3 steps to achieving the SDGs | Linda Midgley | TEDxAlkmaar
Summary
TLDRThe speaker emphasizes that anyone, not just activists or experts, can contribute to making the world a better place by embracing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in daily life. Using three simple steps—listen, act, and listen again—the speaker encourages individuals to reflect on their choices and their impact on the world. Personal experiences illustrate the importance of understanding oneself and others to create meaningful change. Whether through small actions like choosing fair trade products or larger ones like influencing systems, the message is that sustainability is accessible to everyone.
Takeaways
- 😊 You don't need to be an expert or activist to make the world a better place.
- 📊 The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are integrated into our daily lives and are relevant to everyday issues.
- 📰 News headlines often reflect key SDGs, such as education, migration, mental health, and economic growth.
- 👂 Listening is a critical step—first to yourself, then to others—before taking action toward making a difference.
- 🛠 Taking action should be personalized, fitting both who you are and the world around you.
- 🔄 Reassessing and adjusting your actions through continuous listening helps ensure progress toward your goals.
- 📚 The speaker's personal journey—from pursuing activism and expertise to becoming a sustainability consultant—demonstrates that finding your unique path is key.
- ♻️ Sustainable choices involve considering how your decisions impact others, including future generations and those in different parts of the world.
- 🚗 Companies increasingly involve listening in their innovation processes, which makes their products more sustainable and customer-centric.
- 💡 The framework of ‘Listen, Act, and Listen Again’ can help individuals and organizations align their actions with sustainability goals.
Q & A
What is the main message the speaker is trying to convey?
-The main message is that anyone can contribute to making the world a better place without necessarily being an expert or an activist. The speaker emphasizes the importance of integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into daily life through listening, acting, and reassessing.
What are the three steps the speaker suggests to bring the SDGs into daily life?
-The three steps are: 1) Listen to yourself and others, 2) Act by creating a plan that fits your identity and the world around you, and 3) Listen again to check if your plan is working and make adjustments if necessary.
How does the speaker relate the SDGs to everyday life?
-The speaker relates the SDGs to everyday life by showing how headlines in a newspaper touch on various SDGs, such as education, migration, and mental health, demonstrating that the SDGs are integral to our daily experiences.
What personal experiences does the speaker share to illustrate the steps of listen, act, and listen again?
-The speaker shares her experience of quitting a PhD program, which taught her to listen to herself. She also discusses her work as a consultant, which taught her to listen to others. Lastly, she talks about trying different jobs across sectors and continents, which helped her find her way of making a difference.
Why did the speaker quit her PhD program?
-The speaker quit her PhD program because she was miserable on a day-to-day basis and felt it wasn't the right path for her. Quitting lifted a weight off her shoulders and made her happier.
How does the speaker describe her current role as a sustainability consultant?
-As a sustainability consultant, the speaker sometimes acts as an activist, sometimes as an expert, but mostly as herself, making a difference in her own way.
What does the speaker mean when she says she helps companies have a 'healthy long-term relationship with the world around them'?
-The speaker means that she assists companies in understanding and implementing strategies that align with the SDGs, fostering positive, sustainable interactions with their stakeholders and the environment.
How does the speaker connect the process of innovation in companies to the SDGs?
-The speaker connects innovation to the SDGs by explaining that modern innovation cycles involve faster feedback loops and active listening to customers, which can lead to more sustainable and effective products and services.
What example does the speaker give to show how companies are adapting to consumer behavior related to sustainability?
-The speaker gives the example of car manufacturers who, after noticing that people were using their electric car batteries to store solar energy at home, started making batteries for home energy storage.
What is the speaker's final call to action for the audience?
-The speaker encourages the audience to figure out how to bring sustainability into their own lives by listening to what's important to them and those around them, acting on it, and reassessing to ensure their actions are effective.
Outlines
🌏 Engaging with the SDGs in Daily Life
The speaker begins by asking the audience about their involvement as activists or experts, and their desire to make the world a better place. They emphasize that everyone can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) without being an expert or activist. The speaker uses a newspaper as an example to show how the SDGs are intertwined with daily life, touching on issues like education, migration, and mental health. They propose three steps to integrate the SDGs into daily life: listen, act, and listen again. The first step is to listen to oneself and others, which can be challenging but is crucial. The speaker shares personal experiences of trying to fit into roles as an activist and an expert, and how they eventually found their path as a sustainability consultant, which allows them to be themselves and make a difference.
🎓 Learning to Listen and Adapt
The speaker recounts their decision to quit a PhD program in economics, which was a difficult but ultimately rewarding choice that led to greater happiness. This experience taught them the importance of listening to oneself. As a consultant, they learned to listen to others, understanding that truly understanding a situation leads to better solutions and more receptive clients. The speaker emphasizes the importance of listening before acting, a lesson that applies to both professional and personal relationships. They also stress the value of revisiting and adjusting one's approach, as they did through various jobs across different sectors and continents. The speaker relates these lessons to sustainable development, suggesting that listening to a broader range of voices, including those affected by our choices, can lead to more sustainable decisions. They give examples like fair trade chocolate and compensating for air travel to illustrate how personal choices can align with the SDGs.
🚀 Incorporating Listening into Innovation for Sustainability
The speaker discusses the evolution of innovation, highlighting how the process has become faster and more inclusive, with listening as a key component. They give an example of how electric car manufacturers adapted their products based on customer needs, showing that innovation can be both market-driven and sustainable. The speaker argues that by integrating listening into the innovation process, we can develop more sustainable solutions that align with the SDGs. They extend this concept to personal lives, suggesting that we can all make a bigger, better, and more positive impact by listening, acting, and revisiting our actions. The speaker concludes by encouraging the audience to consider how they can bring sustainability into their lives, emphasizing that everyone has the power to make a difference, regardless of their expertise or activism status.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Activist
💡Expert
💡SDGs
💡Listen
💡Act
💡Listen Again
💡Sustainability Consultant
💡Stakeholders
💡Strategy
💡Innovation
💡Personal Impact
Highlights
You don't have to be an expert or activist to make the world a better place.
The SDGs are not just lofty promises by the United Nations; they are an integral part of our daily lives.
Everyday headlines in the news touch on SDGs, such as education (SDG 4), migration (SDGs 1, 8, 16), and mental health (SDG 3).
The speaker introduces three steps to integrate SDGs into daily life: Listen, Act, and Listen Again.
First step: Listen – take time to listen to yourself and others to understand what truly matters.
Second step: Act – develop a plan that aligns with who you are and the world around you.
Third step: Listen Again – check if your actions are working, and make adjustments if needed.
Personal experience of quitting a PhD showed the importance of listening to oneself, despite external pressures.
Consulting work taught the importance of listening to others before jumping to solutions, improving both the process and outcomes.
Bringing listening into the innovation process leads to better, more sustainable innovations.
SDGs are not just for experts – they apply to everyone’s choices and actions, no matter the scale.
The speaker emphasizes the value of small sustainable choices, like buying fair-trade chocolate or compensating for air travel.
Companies can use the same Listen, Act, and Listen Again process to improve their sustainability strategies.
The importance of innovation being driven by listening to customer needs rather than purely technology.
The speaker encourages individuals to reflect on what they can do differently today to contribute to a more sustainable world.
Transcripts
[Applause]
how many of you would consider
yourselves an activist can you raise
your hands
a couple not too many how many of you
would consider yourselves an expert
again okay we are a few more right now
how many of you would like to make the
world a better place yeah much better
great now suddenly it's everybody well I
have good news for you because you don't
have to be an expert or an activist to
make the world a better place now by now
we've heard a lot about the SDGs
and all of us sitting here know what
they are and we also know that they're
not just some lofty promises made by the
United Nations they're an integral part
of our daily lives now if you're not yet
convinced let me show you this is
Saturday's newspaper and every single
headline is about the SDGs there's one
about the number of tests that
schoolchildren have to do and they
literally ask the question is this good
education SDG for there are two
headlines about migration which touches
on a whole range of SDGs from no poverty
SDG one decent work and economic growth
SDG eight peace justice and strong
institutions SDG sixteen and at the top
here there's even a story about how to
battle your winter dip might not seem
like it has much to do with sustainable
development but the winter dip means
mental health good health and well-being
SDG three
now what I find really comforting about
all of these stories is that they touch
on the everyday lives of normal people
like you and me and you can do this with
any newspaper on any day you'll see the
SDGs are everywhere and especially on a
day like today when we hear so many
inspiring stories to me it helps to make
the SDGs smaller and a little bit closer
and what I'd like to share with you
today are three steps that have helped
me to bring the SDGs into my daily life
and those steps are listen act and
listen again first of all listen really
listen to yourself and to others now for
some of us it's harder to listen to
ourselves Visayas it's harder to listen
to other people and there's somebody in
the front row giving a bit of a guilty
laugh so I'm pretty sure that that
struggle bone the second is act come up
with a plan that fits who you are but
also the world around you and finally
listen again check if your plan is
working and make changes if you need to
when I was growing up I knew one thing
for sure and that's that I wanted to
make a difference in capital letters but
I just didn't know how and so I tried to
be an activist I wrote fiery speeches
and I got in heated debates but it just
wasn't me then I tried to be an expert I
started a PhD I stopped a PhD that just
wasn't me either
and so now I'm a sustainability
consultant which means sometimes I get
to be a bit of an activist and sometimes
I get to be a bit of an expert but most
of the time
I get to be me and make a difference in
my own way now what do these steps have
to do with that well let me share some
experiences which helped me to make them
a part of my life I mentioned I quit a
PhD well I started it when I was 24 PhD
in economics and my family was really
proud my friends were thrilled but on a
day-to-day basis I really really was
miserable and it took a lot of courage
to actually pull myself together and
make the decision to stop I felt like I
was letting a lot of people down but
when I did quit a weight lifted off my
shoulders and I was so much happier and
that experience taught me to listen to
myself now believe it or not being a
consultant actually taught me to listen
to other people a lot of people don't
like consultants because they think that
they're always trying to sell something
which well it may be true at least some
of the time but what I've noticed is
that many consultants myself included
tend to focus on the act part the
solution without really taking time to
understand what's going on and I've
learned that if I take the time to
understand the situation then the
selling part feels completely different
not only is the plan the solution much
better but people are more open to it as
well so listen first and then act and
believe it or not a free tip this works
really well in in personal relationships
as well first listen then act also
something that I've learned the hard way
and then finally listen again it took me
a number of jobs to figure out my way of
making a difference
I've worked in the public sector in the
private sector for large corporations
for small startups in five jobs on four
continents before the age of 30 now if
you're a millennial this is normal but
at the time it wasn't I cannot call
myself a millennial anymore but I
learned to learn from what didn't work
and to adjust accordingly so by now you
may be wondering what an earth does this
have to do with sustainable development
and the SDGs it's this you can use these
steps as a guideline for making
sustainable choices who do you listen to
what if the people that you listen to
are not just your family and friends but
are the people in your community the
people who are growing the beans to make
your coffee the people who'll be around
in 30 to 40 years time what if you
really take the time to understand
what's important to them and the way
that your choices impact on their lives
then you'll make different choices from
now on you might choose to buy fair
trade chocolate you might choose to
compensate your air travel I've
mentioned I use these steps at home
especially the chocolate pod but also to
work and when people ask me what what I
do I tell them I'm a relationship
therapist they all look a little bit
confused and say I help companies work
on having a healthy long-term
relationship with the world around them
using listen act and listen again well
of course I have to translate it into a
bit more consultant speak so I usually
say stakeholders strategy
impact which sounds very fancy but it's
actually the same now companies listen
by collecting data and they act by
formulating and implementing a strategy
to achieve the SDGs we all need a new
strategy we need to do things
differently we need to innovate and the
interesting thing is that companies when
it comes to innovation innovation are
learning to listen better if you think
back to Henry Ford when he brought the
Model T Ford onto the market it was
available in one color black and when
the new model came onto the market the
adverts simply said buy it it's a better
car so the innovation then was really
technology driven and the customer came
later nowadays if you look at innovation
it's really different so the cycle from
idea to prototype to feedback it goes
much faster and listening is an integral
part of the innovation process as a
result car manufacturers especially of
electric cars have learned that people
were using their their car batteries to
store the solar energy the excess solar
energy in their homes and as a result
car manufacturers started to make
batteries for use it for storing energy
inside the home as well and of course as
we all know you can take that energy and
stick it into any color car you want now
of course I'm not saying that all
innovations are necessarily sustainable
absolutely not but I am saying that if
you bring listening into the innovation
process then not only will innovations
be more sustainable they'll be better
and they'll bring us closer to the SDGs
well likewise in our personal lives
we're all touching on the SDGs in some
way but our impact can be bigger better
and more positive if we listen act and
listen again if we go back to the
newspaper headlines it might be
something relatively simple like
tackling your winter dip it might be
something really relatively complicated
like changing an entire educational
system either way
it's about figuring out what works for
you and for those around you what are
you going to do to bring sustainability
into your life what are you going to do
differently now that's something that
each of us needs to figure out for
ourselves
but listen act and listen again can help
you ask yourself the questions what's
important to me and those around me now
and in the future what am i doing today
to make those important things happen is
it working and if not what am I going to
change remember you don't have to be an
expert or an activist to make the world
a better place thank you
[Applause]
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