At the Cape Town launch of Story-Centred Leadership earlier this year, Anton Cartwright raised a point that has stayed with me, and sits at the heart of what I explore in my latest piece for BusinessGreen.
He referenced the 2018 IPCC special report on 1.5°C of warming. Tens of thousands of front-page headlines. Overwhelming evidence. And still, many people couldn’t see where they fit or what they could do next.
“More data is necessary. But it does not drive action.” he said. That gap matters.
For years, sustainability communication has been built around informing people, assuming that if the case is strong enough, action will follow. In reality, information without orientation leaves people at a distance.
The stories that work do something different. They help people locate themselves inside the problem. They hold the scale of the challenge while making space for what is still possible.
That shift asks something different of leaders. Not more completeness, but more clarity. Not more data, but more humanity.
I write about what that looks like in practice in this piece which you can read Here.