On my first full-time day of FfILoEing (I guess that's pronounced "filing"), it seems useful to get a running start, by reviewing some previous work that was done in other roles and at other behests -- but turns out to have given some hints about future themes and goals, where that "future" has today become "now."

I asked a neutral party--ChatGPT--"What does Peter Coffee say about environmental stewardship and sustainability?" I did not tell the LLM where to find its source material, so it went to the Internet At Large; it came back (with ridiculous speed) with things that I'm sure it would have taken me much longer to track down.

I'll condense this a bit: one suspects that ChatGPT would have followed an instruction to do that, but let me feel some sense of participation:

What Peter has said relevant to sustainability / stewardship

• On travel, communications and environmental impact:
  "The part of the job I would not do? I'd be fine if it did not involve the 180-plus days of travel and close to 200,000 air miles per year...if telepresence could become a more accepted mode."
  This speaks to thinking about the environmental consequences of business practices (in this case, business travel) and being willing to change modes of operation in light of those consequences.


• On investing into the broader community/supply-chain ecosystem:
  "Sometimes you have to say...are we sufficiently ready, that we should now be investing at the margin in educating our customers, or maybe making investments in our suppliers or in community response...that you invest in the community around you, not because it's the nice thing to do, but because it's the smart thing to do."
  This suggests a view that sustainability (in a broad sense) isn't just about the internal operations of a business, but about the health of the ecosystem--suppliers, customers, community--around it. You can't have sustainable operations if your supply-chain is unsustainable.


• On resilience, long-term thinking, and avoiding "short-term optimisation" with lack of slack/robustness:
  "We've spent 20 years educating managers and organisations to do relentless narrowly focused optimisation, minimise cost, tighten supply chains... The problem is, people got promoted for minimising slack, not for finding resilience."
  While this is more about business resilience than environmental stewardship per se, the implication is: sustainability and resilience are closely linked.


• On redefining what the business is doing (and thus what its impact is):
  "Try to forget the thing you've gotten good at doing, and dial your brain back to the reason anyone wanted you to do it in the first place."
  This statement hints at the need for purpose-driven change, which can include environmental purpose and stewardship rather than simply doing what we've always done.

ChatGPT was unexpectedly generous in giving me credit for redeeming social value, heading another list with "My interpretation: How his thinking applies to environmental stewardship" (this time, ChatGPT numbered the items):

Here are how his ideas map onto the topic of environmental stewardship:

1. Ecosystem mindset: He emphasises that organisations should look beyond direct operations, considering the supply chain and the upstream and downstream ecological impacts.
2. Resilience over pure efficiency: When businesses optimise too narrowly, they may sacrifice robustness. Climate change, resource constraints, ecosystem shocks demand resilience. Environmental stewardship is part of that resilience: preserving resource bases, ensuring long-term viability rather than short-term gains.
3. Rethinking business purpose: his statement about "why anyone wanted you to do it in the first place" invites organizations to revisit their fundamental value proposition.
4. Operational choices that matter: His comment about reducing travel reflects the practical changes organisations can make. In environmental stewardship, operational changes--remote work, reducing logistics footprint, efficient infrastructures--are part of the story.
5. Investing in community and ecosystem: He frames investment in suppliers/customers/community as "smart business" -- not just philanthropic, but strategic and risk-mitigating.

Take-aways? You want take-aways? Once again, ChatGPT output...

Here are some practical actions aligned with his thinking:

• Map your ecosystem
• Shift from cost-only metrics to resilience metrics
• Define the core need your business fulfills -- and ask how to meet that need in a way that doesn't deplete or disrupt ecosystems
• Treat environmental/community investments as strategic
• Culture and mindset: Encourage teams to ask, "Is this just doing an old thing more cheaply, or are we doing something differently that preserves natural capital?"

This is already too long, and it's just the kickoff -- and just this morning, at least three things crossed my news feed that ought to become topics for future sharing and comment. So, more to come.

Thanks for being here. We'll see what we can do about framing, emphasis, and optimization (I don't know why ChatGPT was using British English spellings like "optimisation" up above) to bend the curve in better directions -- quickly.