Human Sustainability: An Interview with Mike Ford

“The Cavalry Isn’t Coming”: Why Human Sustainability Needs to Be the Industry’s Next Big Conversation

Mike Ford doesn’t mince his words. “No one’s coming to save you - not your boss, not your manager, not your client. Meaningful change starts with personal and collective ownership. Fundamentally, it’s down to you. And that can be hugely empowering.”

A former agency owner turned human sustainability advocate, Ford is on a mission to challenge how we think about stress, burnout, and wellbeing. Through his consultancy, Grateful Lemon, he works alongside organisations to embed healthier ways of working, starting with a people-first mentality. His core message? Human sustainability isn’t a soft topic or an HR tick-box; it’s a business-critical mindset shift, and the travel and hospitality industry needs it more than ever.

“I was one of the people pushing the hustle culture - pushing myself and my team to do more, more, more. People are your greatest asset, but they’re also the asset you stretch the furthest. Eventually, that caught up with me. Burnout for me didn’t arrive like a car crash, it was a slow, creeping decline.”

Out of that experience came a simple but powerful realisation: the way we’re working isn’t working. And adding perks around the edges isn’t fixing it. “Are we building systems that truly support people, or simply layering wellbeing initiatives on top of existing pressure? Offering people more things to do - like a yoga session or a gym membership - but not considering how to re-engineer the workday is not the answer.” 

Ford points to what he calls the ‘wellbeing paradox’: “Deloitte did a survey. 80% of leaders said they were doing the right thing for their people. But 90% of the people who work for them said their well-being had got worse. How can that be? Because they’re trying to do more, but still work the same way.”

The shift, he explains, begins with mindset - and with habits. “You don’t experience life. You experience the life you focus on. If you’ve got a mindset of lack, you’ll always find lack. But if you come from a mindset of abundance - appreciation over expectation - you change the way you see the world.”

For those in the travel and leisure world, the stakes are particularly high. “This is an industry full of people who love what they do. And you don’t want to change that. But you’ve got to set boundaries for yourself, and be disciplined about what you need to do to turn up as the best version of yourself.”

So what does that look like? Sometimes it begins with a better question: “Rather than asking how to get people to engage with wellbeing programmes, we should be asking how to design an operating model that’s truly sustainable for the humans within it. The answers are very different.”

The key, he says, is to protect the very thing that makes this industry exceptional: its people. “Nothing changes until you change. Whether you’re an individual, a team, or a leader—it starts there.”

For more expert insight from the Rocco Forte Hotels showcase at The Balmoral, and details on future events, please get in touch with our team.