It Takes a Village to Change the World

This week, the world’s leaders convene in New York to discuss the UN reform. The future of global governance may well depend upon this session. Do New Yorkers care at all? Should they?

In the rural Swedish village of Tällberg (pop. 217) a five-day meeting of 450 leaders from 73 countries recently took place on the theme: “How on earth can we live together? Exploring frameworks for sustainable global independence.” The region is far from perceived as open to global issues and voted no to membership for EU.

Heads of states, ministers, global corporate leaders, thought leaders, artists, clerics, civic and NGO leaders found themselves integrated in an open conversation infused with culture and nature. Learning was more important than speaking. Spending two hours at the Forum was as meaningless to a visiting deputy Prime Minister as it was to the participants. But such is the routine at international conferences. They are hierarchical, linear and pre-conceived. The Tällberg Forum’s aim was to innovate a new format.

The Forum was grounded in the local. Anchored in the trust of the village council, we gained the support of the municipality of Leksand, the region of Dalarna and its civil society. Later support came from the Swedish Government and the UN. The EU Commission was represented by its First Vice Chairperson. This was a global meeting of powerful people that for once was not perceived as a provocation.

Forum security was discreet, but effective. There were no helicopters, no barricades, no motorcades.

Participants and their families mingled among local fiddlers and world artists, joined a wolf tracker and Onondaga Chief on nature walks. Health statisticians, bankers, human rights champions and industrial designers learned about bio-mimicry. Royalty and activists found themselves on an informal common ground. Conversations opened up.

What did we learn? Two moods emerged: one was assertively against business as unresponsive to local need; the other increasingly angry at the slow pace of awareness and action in meeting the challenges.

“Time is running out.”

Gathering the local and global together revealed a two-tier world of speeds: business accelerates globalization through its dynamic management of change; constitutional, political and social developments lag far behind.

It is the lesson of Shakespeare that two sides in opposition have something to learn from each other. But all too often, the two do not hear each other. They are too busy talking.

Listening is a shared value, whether you are in the development business or the car business. Corporate understanding of speed (innovation, production, results) can contribute to a better understanding of the pace of change in governance and social change. Its optimism can infect the changemakers as they impact the direction of change by businesses.

We have short-term deadlines to resolve long-term challenges. The warnings are as obvious as the risks and opportunities.

The paradox that we are confronted by systemic borderless issues, from global warming to poverty, avian flu, energy and terrorism, at precisely the same time when multi-lateral systems of governance continue to weaken creates the prerequisites for a Perfect Storm. Imagine Katrina and the Asian tsunami at the same time. It would be a category 7.

At Tällberg, where the UN Global Compact was conceived, local realities help frame global issues in the concrete. Jan Eliasson, president of the UN General Assembly, summed up the Forum by holding up a glass of water. “A common sight for many of us. A luxury for 1.2 billion people.”

By changing our systems thinking in the local – the concrete - we can contribute to the change in the designs of the solutions to the global problems. The other way around will simply not work.

A Mongolian member of parliament said it best when asked what she would take away from the Forum, “I have to work much harder.” We all do. From UN reform to the village council.

Tällberg strives to foster the essential conversation that emerges from the insight that whether we are social changemakers or corporate executives or public officials, we are all the responsible leaders of our own lives, whether we quote Shakespeare, Confucius, Nordic Sagas or the Koran. No matter or manner of deliberation will amount to anything without empathy, trust, dignity and mutual respect.

If global meetings are not perceived as legitimate and useful to the people where they are held, suspicion and conflict will emerge. Whether you live in Greenwich Village or Tällberg.

It takes a village to change the world.

Bo Ekman