How can going on strike align with your corporate values?
While we strive to live to our values every day at Localz, it’s not often that living up to them means that your business goes on strike and with the full support of the CEO!
On Friday, September 20th, a Global Climate Strike is taking place to send a message to governments ahead of the imminent UN Climate Action summit that NOW is the time for urgent and meaningful climate action.
I first heard about the strike as my children took part in one earlier this year, in Australia. The movement has continued to gather momentum and now millions of school children are asking adults to join them in calling for climate action.
So how does this align to Localz core values of Diverse Thinking, Actions not Words, Transparency and Caring?
We know we need Diverse Thinking to solve the complex business challenges we and our customers face every day. The same is true for the challenging problem of changing behaviours and economics to get real climate action. True Diverse Thinking requires input from everyone touched by or engaged in a problem. Surely children who will be most impacted by the legacy of action or inaction on climate will have some great perspectives on what can or should be done.
Actions not Words. We use this as a counterbalance for spending too long on the thinking stage. Without a bias towards an activity that creates change, you can get completely caught up in the endless possible solutions to a complex problem. We must act now in order to effect a future change.
Transparency is a very effective tool at making conversations and communication more efficient. By being transparent on your point of view, business agenda, political stance, motivations etc from the start, helps get to the important part of the discussion much quicker than if everything has to be drawn out or discovered.
And finally Caring. Perhaps the most obvious fit with the Strike. We care deeply about our customers, their clients, our product, the community and our colleagues. We didn’t want anyone from our company who wanted to support the Strike feeling like they were conflicted between prioritising a paycheck over the planet.
Caring also means that we’re available and able to support our many clients who will still need to be operating on Friday too as they have millions of people relying on their service too.
If you’d like to find out more about the Strike, you can find details on it and events near you here: globalclimatestrike.net
And if you’re a business and would like to pledge your support so that your team can participate too,
you can do so here: notbusinessasusual.co
Finally, a big note of thanks to Kirstin Hunter and the team over at Future Super for being a key catalyst and coordinator for this and to Mike Cannon-Brookes and the Atlassian team for helping to raise awareness of it - it certainly caught our attention!
* Not all team members present in pictures.