that then we promote as values in a person we want in the organization, or values of what we hope a leader will model. Unless it's connected to a number of those in this case, like HR systems, many of them we're going to be super limited in our ability to have that one day long program have any level of impact. It's going to be much lower unless that programming is connected to these other parts of the system and that's exactly right.

Wayne Mayer:

Okay, okay, yes, yeah, you're exactly right. And with that HR example, same thing happens you end up with a scapegoat department. Yes, yeah, that HR example, same thing happens you end up with a scapegoat department.

Wayne Mayer:

Yes, yeah, and this happens a lot in sustainability, but you can see it in HR. It wasn't our fault, the green team did it. Why are we over budget? Oh, they're spending money on this project or that project, and so the idea then is to figure out well, how do we actually shift the way people perceive what we do as an organization?

Scott Allen:

Yeah, this gets to the Kempster conversation, where I think it was Cotswold Dairy, if I'm not mistaken, but it was a dairy company and it was just baked into their DNA as an organization. That's right. Everything they did kind of came back to this, to your point mindset, right, exactly right.

Wayne Mayer:

There's a great quote from Peter Drucker, the American professor of management and leadership. He says and again I'm paraphrasing but something to the effect of the task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes a system's weaknesses irrelevant. Wow, and that's sort of what we're getting at when we talk about embedded sustainability or an embedded mindset. Yeah, I'll give you an example if you'd like. Yeah, please, what we're getting at when we talk about embedded sustainability or an embedded mindset. Yeah, I'll give you an example if you'd like. Yeah, please.

Wayne Mayer:

So, actually, from Cleveland, ohio, I had the great pleasure some years ago of working with Chuck Fowler oh yeah, who's got the over? At Case Western. The Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit honors his name, and Chuck was the longtime CEO of Fairmont Minerals, which he started. It was called Best Sands, became Fairmont Minerals and under his leadership I think it carried all the way to Fairmont Central. It has since been sold to Covia and so they're running it. But under Chuck Fowler's leadership, he decided early on, before the Sustainable Development Goals, when the UN had the Millennium Development Goals, that it would be a great idea to embed this idea of the Millennium Development Goals of sustainable development into core strategy.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Wayne Mayer:

And so they started doing this and basically they began to spiral around their idea of moving silica sand to market with speed as their core initiative or their core purpose. They started to spiral around the idea of social, economic and environmental responsibility and later they actually mapped that to the sustainable development goals. But early on, one of the things they did is they and because it came top down, chuck was able to get the board of directors involved and approval of this and then from there unleashed innovation bottom up and middle out, and what he told me years later was that it was a great exercise in productivity.

Scott Allen:

Would you talk about that bottom up and middle out?

Wayne Mayer:

Sure. So one of the best ways that his work exemplifies this is during early years. He basically said okay, I want everybody to look at whatever it is you do for the company and think about it from an environmentally responsible perspective and a socially responsible perspective. What does that look like? What do you see differently? What could we do different that we haven't thought of before?

Wayne Mayer:

And one of the people on the shipping receiving ends made a very astute observation. He said you know, we take a lot of pride in the. We recycle our cardboard boxes, but we're trucking in boxes of sand into the plant. Then we're emptying the sand. Abrasion from the sand destroys the cardboard boxes so we can't use them again. So now we're collapsing the boxes and we're paying haul-away fees to have them hauled away. And he said look, there's a thing on the market called the Super Sack. It's kind of like a heavy-duty burlap sack designed for this sort of thing. And he said we could use those. The cost would be minimal compared to the haul-away fees and the boxes, and they're designed to last at least 12 months of heavy use.

Wayne Mayer:

They made that switch. It saved them $600,000 the first year and then about a half a million dollars year on year after that, so right away the CFO gets engaged. He said suddenly I like sustainability and so this really transformed how they did this. So that was from the bottom up. It was somebody who was actually receiving the trucks of sand who made the original observation. Yeah, and now Chuck did caution. He said not every idea becomes, you know, incorporated into the way we do business, but the empowerment idea is that everybody is asked to bring their observations to their direct boss and then up the chain so that leadership actually sees, hey, we might be able to use some things differently that have a triple bottom line effect, meaning they help us environmentally, socially and financially.

Scott Allen:

Yes, that's awesome, that's a great story, and so give me a couple other kind of concepts that you want listeners to be aware of. So we've got leadership and influence, we've got strategy, we've got sustainability and how these work together. Talk a little bit more about that application to business. This is fascinating.

Wayne Mayer:

Sure. Well, let me introduce to you all a framework that and I will oversimplify it here, but I would encourage listeners to explore it more I learned this from one of the members of my dissertation committee, a fellow named Dr Francis Lethem, and he had collaborated with Dr William Smith, and in 1980, they had done this work. At the time Francis was working for the World Bank, and so they had been looking at how come a lot of projects aren't as successful as we'd like them to be. And then, with Francis at the World Bank, he said well, how come a lot of projects?

Wayne Mayer:

aren't as successful as we'd like them to be. Okay, and then, with Francis at the World Bank, he said well, how come a lot of our international development projects aren't as successful as we would like them to be? And they came up with this framework called the AIC framework, which stands for appreciative, influential and control.

Scott Allen:

Okay.

Wayne Mayer:

And the way I like to describe it for people to visualize is three concentric circles the outer circles, the appreciative environment or the enabling environment, the center is the influential and then the inner circle is the control sphere. Okay, and what they observed and I've since used this as a tool to help guide businesses think about how they do what they do and how to embrace their external environments and what they observed, Francis and William, was that most organizations, whether they're development organizations or private sector businesses, were making decisions in that control sphere Because that's where they actually had power. They could make decisions, they could make budgetary allocations. But when decisions were made in that control sphere without knowledge or recognition of influence and appreciation, they often ended up with mediocre or lower than mediocre results. So they said why don't we flip that around?

Wayne Mayer:

What if we start by looking at the appreciation sphere? So, just to simplify this, that would be if you want to open a business and you have to appreciate the institutional constraints that exist in that environment, so the legal frameworks. So if you decide you want to open a nightclub and you're working in where ordinances say you must be closed by midnight, you might say, maybe that's not the nightclub. I want the place. I want to open the nightclub.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

Or you're going to say it's going to be more of a dayclub, right? In other words, you have to appreciate your job is not going to be to change those rules. Your job is to appreciate those rules. Now, in the influential sphere, you might find that there are organizations that are actively advocating to change those curfew rules so that you can have a nightclub that stays open longer.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, because the nightclub will be a little less popular.

Wayne Mayer:

That's right, and so what you're thinking then would be maybe I can use my influence in that influential sphere to encourage that organization to advocate for what I want.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

And so in that influence sphere you're looking at how can I influence others and who can influence me, and then how my coalitions be formed.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

And once you've identified all of those things, so you're identifying your stakeholders both the appreciative stakeholders and the influential stakeholders before you actually make decisions in that control sphere. And so then that really transforms how you think about what your company does and the context in which it operates.

Scott Allen:

Yes, 100%. Is this also a tool that's helping us think more systemically?

Wayne Mayer:

Oh, absolutely, because by doing so, one of the things it helps you do is it looks at purpose and power. So you're looking at those three components appreciation, influence and control and then you're looking at who has the power in these different dynamics. Who has the purpose, and how do we align purpose and power to accomplish a shared goal?

Scott Allen:

Yep.

Wayne Mayer:

And so the same thing happens when you are looking through systems, through a systems lens, and trying to create in strategy a shared vision. And then, once you have that shared vision, how do we pull it closer to our present?

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

And this tool really helps you do that. It helps you as well think about different ways to understand stakeholders. So a lot of organizations now do stakeholder analyses or stakeholder mapping, and they'll ask at least two questions. They'll ask who are the main stakeholders and they'll ask what are the interests of those stakeholders? But they often don't ask the third question, which is what are the interests of those stakeholders? But they often don't ask the third question, which is what is the power of each stakeholder group.

Scott Allen:

Oh, wow, yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

Or the fourth question, which is how are coalitions likely to form?

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

And the AIC framework helps you see that. It provides a visual tool that helps you see who's really available, who's in that influential sphere with whom I might collaborate, and there's a lot of rhetoric now about public-private partnerships and often that's misunderstood as hello private sector, please give money to our partnership, and to which either you have corporations that are resistant to that because that's not their business model to give away money, or they say yes, but they want to do it in finite amounts. They don't want to have this recurring, constant need to donate. So one of the things that we see in this idea of building partnerships is how can you do it where there's no direct cost to the company? In other words, it creates opportunities for company savings.

Wayne Mayer:

It creates benefits for the company as well as to the recipient, and I can give you a quick example of what that can look like.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, please do.

Wayne Mayer:

So years ago in Peru I worked with a mining company, first Quantum Minerals and they were trying to figure out how to approach community relations differently, and they were working in a remote area in the Andes where there was another large mine that had done a lot, where they were looking at everything transactionally and they ended up spending an awful lot of money and still not having communities that were content. So one of the things we started to explore was what are the big needs? The company had bought the land for this mining project and embedded in what they purchased was a relocation. They were going to have to relocate families, which meant they're going to have to rebuild housing, and so we started looking at well, when you do that, there are lots of complications, but one that we looked at was how do you provide water and sewer to these new buildings that you'll have to produce, and the usual way to do that is to buy off-shelf components toilet showers, sinks and then truck them to site.

Wayne Mayer:

What we found by looking through that AIC lens was that at the time the water and sanitation division of the World Bank was based in Lima, peru, they had already created a series of what they called my Bathroom Kits that they had rolled out in pilot communities in four different parts of Peru.

Wayne Mayer:

They wanted to bring this to scale and so in conversations with them, they said well, look, if you relocate these communities. And in doing so with them, they said, well, look, if you relocate these communities, in doing so, if you would use our equipment, it's all sourced in country, so it's all domestically, the whole value chain is in country. So you're supporting the National Society of Industry and you're supporting this local production. And we will provide the added value of bringing extension workers out to help use microfinance and train local people in the community to be the custodians of the system. What this did, the brilliance of this idea, was that it would provide the private sector company with an exit strategy. So they were willing to put some money up front and they were willing to invest in these systems and they were even willing to help with some of the engineering designing on putting in the water system. But they didn't want to be plumbers for the life of the mine.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Wayne Mayer:

And so here's a way that they could do this concept of partnerships, of alliance building, in ways that was good for the company, not just for the recipient of that alliance.

Scott Allen:

Yeah Well, I just finished a really good book. I had a fun conversation for listeners Check out the episode with Jeffrey Beeson. The book is called Network Leadership and, yeah, so his whole kind of approach to this work is the power of networks, and it sounds like this tool very nicely helps you tap into maybe even at times, unsuspecting partnerships that you would never imagined, but it then creates an effect where that's so cool. I love it. I absolutely love it. Oh, good, good, wayne, before we, as we begin to wind down our time, what's another concept that you want listeners to be aware of as critical to this conversation around sustainability leadership? Is there another concept that comes to mind for you?

Wayne Mayer:

You know, I would say, around this concept of stakeholder engagement. So we talked a little bit just of stakeholder mapping. But I think in sustainability leadership some of the easy things to do are around the low-hanging fruit of reducing water consumption, reducing energy use. But some of the more complicated components come from this idea of stakeholder engagement.

Scott Allen:

Okay.

Wayne Mayer:

So, if we understand who those stakeholders are, how do we engage with them? How do we work with them Internally? How do we engage with them? How do we work with them Internally? How do we really motivate employees? How do we use the tools of stakeholder engagement to actually increase productivity by creating reasons for why do I come to work, besides doing what I'm paid to do?

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

Is there a level of enthusiasm to what I do? Can I bring excitement with me? Do I feel gratitude that I get to work with these people on these projects, or do I feel like this is a task I must complete because I need to earn a living?

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Wayne Mayer:

And there's a very different way again this idea of mindset. There's a different way of thinking, and so stakeholder engagement really can tie into that internally and then externally also when we talk about sustainability. It morphed out of corporate social responsibility and some of that was heavy on corporate philanthropy.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Wayne Mayer:

So we're a great company, we donated to this organization or that organization, this organization or that organization, and one of the ways that good stakeholder engagement helps a company is that it enables the company to say we're a good company, but you don't have to take our word for it. We'd like you to ask some of these other organizations and again in our sphere of influence, yep, and if they speak well of you, then it really elevates where you are in your ecosystem, in your community. It also elevates how your leaders are using influence and appreciation to achieve the goals that the organization wants them to achieve.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, so cool. Sir, what are a couple resources that you would point listeners to that have stood out for you? I know we spoke about Firms of Endearment, a book that both of us have enjoyed, but are there a couple other resources and maybe you could talk to Firms of Endearment if it is a resource that you would recommend to check out?

Wayne Mayer:

Well, I think certainly Firms of Endearment is helpful. It gives you a fundamental perspective of how to think more broadly about responsibility in business. Yeah, More recently there's a book that I think is really helpful for this. It's called Full Spectrum Thinking.

Scott Allen:

Okay.

Wayne Mayer:

How to Escape Boxes in a Post-Categorical Future, and it's by Bob Johanson of the Institute for the Future out in California. Okay, and that book? It helps leaders break free of limiting labels and to see new gradients of possibility in what's otherwise a very chaotic world.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Wayne Mayer:

So it really helps you with interdisciplinary thinking.

Scott Allen:

Okay.

Wayne Mayer:

Yeah. So another that I was thinking about was the man who Broke Capitalism, and the subtitle there is how Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America and how to Undo His Legacy. Wow, heavy, heavy. It's by David Gels, who's a New York Times writer, and it's really great. It really puts in perspective how did we get to this idea of having CEO celebrities and this huge discrepancy between CEO earnings and worker earnings, and how did that all come out of balance, and then what could we do to bring it back into balance?

Wayne Mayer:

A third one would just be and this is more looking at when we think about the energy transition, we can't not think about mining, and so there was a book that came out last year called the War Below Lithium Copper and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives. It's by a guy named Ernest Schneider I think it's how he pronounced it S-C-H-E-Y-D-E-R. Okay, ernest Schneider, and he writes for Reuters, but he uses storytelling to bring you into this concept of how do we make these decisions around trade-offs, what's more important, certain areas of land in pristine ecosystem style or as deposits of copper or lithium, and should we be extracting them or not? And I think he's very spot on in terms of what we should be thinking about over the next couple of decades.

Scott Allen:

Wow. Well, sir, thank you so much for giving us a broad overview and then helping us understand some of the resources that are available to us, because I think this is, at least for me, a bit of an intimidating topic because it's a whole world that I don't know of. But I feel like I understand it a little bit better because of our conversation today and I very, very much appreciate it. But I also love kind of this interdisciplinary lens of leadership strategy, sustainability, and then, of course, we've got systems thinking embedded in all of this. That I love it. Quickly, before we wind down, I always ask guests what they've been listening to, reading streaming, what's caught your attention in recent times. Now it could have to do with something we've just discussed. It might have nothing to do with what we've discussed, but, Wayne, what's been on the nightstand or the television or the iPad?

Wayne Mayer:

A couple of things. So a podcast your leaders might enjoy called Outrage and Optimism, and it's a climate podcast for people who are not willing to give up on making the world a better place. That's sort of their tagline.

Scott Allen:

Oh, I love it.

Wayne Mayer:

One of the people that runs it is the former climate change executive secretary, cristina Figueres, who I had the great pleasure of meeting her in Lima, peru, at the COP20. So right before the Paris Climate Agreement the year before, and she played an instrumental role in bringing that Paris Climate Agreement to fruition Nice. So she's quite something. She's definitely worth time to listen to. There's another podcast that I don't know as well I've only heard parts of it, but I've heard good things about it and that is the Cleaning Up podcast and that's really. He interviews leaders in clean energy, mobility, climate finance and sustainable development.

Wayne Mayer:

And then, lastly, as kind of a sideline, I just finished reading a book, an actual paper book called Ingrained. It's by a gentleman named Colin Robinson, who is a fine furniture woodworker in Scotland and he does a great homage to the business and the artistry and craftsmanship of furniture making. Wow, and he does. There's great wisdoms of leadership there. He runs his own small business and he really gives you a sense for what it's like to be an entrepreneur in a field that requires him to work with his hands, and it was really a pleasure to read.

Scott Allen:

Oh, that's very cool, awesome. Well, I will put a link to all of those in the show notes, so listeners, check out the show notes. You can find them there. Wayne, thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate. You Appreciate how you think For listeners. I know you appreciate that as well. It's pretty awesome, and you know what? Until next time, sir.

Wayne Mayer:

Well, thank you kindly. And once again, thank you, Scott. It's been a real pleasure. I really appreciate being included. You've got a great playlist.

Scott Allen:

Oh, it's been a lot of fun. I'm learning a lot. Take care, sir. All right, likewise.

Wayne Mayer:

Bye-bye now.

Scott Allen:

What a fun conversation. Truly enjoyed that dialogue. An expert in his field. Thank you so much, wayne. Appreciate you, appreciate all of you, for listening, checking in and staying curious. Great leaders are curious and the research would back that up. Take care everyone. Thank you so much for stopping by. Be well.