Dear Jordan
I enjoyed our conversation on Friday ... sorry I took so much of your time.
To be honest, I am very concerned about the state of both the US society and economy and the global society and economy. I am of the view that the trajectory that has been followed by corporate leadership over the past 40 years is pointing us towards a catastrophe, the likes of which we have never seen before.
This should not be. We have amazing technology. There are also more better educated people on the planet than at any time in history. These two facts should add up to a future that is better than anything we have ever seen in the past ... but all the indications are that the business / economic model that we are using will push us into a place that is totally unsustainable.
Andrew Winston's talk (and the book Big Pivot) is quite thought provoking ... but getting from this conversation to substantial change requires something more that I am not seeing in the conversation. Two things ... (1) the business model needs to be based on the idea that the primary purpose of all economic activity is to improve the quality of life and standard of living of people; and (2) that performance optimization has to be not only for investor profit, but also for people benefit impact and least environmental damage.
In my view, it does not matter how much the CEO talks about the 'sustainability' dimension of business, the pace of change will be low unless the CFO is also able to 'number' the impacts referred to above. This can be done ... but none of the high profile experts on sustainability seem to be very interested in getting numbers into play.
When we change the way the game is scored, we will change the way the game is played!
Peter
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Peter Burgess
TrueValueMetrics ... Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society
Multi Dimension Impact Accounting
http://www.truevaluemetrics.org/DBadmin/DBtxt001.php?vv1=txt20080001
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