Last summer, social media channels brought us stunning firsthand views of the violence, destruction, and extraordinary beauty of Hawaii’s erupting Kilauea volcano. Fast moving lava flowed from the summit crater through many underground tunnels and eruption vents. From May until August, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) provided daily updates of the amount of lava that was spreading across the island. By the time the eruption ended in August 2018, more than a mile of coastline was added along the big island’s southeast coast.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece articulating what lessons consultants could take from bartending. Recently, I was reflecting on that article and considering how, at Toffler Associates, we encourage our clients to look outside their company and their industry for answers to complex questions. As I thought about the Tofflers and our legacy as a firm, that timeless search for meaning struck me as one of the most critical aspects of understanding change. That seemingly simple realization prompted me to reflect on the art and science of philosophy in our contemporary context of change, disruption, innovation, and changing leadership.

Earlier this week, an article from Packaging Digest came across my news feed and immediately caught my attention. The report, Nestlé Clarifies its Sustainable Packaging Vision, highlights the company's ambitious vision to make 100% of its product packaging to be reusable or recyclable by 2025.[1] While this public goal is exciting on its own, what is really compelling is the increasing number of such announcements and articles. We're seeing more and more reporting on actions taken, progress made, and ambitions pursued and achieved to address climate change and global sustainability.

One of the Toffler Associates core values is to be a “curious life-long learner.” We live out that value by continuously seeking opportunities to learn and understand the world. Each of my colleagues exhibits continuous, voluntary, and self-motivated knowledge pursuits that enrich their personal and professional capacities. In addition to enhancing an organization’s culture, this pursuit of intellectual depth also cultivates a significant amount of critical resilience to the corporation.

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”

-Isaac Asimov

In this conversation Deb Westphal, Chairman of the Board for Toffler Associates, talks with author and former GE Vice Chair Beth Comstock about the organizational transformation she led at GE through the rediscovery of the company culture and reigniting the passions that the company was founded on.

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”

– Ronald Reagan, former U.S. President

The early hours of February 13th marked an important personal milestone. I had made it to the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro.

The United States has long maintained a causal relationship between industrial capability and national security. As our domestic manufacturing capabilities continue to erode and fall behind those in other global superpowers, the outcomes are predictable. In a recent series of war simulations, research organization RAND pit the U.S. against China and Russia. The results were startling. We lose quickly and badly.[1]

At the turn of the 21st century, businesses faced the frightening unknown of Y2K. The possibility that computer systems would collapse as the clock turned over was a wake-up call. Those that had been operating with a degree of comfort and complacency faced the urgent need to think about if (and how) they could navigate and thrive if the computers we had become so dependent on toward the turn of the century didn’t work. While nothing came to pass from this fearful possibility, the preparedness was put to the test only a year later when the unimaginable happened on 9/11. Financial services firms, in particular, were slower to recover because they had not sufficiently planned for how to reconstitute their business in the event of such a catastrophe.

One day before #schoolstrike, the biggest day of global action focused on climate change, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. In August 2018, she sat every day for three weeks outside the Swedish parliament in an independent protest. By January, she stood courageously before world leaders at Davos 2019 with a call to “hold no bars.” The day of #schoolstrike, an estimated 1.4 million inspired young people in 2,233 towns and cities across 128 countries stepped out of schools and into the streets to add their voices to hers.