SPRING 2022 / REAL-LEADERS.COM 81 LEADING LEADERS point where we add no more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere than we can remove. But lists of goals are not plans. A long menu of options, however excellent they might be, is not a plan. Anger and despair aren’t plans; neither are hopes and dreams. A plan is only as good as its implementation. To achieve this monumental mission, we’ll need to hold ourselves accountable every step of the way. That’s the great lesson I learned from my mentor, Andy Grove, the legendary CEO of Intel. It’s a mantra I’ve seen proven over and again: Ideas are easy. Execution is everything. To execute a plan, we need the right tools. In my previous book, Measure What Matters, I outlined a simple but powerful goal-setting protocol that Andy Grove invented at Intel. Known as OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results, they guide organizations to focus on a few essential targets, to align at every level, to stretch for ambitious results, and to track their progress as they go — to measure what matters. Now I’m proposing we apply OKRs to solve the climate crisis, the greatest challenge of our lifetimes. But before going all in (and this is an all-or-nothing proposition), we must answer three basic questions. Do we have enough time? We hope so, but we’re fast running out of it. Do we have much margin for error? No, we don’t. Not anymore. Do we have enough money? Not yet. Investors and governments are stepping up. But we’ll need a lot more funding, from both public and private sectors, to develop and scale technologies for a clean economy. Most of all, we’ll need to divert the trillions spent on dirty energy over to clean energy options and use that energy more efficiently. To put our plan into action, we need all hands on deck. Above all, we’ll need to execute our plan with unprecedented speed and unprecedented scale. That’s what matters most. I’m not here to prod consumers to change their behavior. Individual actions are both needed and expected, but they won’t be nearly enough to reach this huge goal. Only concerted, collective, global action can get us past the finish line in time. I might seem an unlikely advocate for this call to action. I’m an American, a citizen of the biggest historic polluter on Earth. I am an affluent white man, born in St. Louis, Missouri, from a generation whose negligence helped create this problem in the first place. In my 15 years on this path, I’ve collected my share of scar tissue. Cleantech ventures demand more money, more guts, more time, and more perseverance than just about anything else. Their horizons stretch longer than most investors can stomach. The washouts are acutely painful. But the success stories — however few and far between — are worth all the setbacks and then some. These companies are more than turning a profit. They are helping to heal the Earth. Entrepreneurs are those hardy individuals who do more with less than anyone thinks possible — and do it faster than anyone thinks possible. Today, bold risk-takers are innovating like mad as they rewrite the rules to avert a climate apocalypse. We need to bottle their entrepreneurial energy and distribute it as widely as we can to governments, companies, and communities worldwide. A plan is not a guarantee. A timely transition to a net-zero future is no sure thing. But though I may be less optimistic than some, consider me hopeful — and impatient. With the right tools and technology, with precision-honed policies, and most of all with science on our side, we still have a fighting chance. But the time is now. n John Doerr is an engineer, venture capitalist, and the chairman of Kleiner Perkins. This is an extract from his new book Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. Tensie Whelan | Director of the Center for Sustainable Business at NYU Stern School of Business. As a young adult, I found myself editing an international environmental journal in Sweden and then went to work as a journalist in Latin America, covering sustainable development issues, including deforestation. I saw firsthand that people cut down trees due to economic pressures, not because they are bad people. The Rainforest Alliance was founded by Daniel Katz. He was moved to act after reading that fifty acres of rainforests are destroyed every minute, and two dozen species become extinct each day. Daniel used his winnings from a casino to sponsor a conference of experts. They came up with two ideas that worked together: First they replaced boycotts with buycotts — positive campaigns to promote purchases of sustainable products. Second, they created a symbol to certify sustainability in the marketplace. They chose a frog for the consumer-facing seal because healthy frog populations are emblematic of healthy ecosystems.
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