Reflections at Year 15
The Birth of the Clean50
This week we celebrate the 14th birthday of the Clean50 – and the start of our 15th search cycle.
Given 15 is kind of a monumental milestone, I’ve been navel gazing the last 10 days or so and thinking about all the moments where somehow, exactly the right thing happened, and how each contributed in sometimes unexpected – even monumental – ways to how we transformed an idea literally on the back of a napkin over lunch, to a public announcement on a significant stage just 6 days later – to where we are now:
I like to think of us as THE most sought-after sustainability award in Canada – but as proud as I am of that, that’s not the point. What I am much more proud is having since recognized the efforts of over 1300 people and projects, and in many cases, providing those people with the biggest “thank you” for all of their work pushing rope up a hill in their careers, while the others in those rooms then inspired one another to go back to work – and do it again… and again…
With the help of our sponsors, we’ve provided the venue and the magic that kick-started thousands of collaborations. This has led to funding and sales for clean tech start ups, contracts for consulting companies – and still more knock on effects. The list is really long!
So, I thought I would reflect on the birth, the underlying motivation, and the people who contributed critical help at the birth of the Clean50 Awards – and those critical butterfly-effect moments which made a difference and led us to where we are. This may not be the best read of the week, but if you’re interested, I think there’s some lessons we learned that may be valuable.
The first learning for me was that when something fails, despite the disappointment, it can lead to something WAY bigger…
The Clean50 only exists because a high school project failed…
Very few people know that the Clean50 is actually the result of a complete failure of what was, essentially, a high school reunion project.
A project that, had it been approved in 2010, would have sufficiently consumed the time of two of the “founders” of the Clean50’s in such a way, that the project which became the Clean50 would never have come into being, or even been conceived.
If mundane history and the “butterfly effect” bore you, you should skip ahead to the “The Problem” section.
In 2010, I organized a LinkedIn alumni group for graduates of the University of Toronto Schools – my high school – and through that group, I met fellow alum, and long-term environmental sustainability leader and consultant, Celesa Horvath. She and I started discussing sustainability, still a largely unknown word at the time, and she kindly coached me on the subject.
Then, with a group of other alumni in this same group, we started discussing bringing back a tradition our school had run when I attended, let the students run the place for a week, in between first and second semesters, called “ISAW” – Inter-Semester Activity Week. That program brought a remarkable and eclectic group of speakers and experts into classrooms to teach curious students a bunch of stuff that was not a part of any curriculum (and which mostly shouldn’t have been)!
Former Toronto Mayor, John Tory, ran ISAW one year and famously got into great trouble from school leadership and his parents alike, for bringing in the head of the Communist Party of Canada as one such speaker. Other memorable speakers for me included the aptly-named, “Dr. Glick”, who used hypnotism to help cure addictions, and another guy who was an expert on the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. For the perpetually curious – a pretty accurate way to describe most of our alums – it was the best week in the school year.
Our plan was to bring back “ISAW for Grown-Ups”; replicate the program over a weekend, for graduates, but leveraging only our alumni as speakers (we have some cool alumni!) and coincidental with that, run a conference to talk about solutions to a different big hairy problem with the topic to be changed each year.
To put it in context, amongst our alums just from Celesa’s year of ~70 or so grads was the then chief of staff to the Prime Minister and a cabinet minister. My class graduated 66 people and amongst them “we” count 2 Olympian medalists, and a couple of Emmy awards. Another from the same era, David Frum, was writing speeches for George Bush – and the list goes on. So, we felt tackling big problems and hearing about a wide variety of topics was the kind of event that would successfully reconnect alumni with the schools, something the UTS Alumni Association was keen to do at the time.
Twenty-five pretty accomplished alums got totally into the idea and began the planning – all thinking this was a splendid idea. We lined up potential speakers, and our first conference topic was to be climate change and sustainability.
For reasons none of those 25 planners still cannot comprehend, the UTS Alumni Association wouldn’t endorse the idea. And after trying for 15 months, Celesa and I, by now good friends, despite a decade age gap, eventually gave up.
Another contributing factor: Delta Management Group’s Evolution
Over that same period of time, I had decided that the internet was sufficiently built out, and we could no longer expect the incredible growth in networking that had fueled Delta Management’s first 15 years to continue. We needed something else…
My philosophy in running a search firm was to never try to be all things to everyone. Delta’s success had always come from “owning” a particular niche vertical. In 1992 at our outset, I identified the internet and networking as likely to be the next big thing. It was bold – the biggest network in the country at the time was a 24 user, Novell-based LAN running at Loblaw’s and corporate IT managers hated giving users more power.
The appeal was unmistakable, and Delta quickly became the headhunter of choice for virtually every major networking vendor looking to establish a Canadian base of operations except (and deliberately) Cisco. Keep in mind, Cisco Canada at that point had a team of exactly two people. It’s over 4,000 today.
At the outset, before finally picking networking as the niche, I’d notice a sudden surge of interest in the environment – Toronto introduced blue boxes, and I could see opportunity in eliminating waste. So at the time, I had considered if an environmentally-focused search practice was an option but ultimately decided it was not. Seventeen years later, in late 2009, as I pondered the next niche market, it looked like it might then be an option.
I went to the GLOBE conference early in 2010, and my new friend, Celesa kindly introduced me to this exciting new world. Before I went, a colleague in the networking world had introduced me to Celine Bak, who was at that point the most well-informed person on the state of clean tech in Canada, publishing an annual report. That same GLOBE I also met with her. And coincidentally, a woman named Paula Glick from Sustainalytics. Niece of the aforementioned hypnotist. Canada is just so small some days…
That same year also spotted a number of organizations exhibiting, who would later become part of the first Clean50 list.
By the time I came home from Vancouver, the die was cast: Delta would pivot over the next few years to transition from networking tech executive search to clean tech, CSR and sustainability executive search.
The Problem…
In pursuit of this evolution, as I started connecting with leaders in sustainability, a couple of things became clear. While there was lots going on in different places, there was little sharing of best practices between silos – or even within silos. I noticed the biggest sponsors of events and conferences where ideas were shared were also the single biggest polluters.
Oil and cement companies had their logos – and their speakers – everywhere. And tried to dampen concerns with false narratives about how they were doing all they could possibly do to be responsible citizens, while funding disinformation campaigns that were so effective they had people debating if climate change was even a real thing. Of course, if it was real, then who would stop it?
Sadly, the same people who caused the problem were on stage – and the smart people who could solve it were in the audience – not learning anything from each other. It was obvious to me we needed to reverse that somehow.
Beyond that, one other thing became hugely apparent to me: if we were to figure out a way to stop climate change, it would take a strong partnership between academics and industry, policy makers and advocates, inventors and entrepreneurs, and great gobs of capital to fund the companies whose products could help make a difference. We needed everyone at the table.
Yet, at the time, nowhere on earth did all of those groups talk to each other.
In mid-May, 2011, my then business colleague, Kevin Dunal, and I met with Chuck Hopkins, who then led the UN’s program to advance sustainability education world-wide, and a couple of other folks Chuck thought might help us think it through.
The Genesis…
A genesis of an idea formed: Could we take Celesa’s conference idea and gather the smartest people from across Canada, from every segment of society and a wide range of expertise, and lock them them in a room until they fixed the problem?
Chuck and his colleagues encouraged us, but Delta did not yet have the convening power to pull such a group together. How could we get the right people in the room? Fifteen+ years of dealing with sales people provided an idea: Incentives! Hand out an award plaque and maybe people would come to collect theirs!
That week, Corporate Knights magazine was delivered to my house, with the latest of their lists of leading companies. Randomly, the guy whose company sold advertising for CK had also attended UTS, but a year behind me, and we barely knew each other. Nonetheless, I reached out to Paul Cassel “You won’t remember me but…”,
The Clean50 Gets Hatched over Lunch
We connected literally the next day – a Saturday – and Paul helped me land a call on Monday, and that led to a meeting with CK publisher Toby Heaps over a lunch near his office on Wednesday.
Over lunch, I made my pitch to him: essentially “Companies didn’t “do sustainability”; Individual leaders make their companies do sustainability.”
As a headhunter, I had often seen cultures shift with CEOs, and I was convinced sustainability culture would be no different. Leadership matters – and exemplary leadership is what I wanted to celebrate at a gathering – and then leverage their presence to drive connections and collaborations.
I also wanted a very different type of event that didn’t take the usual Gala type approach of selling tables of 8 to well-heeled corporations – but rather sought to put 10 leaders from 10 different organizations – and 10 different types of organizations – at the same table – and then find ways to encourage productive conversations that led to meaningful connections.
I pitched Toby on a partnership to share his knowledge of the organizations he was rating with our idea to pull their leaders and others – educators, academics, politicians etc. together to try and solve problems.
I admit to being terribly naïve about how fast the world could and would pivot. But, I think it’s fair to say that had I not been, the Clean50 would not exist.
Toby and I literally sketched the idea of the Clean50 out on a napkin and agreed to a partnership on the spot. Delta would handle the search aspect. Toby would provide the Corporate Knights name and reputation to make up for Delta’s complete lack of either in this new world, and he would publish the winners. Initially we envisioned that it would be the “Green50”, but attempts to secure that website later that day were thwarted when another company, literally the day before, and quite incredibly, in the next office tower to ours, had secured the site Green50.com.
Toby’s Corporate Knights theme was built around the concept of “clean capitalism” and so he proposed “Clean50” as an alternative, the “clean50.ca” website was available, and so the Clean50 was born. We had to fight to get “clean50.com”, but years later, we managed that.
The Launch Day
A mere 6 days after our launch, with freshly printed nomination cards in hand, and a brand new website in name only, on a swelteringly hot night, outside at the Evergreen Brickworks, Kevin and I went to the Corporate Knights Gala in our tuxedos, and with Toby, sweat running down all our foreheads, together we announced the creation of a new award for individual sustainability leaders. It was June 6th, 2011 – fittingly, the anniversary of D-Day.
With Celesa and Chuck Hopkins already on board as advisors, at that same Gala, I again encountered Celine Bak, then running Analytica Advisors, a consulting firm that focused in the clean tech space, told her what we had planned, and asked if she would also serve as an advisor. She agreed instantly, and then moments later, she tracked down Velma McColl, of Earnscliffe, who similarly signed up on the spot. Snap! We were rolling! With their help, Toby’s engagement, and my continued naivety, I felt confident we could pull a decent list together – and launch a gathering. I had no idea just how difficult that would prove to be. Or how the next 14 summers would be dedicated to that cause…
But 14 years ago today, we got started. And now we’re on cycle 15…
This story will continue next week!
