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Topic Description:
Since Fra Luca Pacioli established accounting at the end of the 15th century, nothing has changed about the so-called “language of business”. His warning that “the accountant must not sleep until the debits are equal to the credits” has served as the single most powerful tool in corporate decision-making to date. For the last six centuries, business practices have conditioned the world and the people to measure success as a magnitude of a monetary value. Up until now, the financial performance of a business has been the only accepted standard of success.
What if better became the world’s new currency? What if better people, better leaders, and better businesses systems begin to measure what matters most, not what measures more?
It is time we discover new ways to measure the better dimension of the economic process. Only then, we will have objective new measures – and definitions - of success.
Triple Bottom Line, Conscious Capitalisms, Corporate Social Responsibility, and other thoughtful and progressive ideas jumpstarted the process that shifted how we define and measure success. These principles and ideas have increased our understanding of the impact of our decisions as humans on this planet.
Numbers are a powerful instrument. In fact, poor or negative financial performance has been the single most effective influencer in CEO’s and CFO’s decisions on how to run their companies. We need a new accounting system for better business leaders to guide corporate decision making with an eye toward “good” as a measure of a company’s performance. What if a CFO became the company’s CPO where “P” stood for Performance or even Prosperity? What if we measured Performance by following a sound accounting system designed to capture the multi-disciplinary activities – and impacts - of a business? More importantly, what would happen if the business community, stock analysts, and money managers accepted a new way to look at the bottom line?
Efforts to discover an accounting system for good have already began. Many attempts including environmental accounting, prosperity indexes, the increasing powerful role of big data and infographics have proven to be useful tools in this new area of performance measurement. However, without the discipline and clarity of new accounting standards for better performance, we will not only fail to bring radical innovation to the principles of accounting, we will remain paralyzed in thinking that money is the ONLY measure.
Speaker:
Peter Burgess holds a dual degree in Engineering and Economics from Cambridge University and has professional training in accountancy with Coopers and Lybrand (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) in London. He has held a number of senior positions in corporate management including manager, controller, project manager, VP manufacturing, and CFO and has worked in a range of industries including heavy engineering, iron and steel, construction, pulp and paper, consumer products, electronics and marine fisheries.
As an independent management consultant, Peter has led projects in over 50 countries and has worked with international relief and development organizations including the World Bank, IFC, and the United Nations. While working on projects for the World Bank in the 1980s, Peter realized a nation’s raising GDP correlated badly with prosperity for its people. Therefore, for the last 40 years, Peter has had a focus on developing innovative concepts and methodologies better to manage the social and environmental impact of corporate and governmental business activities beyond their financial performance. His Multi-Dimensional Impact Accounting model broadens the focus from traditional unidimensional accounting where profits are main measure of performance to comprehensive measures for triple-bottom-line performance grounded on sound accounting principles.
Practical applications of Peter’s multi-dimensional accounting system include corporate decision-making including strategy, innovation, and public policy all aimed at making this a better world for all.
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