Juergen Maier comes out fighting for progressive business leadership
Industrialist Juergen Maier has urged business leaders not to shirk from a positive and progressive business agenda that can address the climate crisis and stand up for under-represented groups.
The former CEO of Siemens UK said he has encountered business leaders who are keeping their heads down as a toxic pushback against “woke” values gains momentum.
In a start of the year message through his leadership development project vocL he said: “We must stick to our values, take the high ground, and improve our ability to demonstrate and communicate the worth of those values that we deliver as the business community.”
He said populist forces have turned their attention from Brexit and immigration, to ESG and climate action, and are simplistically labelling progressive business leaders as “woke.”
“Their rhetoric often includes toxic, racist, misogynistic, and anti-LGBT undertones,” he said.
Maier, also appointed by the government to chair GB Energy, said that this change in mood comes after a period of time when he had felt “rather good” that business had worked together to deliver 50% of the UK’s energy from renewable sources, a halving of emissions since 1990 and closure of the UK’s last coal-fired power station, and that inclusion had made such significant strides that for the first time in his working life, he “felt for the first time that I could bring my whole self to work — not the authoritarian, alpha-male leader that had been expected of me before.”
He said he attended and spoke at the Employee Ownership Association conference and was “in my element” alongside companies who demonstrated the value of inclusive and social value driven cultures.
“Yet when I talked to them about telling their fantastic stories to broader society, or the media, most were less enthusiastic.
“This, in my view, is where we’ve failed the most. Increasingly, I speak to progressive senior business leaders who admit they’re ‘keeping their heads down’ or have no more energy to keep up the fight.
“Now is not the time to give up or keep our heads down. I don’t advocate for us, the business community entering a massive fight — as I have said, that hasn’t worked and purely serves to inflame culture wars, that we would rather calm down. Instead, I urge socially progressive leaders in business to speak up and and collaborate with others in business, government, and policymaking to drive progressive change.
“Let us be the first generation of leaders to truly harness the transformative power of ESG principles. Let’s not give up and ensure we aren’t the last generation to fail to understand them,” he said.
In a subsequent post, he added: “Looking forward, it will remain challenging and tempting to believe that there are quick fixes to the many complex problems facing the world. But there aren’t any, and we progressive centrists need to stay the course, act long-term, and in time prove that our way provides better outcomes – and find ways to communicate these better.”
