SA Power 100 – 2013: Dr Wayne

SA Power 100 – 2013: Dr Wayne Visser

Writer, academic, social entrepreneur and futurist

SA Power 100 – 2013: Dr Wayne

wayne visser 2012

Bullet Biography

Born: 

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, grew up in Cape Town, South Africa.

Career:

Director of the thinktank Kaleidoscope Futures and Founder of CSR International.

Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and Visiting Professor of Corporate Responsibility at the Gordon Institute for Business Science in South Africa.

His early career was spent as a management consultant, first as a Strategy Analyst for Capgemini and then as Director of Sustainability Services for KPMG in South Africa.

Author of 17 books, including The Quest for Sustainable Business (2012), and The Age of Responsibility (2011). Listed as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior in 2013.

Education: PhD in Corporate Social Responsibility (Nottingham University, UK), MSc in Human Ecology (Edinburgh University, UK) and a Bachelor of Business Science with Honours in Marketing (Cape Town University, South Africa).

Lives in: London

 

Why did you come to the UK?

I did my Masters in Human Ecology at Edinburgh University and my PhD at Nottingham University, which was one of the few universities in the world at that time (10 years ago) that was offering a PhD in corporate social responsibility. After that, I started working for Cambridge University and also started up CSR International and more recently Kaleidoscope Futures. I’ve found the UK a really good base for an international career, with connections to Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa. As a result, my work has now taken me to more than 60 countries.

 

How did you become interested in ecology and sustainability?

It was an interest all the way back when I was studying at the University of Cape Town. I was doing Business Science and I got involved in a business student organisation called AIESEC. They had a conference in Japan in 1990 on sustainable development. It was in the lead-up to what became known as the Rio Earth Summit, the biggest gathering of international heads of state on these issues. That engaged my interest, and then I did my honours dissertation on green marketing. Then I went into general management consulting as a strategy analyst, but always looking out for the positive social and environmental impact that business can make.

 

How would you compare sustainability in the UK and South Africa?

Generally, the UK is further ahead on issues like tackling climate change. South Africa is still very much a coal-based economy and despite some innovations like solar panels on low-cost housing, it has one of the worst greenhouse gas emission records in the world. On the other hand, South Africa has very progressive legislation, and it has had some innovation over the years. For example, its track record on recycling has been world class, because it’s linked the issue to tackling poverty. Unfortunately, South Africa suffers, as many developing countries do, from very good legislation but very poor enforcement. The UK has better policy enforcement, but a lifestyle that has a much bigger negative environmental impact. So, it depends how you look at it.

 

But there is also the argument that developing countries should have the chance to develop?

Exactly, it’s difficult to make a moral argument that developing countries should not grow, when we’ve had hundred years to industrialise in the West. But at the same time, there is a global moral imperative to act that crosses borders, because South Africa, like many developing countries, will suffer more from the effects of climate change. The trick is to improve social well-being at the same time as reducing environmental impact. And that’s the Holy Grail for the whole world at the moment. Developed countries, like the UK, have a strong responsibility to help — they can transfer clean technology, reduce their own impact and provide incentives for countries like South Africa to grow in a green way.

 

Talking about responsibility, you created the concept of the “age of responsibility.” Can you say more about that?

This is an aspiration. I described in my book, The Age of Responsibility, five different ages or stages of development. Different companies and countries are at different stages. We’ve got the ages of greed, philanthropy, marketing, management and responsibility. My observation from 20 years of working on these issues is that most of the world – and certainly most of big business – is still in those first four stages. So the age of responsibility is what we have to create if we are actually going to reach a sustainable future.

 

What would that age of responsibility look like?

It needs to be one where creativity and innovation are used to find solutions to our social and environmental problems. And it has to be one where these solutions go to scale. At the moment we have a lot of nice pilot projects that aren’t going to scale, so most of our world remains unsustainable. Having a few demonstration projects – however exciting or heartwarming – doesn’t solve the problem.

 

But how can you encourage people to adopt sustainable practices?

There are lots of ways. One of the things is that we need to encourage so-called “choice editing”. For example, instead of grocery stores offering people the full range of bananas – including the cheapest ones that are associated with labour exploitation – they can choose to only offer fair trade bananas. So we need retailers to say — in future, sustainable products are the only choice you’ll get, because sustainability is simply a new form of higher quality. Thankfully, more and more retailers are doing that on certain product lines.

 

It seems that the Fair Trade brand was bigger a few years ago than now?

They continue to make progress, but they face a dilemma, because mostly it’s marketed as a premium brand, and as soon as you’re asking customers to pay more it’s not going to go to scale.

 

Is the economic crisis a setback for sustainability?

Definitely, the financial crisis has put us back, although there has been a positive spin-off, with renewed focus on green growth and investing in green jobs. Today, there are plenty of exciting things going on — such as moving to a circular economy, so we no longer throw anything away. For instance, companies like Nike are now designing their trainers and shirts to be collected and recycled to become shirts and trainers again. A lot of my work is to keep reminding us of both the inspiration that’s coming out of innovation and of the gap that exists between the problems and the solutions. Our social and environmental challenges are actually still getting worse, not better, and so these solutions that have so much promise really need to move quickly to become mainstream.

 

What do you miss about South Africa?

I get back quite often and I still do some work there, teaching MBA students at the Gordon Institute for Business Science in Johannesburg. But when I’m not there, I suppose I miss the cultural diversity – as you know, South Africa has 11 official languages. I miss that palpable sense of urgency for change, and also the belief in the possibility of miracles to happen, because they’ve happened before. There is an incredible optimism and belief in our ability as South Africans to reinvent our world.

One of my favourite authors is Muhammad Yunus, who started the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh as bank for the poor. I did an interview with him a couple of years ago, and he talked about the difference between the bird’s-eye view and a worm’s-eye view. The worm’s-eye view is the grassroots perpective, looking from the ground up, because that’s the reality of where things happen and how things can get changed. The worm’s eye view is seeing the big picture and how things fit together. So, in a way, South Africa is my worm’s eye view, and the UK is my bird’s eye view.

 

One of your books is entitled African Dream, so how do you see a dream Africa?

I think the dream is for Africa to build on the incredible beauty of its bountiful nature and diverse cultures. We are talking about 54 countries and 2,000 languages. I think people don’t realise how diverse Africa is. People talk about it as if it’s one country. So the dream is taking those two things – the mosaic of cultures and the palette of nature – and finding a way to turn them into a more prosperous future. Africa has had its fair share of exploitation from the outside, but it’s also had a catastrophic failure of national leadership in many countries. The dream is to tap into the energy of Africa, it’s vibrant cultures and creativity. The entrepreneurship in Africa is incredible. To survive in the cities and villages of Africa, you have to be creative, so Africans are natural entrepreneurs. We need that spirit of possibility, but we must also insist on a revolution in governance and in transparency. The dream will die unless power in business and government is held accountable, so that the people, who are really the bounty of Africa, can benefit.

 

In 2008 you wrote a poem “I weep for Africa”, which was a sad picture of the continent. Do you think Africa has made progress since then?

It is true, sometimes I do despair. But at the same time, there is a wellspring of hope and many reasons to celebrate, which many of my other poems on Africa reflect.  If you look at the spread of democracy and transparency in governance, compared to a few decades ago, there has been huge progress. There are movements like the Arab Spring, which brought a new vitality to the democratic struggle.

There are also many initiatives where companies are being held more accountable, such as with conflict minerals on the continent. There has been huge success in the treatment of malaria and in many countries, even tackling HIV/AIDS is becoming a success story. So I think the trend is in the right direction, but there a long way to go. There is a reason why Nelson Mandela called his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. Any process of transformation is long and slow.

 

Seventeen books, two think tanks, lecturing at Cambridge, poetry, art — how do you manage to find the time for everything?

I am a bit of a magpie. I’m attracted by shiny things, by which I mean that my focus changes depending on what’s grabbing my interest. Sometimes I say I am a professional juggler. How do I do it? I remember somebody giving me some advice when I was quite young and worried about trying to balance everything in my life. They said to me it’s not about balance, it’s about rhythm.

So sometimes you get crazy about one thing, and everything else goes on the back burner, and then the rhythm changes and you switch priorities. I think I’ve learned to go with my own flow more. If I’m feeling creative, I just go with that. When I have to pay the bills, I do what it takes to make that happen. It may look a bit scattered from the outside – and sometimes it feels that way from the inside – but I’m just trying to follow what I’m passionate about. And for me, the way to express that passion is try and capture it somehow – in books, poems, art and photography.

 

What inspires you as an artist?

In general, I would say the mysteries of life. I find nature very inspiring. I have a bit of a philosophical mind, so I’m always in a state of existential angst. That where art helps – especially poetry, which I sometimes think is a bit like existential masturbation, if you’ll forgive the analogy. I’m always thinking about how things fit together, what’s my place in the world and what’s important in life. I’m fortunate as well that I meet and connect with lots of people I find inspiring.

My view is that the only story we have some control over is our own life, so I’m always intrigued by trying to map that story and make sense of it. Our lives are fascinating. How do we end up where we are? So, I guess my inspiration comes from staying fascinated with life and my little part in it.

 

What’s your next project?

I wish I knew. There are always a hundred projects waiting in the wings, so the question is really, what’s going to grab enough of my attention and energy? I definitely want to do more creative writing. I’ve got several half-completed books, which I need to finish. I’m writing one at the moment, a parable of leadership called ‘Follow Me! (I’m Lost)’. It’s about a goose called Gulliver who gets lost on his way from Scoraig in Scotland to London to attend leadership school, but he gets lost and ends up in Africa. Then he meets different animals along the way, and each one teaches him an unexpected lesson about leadership. It’s fun, but I also really believe in the power of stories.

Another thing on the horizon is turning the African Dream book into a concert performance. I’m teaming up with two amazing musicians – a percussionist and a flute player – and we’ll put on a show here in London in September. There is a more serious book that I need to write as well, which is on “Future Fitness”, i.e. how we can survive and thrive in the coming decades and shape a better world.

For the rest, I guess I’ll continue to write, lecture and travel to share what I am learning. Basically, I go wherever I’m invited, so I never quite know where I’m going to end up and what I’m going to learn next.

Read more:

Power 100 2013: Dean Furman

SA Power 100 2013: Dame Janet Suzman

SA Power 100 — 2013: Professor Tamar Garb