In episode 41 of Shifting to Ethical Systems, Jules Harrison-Annear thinks out loud about the distance between a plan and the people the plan is for. How does a commitment made in a meeting room somewhere become something people can actually feel in their lives? And what does ethical leadership ask of us in that distance?
"A plan with no route back from the people living with it can't learn, and it will repeat its first mistakes at scale."
The plans already exist
Climate commitments. The Sustainable Development Goals. National strategies. Corporate net zero pledges. In most places Jules works, from Aotearoa New Zealand to Fiji to France, the big plans have already been written. Some governments have gone further and devolved decisions closer to the people they affect.
So the gap worth paying attention to is follow-through. Jules frames it with three questions. Who carries a plan from paper into a place? Who decides what it looks like when it arrives? And who lives with the result?
The uncomfortable pattern is that the people who live with the result have usually had the least say in the first two. That includes young people, who will live longest with the decisions being made now, and who will be designing and carrying out these plans for decades. It is one reason the question has been on Jules's mind while preparing to work with young leaders from across Africa, ahead of the Reformation Community Leadership Summit in Nairobi on 6 November.
Two needs that pull against each other
This is where the episode avoids an easy answer. Large-scale change needs long-term vision and serious capital, and both tend to be organised from the centre, by people some distance from the place where a plan lands. It also needs the people living with the consequences to have real authority over how plans land in their place and the impact they have.
Those needs pull against each other, and climate change makes the pull stronger. The people who did least to cause the crisis are often carrying the heaviest cost of it. A response can make complete sense from a distance and feel very different close up.
Jules's position is that leaders don't get to choose one need over the other. The ethical work is in holding both in constructive tension, being honest about where the balance sits right now, and building the fluency to shift between them in conversations, decisions and implementation. That is harder than picking a side, and much closer to how change actually happens.
Follow-through is where ethics becomes visible
At JERICA Global, we talk a lot about moving from extraction to regeneration. As Jules says in the episode, it's an easy thing to say. The test comes when someone asks three questions. Who benefits? Who decides? What's left behind when the money moves on?
These are follow-through questions. They ask what happens to a commitment after it has been announced and the funding round has closed. For Jules, that is where ethics shows up for leaders: in whether we stay with the consequences of a decision long enough to see who it actually impacted, and whether we're willing to change course when it missed the people it was meant for.
There is a systems argument underneath this. Every plan needs a feedback loop. Without a route back from the people living with it, a plan can't learn, and it will repeat its first mistakes at scale. Leaders build that route back through relationships, one conversation at a time.
A simple exercise from the episode: think about a commitment you or your organisation made in the last year. Who was it for? And how do you know whether it has had any positive benefit?
A just transition is made of ordinary decisions
"Just transition" is a phrase most people hear in conversations about energy and climate. Jules uses it more widely, for any transition plan, whether it concerns energy, food, housing, or a single organisation changing how it works. She brings three questions to each one:
How do we make this transition just for everyone? (Which, she points out, is not the same as everyone being happy about the transition.)
What does money or investment actually deliver to the people living with the problem?
Where are the real opportunities, and what's stopping certain people from accessing them?
Swap in your supply chain, your grant programme or your investment portfolio, and you are asking the same thing about your own work.
This belongs in a conversation about leadership because a just transition gets made or unmade through thousands of decisions by people with some agency: government officials, procurement leads, programme designers, investors, community leaders, entrepreneurs. Policy, finance and traditional structures set the conditions for those decisions, but people make them. Systems shift when enough of those decisions shift in the same direction, and that is the part of systems change each of us can actually reach.
Whose place, whose plan?
When Jules facilitates sessions on agency, she starts with one real local challenge. A small group works from the root causes to a plan for the next six to twelve months, including who they'll partner with, what they need and how they'll know it's working. Everyone leaves with one thing they can start on Monday without anyone's permission.
That last part matters most to her, because a lot of leadership development quietly teaches people to wait for a mandate or a budget before they act. Local agency means the people who live in a place shape the plan for it, and can do something with the plan.
The same thinking shapes JERICA Global's Catalyst Kits programme, which supports young climate entrepreneurs across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. The name comes from beaver kits, which learn from their parents how to build and maintain the dams that reshape their surroundings. (Jules also likes that beavers are very good at ignoring people who tell them where the water should go!)
Founders tend to get plenty of help with a pitch deck and with finding traditional funding. Far fewer get help learning how to lead themselves through all of it: how to hold on to purpose when the pressure arrives, and how to decide well when there is no clean answer. That is where ethical leadership lives for them, and it is the gap JERICA Global works in.
What changes when you lead this way
Leading from whose place, whose plan shifts a few concrete things:
In planning, you describe who will live with the result, and give them a role in shaping and deciding the plan.
In funding and investment, you design the exit as carefully as the entry, and ask what stays behind when the money moves on. (Episode 33, Capital That Knows How to Wait, explores the conditions that make this possible.)
In partnerships, you look for situations where people are waiting for permission, and ask whether they need to.
In your own decisions, you pick one thing you're willing to do differently because of what you stand for.
A long-term vision helps. But in Jules's experience, change starts closer in: being clear on what matters to you, and using the agency you have to make the next decision with as much care as you can.
And here are three reflections that stayed with us from this episode:
1) Follow-through is where ethics becomes visible.
Announcing a commitment is the easy part. The ethical test comes afterwards, when someone asks who benefits, who decides and what's left behind when the money moves on. Leaders show what they value by staying with the consequences of a decision long enough to see who it reached, and by changing course when it missed its mark. A plan without a route back from the people living with it can't learn. It will repeat its first mistakes, only bigger.
2) A just transition is made or unmade through thousands of decisions.
It is tempting to treat a just transition as something governments and large funders deliver. Jules situates it with everyone who has some agency: the procurement lead, the programme designer, the investor, the community leader, the entrepreneur. Structures set the conditions, but people make the decisions, and systems shift when enough of those decisions shift in the same direction. Being just is also a different goal from keeping everyone happy, and it helps to be honest about that.
3) Whose place, whose plan?
Local agency means the people who live in a place shape the plan for it and can act on it. In practice that changes how you plan (give the people who will live with the result a role in deciding it), how you fund (design the exit as carefully as the entry) and how you partner (notice who is waiting for permission and ask whether they need to). It also changes how we develop leaders. The aim is for people to leave with something they can start on Monday, without waiting for a mandate.
Episode breakdown
00:46 The Distance Between a Plan and Its People
Why the big plans already exist, and why follow-through is the gap that matters most.
02:11 The Tension: Vision and Capital vs Local Authority
Why long-term vision and capital tend to sit at the centre, and why the people living with the consequences need real authority too.
03:02 Holding Both in Constructive Tension
What ethical leadership asks of us in that tension, and why young people belong in the conversation.
04:48 Insight 1: Follow-Through Is Where Ethics Becomes Visible
Who benefits, who decides, and what's left behind when the money moves on. Plus why every plan needs a feedback loop.
06:21 Insight 2: A Just Transition Is a Leadership Question
Three questions for any transition plan, and why systems shift through thousands of individual decisions.
07:55 Insight 3: Whose Place, Whose Plan?
A facilitation approach built around local agency, and the story behind JERICA Global's Catalyst Kits.
10:06 What Shifts When You Lead This Way
How planning, funding, partnerships and your own decisions change.
11:23 Ethical Leadership at JERICA Global
Leadership programmes, advisory work, and an invitation to people who work with founders.
If this episode resonated, share it with someone working on a plan that has to land in a real place, with real people.
And if you work with founders through an accelerator, an impact programme, a university innovation lab or a social entrepreneurship course, we'd love to talk.