Successful market change agents have one thing in common. It’s not enough to be right, though it certainly helps. It’s almost always a mistake to insist too early, to hector your audience, however intense your own conviction and feelings may be. Powerful people know who they don’t want to talk to—and imagine they know what those people look like and sound like.
Bluntly, missionaries make them nervous, triggering their fight or flight instincts.
So, approach them from an unexpected angle—in their club, through their family, at an event where they are separated from their minders. Find them, if you can, in moments where they are more human, exposed, vulnerable, open.
Encourage them to believe that you might just be one of them, from their side of life’s tracks.
They also tend to come down very hard on whistleblowers, people who are caught in soul-searing conundrums—and can sometimes be a powerful force for change. But experience shows that whistleblowing can wreck careers and lives. It should therefore be a last resort—though in today’s world few leaders worth their salt will fully discount the risk of such leaks and exposures.
So, while blackmail is bad, clearly, consider a dilute form of greenmail. Let your targets know that the world may be a little more porous than they might imagine. Suggest that the bad news is already leaking. That the corporate omertà they count on may be a bit more precarious that they had thought.
Next, tomorrow, we will consider why it’s important not to assume that all Sharks and Orcas are evil, or the market equivalent of mafiosi.
Again, all comments welcome.
John Elkington is Founder & Chief Pollinator at Volans. His personal website can be accessed here. This post draws on the Coda & Manifesto section of his new book, Tickling Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability (Fast Company Press, 2024). This 10-part series of posts began on 2nd September, with the first five posts running through to the 6th of September—and now continues with the second five running through to the 13th of September.
What readers say:
“John has seen farther, sooner, and better than anyone how commerce could
reimagine the world and has done so with modesty, eloquence, and kindness.”
PAUL HAWKEN, environmentalist, entrepreneur,
author of The Ecology of Commerce, Drawdown, and Regeneration
Available on Amazon and through good bookshops