This week’s reads come back to one idea. The people making a difference are the ones doing the work.
1️⃣ How to Prepare Your Team for 2026.
Most leaders plan as if the future is patient. It is not. Graeme Codrington shares 5 practical strategies for building a future-fit team in 2026, from spotting Grey Elephants in your sector, to building antifragile habits, to protecting your people’s wellbeing as a performance strategy. Preparation is a practice, not a project. Read the full article here…
2️⃣ Happy Earth Day – 1 800 Trees and Counting.
As a company that helps organisations prepare for the future, we believe we have a responsibility to invest in the planet that the future depends on. That’s why we’re proud partners of Greenpop, a South African nonprofit on a mission to get people active, not anxious about our planet.
Through landscape restoration, urban greening, and education, they’ve brought 165 hectares under restoration, greened 500 urban spaces, and reached over 100 000 people. Every time we deliver a keynote or workshop, we plant trees on behalf of our client, and over the past two years, that’s added up to 1 800 trees. Learn more or get involved here.
3️⃣ Certainly, a Case study we can use for youth Eco-friendly Save the plant.
Single-use plastic sticks around for thousands of years. Joseph Nguthiru saw a different path. In Kenya, he watched water hyacinth destroy waterways and livelihoods. So, he turned the problem into a product. His startup HyaPak turns the invasive plant into biodegradable packaging, as durable as plastic, without the damage. Cleaner waterways. Green jobs. A real alternative. Watch here…
4️⃣ A 300-Year-Old Story With a 2026 Lesson.
In 1714, the British government offered a prize worth millions today to solve longitude at sea. The greatest scientific minds said the answer lay in the stars. A carpenter’s son named John Harrison quietly disagreed. Over 40 years, he built clocks that most experts called impossible, and he kept building anyway.
Dean van Leeuwen shares Harrison’s story in a recent LinkedIn post. The lesson for leaders in 2026 is simple. Change rarely starts with consensus. It starts with someone willing to question what everyone else is sure about.
5️⃣ This Earth Month, It’s Not About Perfection – It’s About Participation.
As we move through Earth Month, Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet, highlights a powerful shift in a recent Fast Company article: we’ve moved from greenwashing to greenhushing – where organisations are doing the work but staying quiet about it. Often driven by fear of getting it wrong, this silence creates the impression that nothing is happening, which slows real change.
This Earth Month, it’s a reminder that impact doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to be visible. Worth a read – this one really shifts perspective.
Which of these reads stood out for you? Reach out and tell us. We would love to hear what you are working on, where you want to make a difference, and how we might help.