We are living through a moment of profound paralysis. The global systems we once depended on to manage shared risks have become gridlocked.
This is happening at the worst possible moment, just as the environmental, social, economic, and democratic fault lines we’ve spent decades papering over begin to fracture under real pressure.
What’s perhaps most unsettling aren’t the cracks themselves, but how little they’ve broken our stride.
We are breaching planetary boundaries. Food systems are buckling. Oceans are being depleted, conflicts are spreading. Decades of hard-won progress on poverty, health, gender equality, and democratic rights risk sliding into reverse.
And yet it seems there is no panic. No coordinated urgency. Only the steady hum of business as usual.
This illusion of normalcy is perhaps the most dangerous delusion of all.
Polarised politics fill the airwaves. The private sector, lulled by strong earnings and buoyant stock markets, remains largely silent, even as the long-term foundations of value creation erode beneath its feet.
When the world’s most powerful institutions stall, the effect is not just structural, it’s deeply psychological.
If they can’t fix this, what hope do the rest of us have?
It’s easy to feel powerless. Overwhelmed. Frightened, even.
A quiet kind of burnout is spreading. A creeping sense that the scale and complexity of the problem is outpacing our ability to solve it.
But this is precisely the instinct we must resist.
Because when formal systems falter, history shows us that leadership doesn't vanish, it re-emerges elsewhere. In communities. In coalitions. In unlikely places.
Across industries, sectors, and geographies we are starting to see it. Coalitions of the willing. Circles of agreement. Communities coalescing around a shared sense of urgency and purpose.
We won’t meet this moment by adding new seats to old tables. We must build new tables, with new rules, new actors, and new levels of cooperation and ambition.
Science lights the way, but science alone doesn’t deliver change. People do. Not lone heroes, but communities.
IMAGINE is one such community. A space for business leaders to turn shared passion into practical collaboration. EAT is another, leveraging scientific evidence, convenings, and partnerships to transform food systems sustainably and fairly. Now, they’re joining forces, combining IMAGINE’s transformational leadership programs with EAT’s scientific rigor.
If you are a business executive, investor, or founder who’s ready to move from ambition to action, these organisations offer an opportunity to join a global cohort of peers who are doing just that. You can apply to join them at their September and October gatherings in Oxford, UK (link below), where I’ll also be joining to listen and learn.
In this age of breakdown, communities of trust, urgency, and purpose may be our best shot at breakthrough. Now’s the time to move. Not because the path is clear, but because the stakes are.
