The interview format aims to collect the point of view of International professionals to understand the value, the perspective and impact of Culture on society.
This interview is with Greg Albrecht, a professional who provides strategy and leadership mentorship to growing companies’ managers and entrepreneurs. He provides mentoring programs, executive coaching, strategic workshops and public speaking. He firmly believes that creative language helps people persuade and make better decisions. Owner of Albrecht&Partners, he assists business owners achieving their goals. He creates a lot of free content, gives advice as a coach, and is an investor in early stage companies, providing free education.
- What is the meaning of sustainability for young people? And can sustainability practice become a new engine for the education of next social and business classes?
Sustainability will create for the young generation something that will last longer and will make them more responsible towards the environment creating positive bonds for everybody. They can become more aware of it, selecting the activities and behaviors that will create a sustainable impact.
Businesses now know that they have to change their values to remain attractive and create an environment which is meaningful for everybody, and that will be engaging for new generations which already have these values internally. Now it is a role of business leaders to be aware of it and to employ this sustainability thinking into their strategies.
- Soft skills, creative and artistic competences, how can these improve and enhance the world of institutions and business?
Sometimes these competencies are being treated as somehow difficult to measure and being appreciated by traditional businesses. I think that without imagination, creativity and art we wouldn’t have engineered any machine. They give us a new perspective on the same problems; without creativity there would be no innovation.
Innovation is the ability to look at the same problem with another perspective and see a solution that was never there, that is the domain of art which also normally uses tools that we may have around to create something new like in Contemporary Art.
Regarding soft skills, I think what is important is to look at the problem from a human perspective to define the nature of the problem.
In my opinion, art and performances can create something very substantial with a real problem-solving power, at the same time, it is difficult to change old and less sustainable points of view in businesses because here psychology comes into play and ego-related problems.
- Do you know examples of artistic interventions that have generated a sustainable social and cultural impact? And names of innovative realities that support companies to collaborate with artists?
Real life disasters can be a good and natural driver for change, the COVID-19 changed the way of communicating and several behaviors, for example.
In a business it is important that the leader changes his mindset first, in order to have a change in the whole company. For example, I came in touch with a company which bought and re-modelled an old building in Warsaw and gave some spaces for free to a charity foundation which supports kids to run a coffee-bar and rent rooms, and so to have a business. That is a very innovative way of sharing resources, they combine business with a mission and they also wrote a book about their project.
- How do you interpret the UNESCO statement published in the dossier “Culture|2030 Indicators” THE ONLY POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENT IS CULTURAL?
This statement means that a large group gets common sense and changes behaviors; Popular art and Media, or Netflix for example, can have a huge impact in changing mindsets and actions, positively and negatively.
We really thank Greg for the time dedicated and his contribution.
