Events
Interfaith-Center-on-Corporate-Responsibility

Interfaith-Center-on-Corporate-Responsibility ... October 2015

Burgess COMMENTARY
Dear Kyle

My career has spanned more than 50 years. In that time most amazing things have been accomplished ... but in the process ordinary people and the environment have been trashed. Something is wrong with the system ... and good people are not making much of an impression.

I argue that in order to change things there has to be a rethink of the metrics we use to measure success. Money may have been a good proxy for economic performance in the dim and distant past, but is inadequate for the 21st century. I am working to develop a system of accounting that does for impact on people (society) and the environment (planet) what money does for organizational performance and profit.

We live in a complex system, and the idea that we are using metrics that in the case of double entry accounting were first used in the 1200s and then written about in the 1400s and in the case of GDP introduced in something of a hurry in the 1930s suggests that it is time for something better.

Most of the socially responsible community avoids the issue of metrics like the plague. This is a mistake. Until there are metrics in this space, there will not be traction. As Peter Drucker famously said, 'You cannot manage what you do not measure'.

Is ICCR 2015 going to address this ... or just talk about things and get no traction

Peter Burgess TrueValueMetrics.org
Peter Burgess