Gentlemen
This is a big question. I cannot argue with the 6 point list of themes described in the recent Parish Letter.
From my own personal perspective I want the Church to be a central part of my life, and at the same time I would like what I do to be of some value to the Church.
My career has not been, by conventional standards, a huge success. My early career was 'fast track' and when I was in my early 30s I already had substantial corporate responsibility and was the CFO of a US based international company. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I still had my eyes open, and saw something of the obscene poverty that prevailed the third world ... in South Asia, Africa, Latin America.
It is now 35 years since I moved out of my corporate comfort zone and started to work as an independent consultant ... working a bit with the international private sector, but mainly with the World Bank, the United Nations and other parts of the international development community in over 50 countries. While the objectives of most of the projects I worked on where very laudable, the whole process of development was, in my view, terribly flawed. My efforts to make meaningful changes so that the money would fetch up in the right places were not received with much enthusiasm, and in the end my consulting career was something of a disaster.
I am still an advocate for accountancy and performance metrics. In my view this is one of the major missing links in modern socio-economic analytics. So now that my career is over, I am in a position to advocate for radical reform in a way that was not possible when I was younger and hoping my career would improve. What is emerging is something I call Multi Dimension Impact Accounting (MDIA) ... a framework for performance analysis that has all the elements of the Triple Bottom Line (people, planet and profit) integrated into a single system.
While every economic activity is judged on its money flows, I argue that every economic activity should also be judged on its value flows. When there is a surplus money flow, it can be banked and used in the future. When there is a surplus of value flow ... of good works ... it is not recorded in any earthly way, and there is nowhere to bank it so that it can be used in the future. Equally important, without value metrics, there is no way to engage the capital markets in a way that will mobilize money capital on the scale needed for radical improvement of global socio-economic performance.
There are one (two, three or four) billion people on the planet in obscene poverty. It is entirely possible to change their situation with the technology, knowledge and human resources that we have on the planet now in the 21st century. As things stand, however, we do not have a system that can address this because the money profit metrics do not work. This should get changed and it can get changed.
I talk a lot informally to young people. My impression is that they will change the world, and it would be good if they could do it in ways that have value with the minimum of false starts ... not to mention massive avoidable violence.
In conclusion, metrics dominate my personal agenda. I am an enthusiast for the engagement of young people ... engagement around things that are of great consequence. I am wondering to what extent my enthusiasm for the radical reform of socio-economic metrics might be something around which CHR and youth could engage.
Honestly, I don't know how to make something like this happen ... but I watch young people organize things in a way I never could (and still can't). At the present, I am looking to collaborate on a student organized 'hackathon' later in the year ... and I find it exciting how amazing some of the things that young people can do with technology. The deeper challenge may be to try to get young people to engage with things that have value while not necessarily being fast track to great money wealth!
Sincerely
Peter Burgess
____________
Peter Burgess
TrueValueMetrics ... Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society
Multi Dimension Impact Accounting
http://www.truevaluemetrics.org/DBadmin/DBtxt001.php?vv1=txt20080001
linkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterburgess1/
twitter: @truevaluemetric @peterbnyc
mobile: 212 744 6469 landline 570 431 4385
email: peterbnyc@gmail.com
skype: peterburgessnyc
