Relating to nature

Climate change is hot these days. Although the world has been warned by scientists for years already about the fact that our globe is warming and that this will have adverse effects on our way of life, the realisation of it seems to have been trickling down only slowly. But now that the consequences of global warming are becoming cruel reality, governments, authorities, organizations, institutions and individuals are beginning to wake up and ponder what can be done to mitigate the adverse effects of global climate changes that we are witnessing. Yes, global warming has been debated in international conferences for some time now but the world has yet to seriously take action to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses and stop destroying the environment. Two questions need to be answered here: 1. Can we do it? Probably yes. 2. Do we want to do it? Probably not, and I would like to challenge any reader to reflect and honestly answer what (s)he is doing individually to reduce pollution, environmental degradation, CO2 emission etc. Looking around in Addis Abeba and the countryside of Ethiopia, barely nothing I would say. And yet, the evidence of climate change has come to our doorstep as well. It is getting hotter, we see more frequent droughts, followed again by floods. So as the climate is changing globally, our entire natural environment is changing with it and we are witness of the consequences of it.
Interestingly enough, people around the world consider their natural environment in different ways. Admittedly, although we observe an increase in natural disaster around the world, man has from the beginning been besieged by natural elements: wind, floods, fire, cold, earthquakes, famine, pests and predators. Survival itself has meant acting against and with the environment in ways to render it both less threatening and more sustaining. Constant action was originally an inescapable necessity. And while developing economically, man gradually strengthened the devices to keep nature at bay. In the course of human existence there has been a shift from fear that nature would overwhelm human existence to the opposite fear that human existence may overwhelm and degrade nature, as for example by destroying entire rainforests. Now, societies which conduct business have developed two major orientations towards nature. They either believe that they can and should control nature by imposing their will upon it, or they believe that man is part of nature and must go along with its laws, directions and forces.
Orientations to nature have much to do with how we conduct our day to day lives and manage businesses as well. Cultures may seek to master nature, accept and be subjugated by it, or live in the most effective harmony with it. Nature is both controllable by man and liable to show sudden reversals of relative strength, becoming man’s master, not slave. Neither situation is very stable nor very desirable, since a subjugated nature may fail to sustain man on earth. A similar relationship is that of organisation and market. A product may succeed not simply because we want it to or because the special features designed into it delight customers. It may succeed for other reasons which may have to do with the way other people in the environment think rather than we ourselves, like customers. Realising this, how willing are we as the owner of a business to change our mind and products when it becomes clear that customers’ preferences are different from our own?
Let us look into another example: pay for performance, a strategy used to encourage workers to produce more output and sell more products. Such a strategy assumes that each employee can behave in ways that increase sales, that he or she can personally induce greater effort and hence greater results. This may lead to sales persons becoming pushy to customers and overload them with products they don’t really want. The tendency to demonstrate such behaviour will be greater during periods that sales are down and when people cannot afford to spend their money. Yet, we may have to accept that there are good times and that there are bad times. Observing the current costs of living in Ethiopia, we may have arrived in such a period and sales trends will surely be slower than before.
So, cultures vary in their approaches to their environment, between belief that it can be controlled by the individual and the belief that the individual must respond to external circumstances.
Now, how do you regard yourself as business owner and manager? As somebody who wants to control all that is outside him or herself? Or as the manager who allows him/herself to be influenced by the environment, including workers, customers, and trends? It may be wise to try and take a position somewhere in the middle. More effective businesses for example are those which are better at finding a balance between pushing their product to the market and allowing the market to pull for what it desires.
Going back to the top of this article, we may want to ask ourselves how we in Ethiopia relate to nature and related to that to the effects of climate change that we observe around us. Do we believe that they can be controlled or do we believe that we must adjust to them? Again, the answer will probably be somewhere in between whereby we must take our responsibility to try and positively influence current trends as well as take appropriate measures to live with them.