The 5Cs: Business, Climate, Leadership Done Differently

Charlene Norman
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A podcast on business, climate risk, and leadership, exploring what happens when companies choose stewardship over the old systems. Imagine the profit. Imagine the impact. Imagine if every business led this way.

  1. 1 day ago

    This Mine is Sacred

    This is the first episode of When the Land Talks Back.   Nicola Robins was auditing a diamond mine in northwestern Australia when she heard a voice that had no business being there. It told her the land was sacred, and that nothing could justify what was being done to it. She is a Yale-trained scientist. She decided it hadn't happened, and carried on with the job.   Her body did not carry on so easily. In this episode, Nicola tells the story of the health crisis that followed, and how healing from it meant four months of training in Ngoma, a South African knowledge system with roots going back four thousand years, built for making decisions under uncertainty long before anyone called it sustainability. She talks about colonial entanglement, about sickness as a signal that something bigger than one person has come out of balance, and about the name she is known by in that world. It is not Nicola.   Nicola Robins offers a radically human approach to sustainability transition in an era of uncertainty and AI. Her work sits at the intersection of sustainability, complexity science, and the indigenous Ngoma tradition, drawing on more than three decades of organisational practice across the continent. She co-founded the Cape Town–based consultancy Incite in 2005 and now works as an independent consultant while remaining part of the Incite network. Nicola teaches at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business.  You can find Nicola here. She writes on Substack and is the author of Diviner Mind: How Organisations Can Learn from the Indigenous Science of Uncertainty. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

    This Mine is Sacred

  2. 5 Sept

    The Hill I'll Die On

    Season Five of the 5Cs Podcast opens with the story behind the line you've heard at the end of every episode for four years: the only thing we can do is do better, for the highest good, for all. This season the 5Cs get a new order and a sharper edge: Clarity, Courage, Commitment, Compassion, Collective. The guests ahead will bring ideas without a track record yet, many rooted in indigenous and ancestral ways of understanding our relationship to each other and the planet.  Charlene explains why she's done being polite about a model that isn't working.  None of us gets out of this alone. And frankly, we've all got to do better. For the highest good. For all. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

    The Hill I'll Die On

  3. 15 Aug

    See You September 5th

    Season four closed with a three-part series that asked more of us than most of what came before.  Before diving into what's next, we're taking a short, deliberate pause. Three weeks, no new episodes, back on September 5th with a brand new season five, a fresh focus, and guests you haven't heard talk about business, climate, or leadership before. In the meantime, revisit the back catalogue. Nearly 200 episodes are there, and most of them still hold up.  See you in three weeks, refreshed and ready to keep going. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

    See You September 5th

  4. 8 Aug

    What We Build Now

    We Found Each Other. What We Build Now The season four finale. Charlene names what four years of this work has actually taught her, and retires the framing the show started with. Compassionate capitalism served its purpose. It no longer fits what this work has become. The 5Cs remain, but the words change. She explains the reasoning behind each one, names where she has fallen short of what the show has asked of others, and commits publicly to what comes next. This episode closes with an ask: find one person this week, and tell them something true you've been keeping quiet. That's how the distributed knowing stops being distributed in silence. Final episode in a three-part close to season four. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

    What We Build Now

  5. 1 Aug

    The Map Of The Distributed Knowing

    We Found Each Other. The Map Of The Distributed Knowing. Charlene started this podcast wanting to blame someone. A generation, an industry, a set of executives. What she found instead, across four years and dozens of conversations, was harder to sit with: a system so embedded in laws, institutions, and how we teach children to think that most people inside it don't know it's there. This episode walks through the conversations that changed her mind: on economics, on recycling, on nuclear energy, on indigenous knowledge, on moral injury versus PTSD. It lands on the idea that has quietly run under every episode of this show: you are not alone in what you know. The knowing is everywhere. The question was never whether enough of us see it. The question is what we do now that we've found each other. Second in a three-part close to season four. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

    The Map Of The Distributed Knowing

  6. 25 Jul

    The Girl From The Town Of Twenty Thousand

    The Girl from the Town of Twenty Thousand  Before the podcast, before the platform, before she had words for any of it, Charlene knew something was wrong. This episode goes back to where that knowing started: a small town, a business career that took her from internal audit to the C-suite, and a moral bind she tried to ignore for thirty years while working in chemicals, plastics, and industries she knew in her bones were doing damage. She stayed longer than that moral bind wanted her to. The bonuses were good. The system eventually collected its debt anyway, in the form of a health crisis that cost her more than half of everything she'd built. This is the story of what she found when she came back up with nothing left to lose by listening to what she'd always known. First in a three-part close to season four. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

    The Girl From The Town Of Twenty Thousand

  7. 18 Jul

    Clear Eyed; Not Hopeless

    Clear Eyed; Not Hopeless This is the finale of the five part series Shell Shocked: Moral Injury and the Leaders Carrying It   With special guest Dr. Debra Borys, a clinical psychologist licensed in California with long-standing interest and concern for nature and the environment. She is co-founder and co-chair of the LA County Psychological Association Eco-Psychology Special Interest Group, an active member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and a trained Climate Café leader.  You can find Dr Borys here and you can get on her wait list here  in order to gain access to the workshops she and Nikyta Palmisani created.  The hardest conversation of the series. And the most important one. In this finale episode, Charlene Norman and Dr. Debra Borys go to the place most podcasts won't. What does it mean to look honestly at where we are — the climate crisis, the collapse of institutional trust, the poly-crisis unravelling in real time — without flinching, without denial, and without false hope? And what does it mean to keep going anyway?  Three things you'll take away: Why grief and joy are not opposites. What happens when you stop defending against one to protect the other? Jem Bendell's six R's of deep adaptation. A framework for anyone who has accepted that the road ahead is genuinely uncertain and wants to know how to orient themselves anyway One simple sensory practice that costs nothing, takes minutes, and reconnects you to the world you're trying to protect The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

    Clear Eyed; Not Hopeless

  8. 11 Jul

    The Business of Not Giving Up

    The Business of Not Giving Up The most committed people in any room are often the ones closest to the edge. This episode is about what leaders can actually do about that. Before it's too late. With special guest Dr. Debra Borys, a clinical psychologist licensed in California with long-standing interest and concern for nature and the environment. She is co-founder and co-chair of the LA County Psychological Association Eco-Psychology Special Interest Group, an active member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and a trained Climate Café leader.  You can find Dr Borys here and you can get on her wait list here  in order to gain access to the workshops she and Nikyta Palmisani created.  In this episode,  the discussion is around the practical reality of doing meaningful work inside systems that weren't built for it. From the warning signs most organisations miss entirely, to a two-hour intervention any leader could run with their team next week, to the honest answer to the hardest question in this space. What actually changes when you do this work and then walk back into the same system? Three things you'll take away: The organisational warning signs of moral injury that get mislabelled as performance problems and what to look for before good people quietly disappear Stress inoculation. What it is, how it works, and why two hours with your team naming their actual fears could prevent months of dysfunction down the road The most honest answer to the long game question: What changes when someone does this inner work and walks back into the same structure that contributed to the injury in the first place? The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

    The Business of Not Giving Up
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A podcast on business, climate risk, and leadership, exploring what happens when companies choose stewardship over the old systems. Imagine the profit. Imagine the impact. Imagine if every business led this way.

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