Translator: Ilze Garda Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I was born in a small district of Soviet Riga
with roughly 25,000 predominantly Russian-speaking neighbors.
A district not dissimilar to many other residential areas of Soviet Latvia.
It was my small world, my bubble, my comfort zone.
Similar people and their similar stories, the same language, the same outlook,
similar furniture from one flat to another,
books and friends whom you inherit from your parents,
and even similar aspirations and hopes for the future,
that back then felt quite predictable and therefore very safe.
My bubble cracked for the first time
when I changed to a school in the city center,
and then later went to a university
where the majority of students were ethnic Latvians,
communications with whom enabled me to open up
to a new perspective on Latvian society
and also start to reevalute
where I come from and how I fit in this wider Latvian context.
I moved from a very closed, wholly Russian-speaking environment
to a more open, bilingual world.
My social network grew larger and larger, and more diverse.
New friends from cultural and economic backgrounds different from mine.
New stories, some of which contradicted the worldview I was so familiar with.
The collapse of the Soviet Union,
which happened approximately around the same time,
contributed to this increasing ambiguity
of the environment I was exposing myself to,
but also helped me realize that any status quo can be challenged.
I started to appreciate the diversity of Latvian society,
and I started to learn back then
something that would serve me very much in the future,
in what I do today, in London.
I started to learn that in our complex and interconnected world
there is hardly ever one single truth,
and that we all contribute with our personal experiences
to creating a more complete understanding of this world and ourselves in it.
Later, after university, I lived abroad in a few different cities:
Copenhagen, Paris, Brussels, Bristol, and now London.
And as I was moving around and changing the view from my window,
I was opening up
to still more different cultures and ways of being.
Each interaction with the unfamiliar challenged what I used to know,
raised a new question,
reflection on which added yet another puzzle piece to my understanding,
to my awareness of myself in this society.
For example, how the history of a small nation like Denmark
can help me better understand the history of my country, of Latvia.
Or,
considering the historically developed relations between Russia and France,
how these can help me in building my relations with my French friends today.
Or, can the imperial heritage of London
help me understand why I feel welcome there
more than anywhere else abroad?
My ability to thrive in this foreign environment,
and my sustainability, if you wish,
depended on my openness and willingness to understand
and to adapt to constantly changing conditions around me.
Similarly, on a social level,
this sustainability of our society depends on our openness,
on our willingness to coexist and collaborate
with respect for each other and the planet.
Because the problems that we face today,
be it the refugee crisis, global warming, increasing inequality, just to name a few,
these problems are too complex to be understood,
let alone to be tackled in isolation,
when acting in isolation tends to aggravate existing problems
and create new ones.
So, today, I'm bringing this awareness,
this thinking that I've been developing over the last 20 years,
to my work, to what I do today in London.
I'm bringing this awareness,
helping large organizations, big, established businesses,
to understand their social purpose in this society and burst their bubbles
in which they operate,
and reconnect them with the society that, I believe, they are here to serve.
There is hardly anyone who is left out
from commenting on what is wrong with the corporate economy today.
Even Pope Francis challenged what capitalism has become and its values:
greed, self-interest,
and this dominating vision of might is right.
It just takes opening any newspaper today to see the consequences of this attitude:
tax avoidance;
cheating on emissions tests and medical research results;
excessive executive salaries and bonuses,
you name it.
But is this the reason why these companies exist?
Is this the reason why these companies were established in the first place?
And is this why all these people who make up these large organizations
wake up in the morning and go to work every day from day to day?
Because, if we look at it,
many of these large organizations that are being accused of wrongdoing today
were once social enterprises.
Yes, because most company founders had a very strong belief and will
to contribute to the betterment of our society with their business ideas,
be it through fighting disease,
connecting ideas and people around the world,
fostering economic growth,
or meeting the need for affordable and healthy products.
As these companies were growing larger and larger,
becoming more and more difficult to manage,
creating more and more bureaucracy around them,
and finally becoming overwhelmed by it,
people within these companies
started to move away from the initial social purpose
and miles away from the society and its needs,
in response to which these companies were actually created.
There is one interesting study that says,
"The closer we live to the ground,
the better our connection with the local community."
Isn't it ironic
that the higher someone's position is in a corporate hierarchy,
the higher their office is in the company's building?
But how often senior executives do look out their windows
to see what is going on in the society today?
Well, very often when people ask me what I do as my job, what my job is,
I explain that my colleagues and I
help people within these cooperations
to look out their windows
and together make sense of what they see out there,
but also establish their relation to it.
So, with this thinking in mind
and our aspiration to improve corporate culture,
my colleagues and I have been helping these companies
to understand what is going on in the society.
And as I had have to do for myself
when I was living in different foreign environments,
I now help large organizations to establish a dialogue
with different social stakeholders,
because I believe this dialogue is instrumental
for cross-sectoral collaboration and social innovation.
Moreover, a dialogue is already collaboration.
Let me explain.
SInce the 1970s,
we have dramatically increased our use of the words 'partner' and 'partnership,'
but at the same time, and I think you would agree with me,
we are miles away from building truly equal and effective partnerships,
be it across different age groups, genders, cultures, faith communities,
or across all these groups all together.
So, I think that the problem is partly because we see a dialogue
as an enabler for further actions, as a tool for further collaboration.
When we are engaged in a practice of exchange of ideas, opinions, views,
we are already shaping each other's thinking,
and we are already contributing to completing each other's understanding
of the human condition and the nature of things.
So, in a way, we are already collaborating when we are talking to each other.
With this thinking in mind,
I want to give you one practical example
of how we've been bringing senior leaders
and representatives of other social groups
in one physical space in order just to talk,
and by talking to create a shared understanding
of what we want as a society together
and how we can make it happen in our respective fields or collectively.
A professional service firm started to question itself:
what is the purpose of accountancy today?
In a world with a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots,
where even the most equal economies report growing inequality,
is there a way for a tax and financial advisory firm
to contribute to building a more prosperous economy
and a more financially inclusive society?
So, what do you do?
How do you create this understanding, and how do you understand
your contribution to this purpose, to this vision?
First of all, if you are truly passionate about your contribution to social good,
you do not define it in isolation in a closed boardroom
with a group of white, middle-aged, male executives.
You go out, and you engage in a conversation
with the diversity of our society that is out there,
which would help you to create a more complete understanding
and define prosperity from the point of view of the whole society.
We help these senior executives to go out of their bubbles,
both metaphysically, but also physically.
For example, our next discussion will take place in Tower Hamlets.
It's a borough in London,
and, in terms of income, it's probably one of the most unequal areas in the UK,
where Canary Wharf, the European financial district,
is rubbing shoulders
with a large amount of social housing for people on low income.
So, in a way, it's already the embodiment of this divide
that we are witnessing in the society,
the embodiment of something that we would like to tackle together.
The outcomes of these discussions are not a list of actions.
When we talk to each other in our daily lives,
we do not struggle to justify the validity of these conversations
by a list of actions or next steps, so why should it be different here?
The outcome of these discussions is to bring people together,
to help them meet in the middle, to better understand each other,
and also to create an understanding of how they can contribute
to a better society and a better future where we all want to live together,
and then to take this understanding and to relate to it,
no matter what you do,
no matter which decision you take later in your daily working life.
In conclusion, I would like to invite you
to see these observations that I've been sharing with you
not merely as a tool for making businesses more sustainable and more purposeful,
but as an invitation to engage in a wider, more inclusive dialogue.
I believe that by talking more to each other
and by trying to understand each other, by challenging ourselves and others,
by asking questions, by creating more spaces for discussions
about some of the pressing issues that we face today as a society,
but also by leaving space
for small, less significant, but so human chat and small talk,
we will be able to understand each other better
and relate to each other.
Yes, bubbles are safe, but can we really prosper in isolation?
Whether we like it or not, we are a part of a wider, complex world,
which forces us to reach out to each other and to look for solutions together.
So, I'd be glad to see if my experience would be of value
in breaking some of the bubbles that still exist in this society today.
Thank you.
(Applause)