From farm to fork: making a real impact through good leadership
Whether it’s your daily cup of coffee or tea, the chocolate you eat, the clothes you wear or the shampoo you wash your hair with, the production of all these things starts somewhere many miles away from you. Unfortunately, this process isn’t always fair or sustainable. Heske Verburg is the Managing Director of Solidaridad Europe. She and her colleagues are achieving a global impact by making international production chains better and fairer for everyone concerned.
Make a beeline for your goal with smart choices
Heske knew she wanted to make the world a better place from an early age: “Justice was very important to me even as a little girl. I thought it was very unfair that I was able to go to school and have enough food to eat every day when other children my age weren’t as lucky. It was difficult for me to understand why this was. Couldn’t we do something about it? That’s why I chose to study policy and governance in international organisations. I saw it as my vocation.”
Heske couldn’t imagine herself just typing out policy documents, so she started to explore opportunities at all kinds of different organisations. After studying business administration in America, she applied for a place on the Ormit Talent programme. “I didn’t like the idea of being a policy officer at all, so I decided I’d like to work in the business sector first. That’s what led me to Ormit Talent. It’s a great way to start your career. You take a look around different companies and learn a lot about yourself: your competencies, skills and who are you, what you can do and what you want to do.”
Heske learnt a lot about herself via her experience at Ormit Talent. They also quickly helped her realise how she could make a difference because of the type of person she is. But the assignments she did during her time with Ormit Talent also taught her many new things: “I’m very good at stakeholder management and at getting people excited and moving in a certain direction. So, a logical next step for me after Ormit Talent was to become a corporate partnership manager at UNICEF. While at UNICEF, I established some great partnerships with companies and had various management positions.”
Leadership in her DNA
But for Heske, UNICEF wasn’t the place to have a real impact. “I feel driven to make a difference. To really do something about all the wrongs in the world. And I have the confidence and vision to know exactly how to set about doing it. My dot on the horizon was to work for an international development organisation. But as what? I didn’t know the answer to that question at that stage. But when I looked at the different roles in organisations like this, I decided that I’d really like to be a director. It’s a role that really suits me. For two reasons: because you work as part of a team and really achieve something and because you have responsibility and are able to make decisions. Before becoming a managing director, I sometimes felt quite frustrated because I didn’t always fully support the decisions being made. It’s great to be the person in charge and the one who decides what’s best”, Heske laughs.
Effective leadership: collaboration, focus and diversity
Collaboration is at the heart of everything that an NGO like Solidaridad does. It has a team of 70 in Europe and 1,400 globally. My colleagues and I make an impact together; it’s impossible to achieve anything on your own. In Europe, we work more with donors, companies and policy advocacy. But my colleagues in other parts of the world actually work in the factories and with farmers in the fields. So, we complement each other perfectly throughout the production chain, from farm to fork.”
For Heske, creating this impact together requires two things. She is still reaping the benefits of one of the training courses she did at Ormit Talent to this very day. “It was about Covey’s seven habits of effective leadership. It made me realise how vital it is to focus on the big, important things. One of the seven habits is to ‘keep the end in mind’. In other words, always know where you’re heading. Because if you know that, you can plan how to get there too. If you don’t know where you’re heading, you’ll never get there and you’ll be wasting your time. This is very relevant when you’re managing an organisation too. You have to be very clear about where you’re going and how you intend to get there. This also enables you and your organisation to be more effective.”
Besides focus, diversity is vital when you’re setting out to achieve something as well: “You’ll need both to be effective. Sometimes, you’ll work with people who come up with lots of creative ideas, but they never progress beyond the idea stage. Or someone who does things very differently or complains a lot. During my time at Ormit Talent, I realised how important it is to have these different types of people around you. Good ideas are incredibly valuable, but you need someone to execute them and someone who can plan the process from start to end. I try hard to put my team together with this in mind.”
Want to have an impact yourself? Stay right where you are!
We don’t all need to work at Greenpeace or turn our backs on Shell to do our bit for a better world. Heske believes that people can have much more of an impact from within their own organisations than by heading off to work for NGOs. “I think it would be very bad if everyone with a strong moral compass decided to work for charities. I truly believe that people can make a lot of difference in a commercial environment too. They should stay in the commercial sector and change it from within. And make sure the focus isn’t just on profit maximisation but also on what the company can do to make the world a better place. Instead of looking for a new job, people could keep their great jobs in the business sector and do volunteer work as well. Or look for an organisation where they can maximise the difference they make. That might be Shell rather than Greenpeace; a whole bunch of passionate people already work there.”
Small steps for a big effect
There are so many other ways to make an impact than via the work you do. And consumers can make an impact too. Heske: “Make sustainable choices, buy second-hand clothes, check whether products have been produced sustainably, are made from organic cotton and that working conditions are good, recycle your clothes and buy Fairtrade and organic. These are all little things you can do yourself.” But you can take small steps in the organisation you work for too: “Look at how big your company’s footprint is and what you can do to reduce it. This might be by making a really small change, like the coffee you drink at work. Have a chat with your coffee buyer and make sure the coffee is sustainable.”
Still got big moral ambitions?
If so, Heske has another tip for you: “Keep the end in mind. Be aware of what you want to achieve, where you want to go and work towards it. It might not always seem like a direct path; you won’t always have a choice. That’s when you need to remember you can always take a different road if the one you’ve chosen isn’t taking you directly to where you want to be or is even closed off altogether. You can choose to go left or right or over or under the original road. Always find a solution that enables you to move forward and don’t give up.”
Heske’s story is one of collaboration, leadership and positive change. It shows that it’s possible to make an impact whoever you are, whether you’re the head of a charity, an employee of a company in the business sector or a conscious consumer. What really counts is the willingness to work together to make the world a better place.
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