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Performance●Productivity●Profit
Gross corruption, constant wars, and irrational economics long made Africa a poor, troubled continent where natural-resource companies were almost the only multinationals that dared or cared to do business. But in the 1990s, the picture improved. The wars started subsiding. Many governments balanced their budgets and created a better, safer environment for companies, both foreign and domestic. And the African consumer began to stir. Now 80 million households earn at least the equivalent of $5,000 annually, the point where discretionary spending commences—an increase of 80 percent in eight years. Meanwhile, the continent’s GDP has been rising steadily, at around 5 percent a year, for the past decade, reaching $1.6 trillion in 2008. Last year, Africa was one of just two regions (the other was Asia) where GDP rose.
Is all this good news sustainable? At the 2010 Fortune Global Forum, in Cape Town, South Africa, McKinsey Publishing’s Rik Kirkland spoke with Absa’s Maria Ramos, Coca-Cola’s Bill Egbe, and McKinsey’s Norbert Dörr to find the answer.
Watch the video, or download a PDF of the transcript.
Source: Mckinsey
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The survey involved 766 CEOs and top executives, including face-to-face interviews with over 50 of the world's foremost business executives.
This new research found that:
In 2006, the UN launched the Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative (PRI), a $20 trillion effort developed to persuade mainstream investors to better integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into valuations and investment processes. At a major UN Summit in New York City last week, Donald MacDonald, PRI Chairman urged investors to 'push further' despite recent progress.
"Time and again investors have seen how ESG issues can affect investment performance and there is now a critical mass of institutional investors who know that good management of these issues is an important factor in for the long-term financial success of their investments. I expect the next decade to be an age of responsibility for capital markets," he said.
"If a company has poor corporate governance or persists with bad environmental management then it can, and should, affect the long-term valuation of the company. The truth is that's still a relatively new concept for many investors, but there are now leaders in mainstream markets that have developed the tools and models to integrate sustainability and who can push the global capital markets beyond the tipping point on sustainability."
The 60-page report, titled A New Era of Sustainability, is available here.
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Today I met up with Dr James Bradfield Moody. For any of you that watch ABC New Inventors - you will be familiar with James.
Others may be aware how James is the Executive Director of Development for the CSIRO.
Additionally you may be familiar with the book “The 6th Wave: How to succeed in a resource-limited world” that James has co-authored with Bianca Nogrady http://sixthwave.org/
Our discussion was about responsible leadership and as a young innovator, speaker and thought leader, James had a few very interesting concepts that hold true...
James believes truly responsible leaders take a long term view, past immediate gains to the next decade and beyond. They understand that responsibility means looking at the past as well as the future to create a better world for all humanity.
A responsible leader has a variety of dimensions...
They also take a much broader view of costs and benefits for business.
James is particularly interested in sustainability...
Sustainable business Leaders understand scarcity will drive innovation to create new products and services and as good stewards for our future, they also understand the importance of involving all stakeholders in their business, from shareholders and customers to employees and suppliers.
Responsible leaders as stewards of our future understand every business contributes and extracts from our society and environment and every product has a footprint of energy, water and waste.
James believes a responsible leader has a great sense of purpose. By thinking in the long term, generating value and being a good steward of those areas they are responsible for - a leader automatically taps into effective ways of communicating - it becomes second nature.
When leadership doesn't work well is when it hasn't tapped into and learnt from the past.
The GFC is a classic example of this which has similarities to other financial slumps like the 70’s oil shocks and the great depression.
Another example of when things don't work is when people don't take future generations into account - when the future costs of their actions are much worse than the low value they are currently creating. This can cost them financially as well - as we become a more knowledge capable society.
When leaders don't subscribe to a higher purpose is the 3rd major problem - then people don't believe in you as a leader into the future.
Going forward, James sees people are a lot more selective on who they will work with. Mobility is available - people can move around.
Responsible leaders understands that it is a competitive world and as technology and communication methods provide more knowledge and mobility - businesses will need to look more closely at how they develop their business model innovations - to cater for the needs for our future generations over the next 30-40 years.
Future generations are more interested in supporting society and our planet dynamically across locations - rather than settling in one house and occupation.
James believes there are many ways Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability will drive growth as we lead into an era of more values driven leaders.
Responsible leadership will underlie the values of most successful leaders who are motivated by generating happiness with their staff, stakeholders, clients and the broader community over the next 30-50 years.
If you are not making the world a better place - the world will not sustain involvement with you.
Are you ready for the 6th wave of innovation as a responsible leader?...
What happens in the second half of the 2000's? - Well that will depend on what we make of the 1st half...
Even though they were a wildly diverse group, the stories they told had common threads. Radical transparency, disruptive innovation and policy alignment were reccurring themes at the Turning the Tide conference last week near San Francisco, a forum that strives to connect human health and environmental health issues while exploring bold steps to affect societal change.
The speakers were accomplished leaders from five fields: Integrative medicine, business, sustainable communities, environmental conservation and the media, and the conference provided an expansive view of how those sectors influence one another. Healthcare Driving disruptive innovation in healthcare is Andrew Weil, a pioneer in integrative medicine among Western-trained physicians and founding director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine. Weil has trained over 700 practicing physicians through a fellowship program, and his philosophy places emphasis on the body's self-healing capacity, mental and spiritual health and its relation to the physical, the restoration of the patient-doctor healing relationship and a broad array of therapeutic options. Weil is developing and implementing integrative medicine programs for "family practice" medical residencies with the intent of having the programs eventually included in all residencies. Ultimately, his goal is to have integrative medicine taught as part of the medical school curriculum, changing the current emphasis from "disease-management" to a wellness and prevention model. Weil, along with other featured physicians including Dean Ornish, founder of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute, echoed this need to revamp the health care system. The panelists explored how public policy has unwittingly helped to spur the increase of cheap and unhealthy food reliant on the fat-sugar-salt trifecta by subsidizing the corn and soybeans, used to make high fructose corn syrup and refined soy bean oils that are key culprits in the obesity and food-related health epidemics. Solutions emphasized by the panelists included the need for governmental policies that support and incentivize the growth and production of healthy food, not make it less competitive.But there are far more than policy-related hurdles to healthy food and lifestyles. The physicians at Turning the Tide described how medical schools do not teach nutrition in a substantive way; how most hospitals do not actively promote healthy lifestyles -- 47 percent of U.S. hospitals have fast food outlets on their premises! -- insurance companies don't reimburse doctors for wellness consultations, but do for disease treatments; and even how a significant percentage of hospital revenue is derived from technology-centered procedures for cardiovascular disease, so that changing treatment patterns means reconfiguring the business model.
The brightest spot on the horizon is the fact that people who have access corporate wellness programs have lower medical costs. Because most large corporations are self-insured, they find plenty of incentives to encourage healthier lifestyles among their employees. Food and Radical Transparency The physicians discussed the theme of radical transparency in food labeling and the possibility of a food rating system to shape food choices. But it was another speaker, former advertising executive Alex Bogusky, who spoke of how start-up company GoodGuide is the embodiment of this concept. GoodGuide is led by a team of Ph.D's from MIT and the University of California and other professionals who had worked at data-driven companies like Google and Amazon. The site rates packaged food items, household cleaners, personal care products and toys on a 10-point scale for their impact on personal health, the environment and society. The depth, breadth and accessibility of the data are unprecedented; it is offered free online and on mobile devices, enabling shoppers to make sustainable purchasing decisions from the supermarket aisles. The GoodGuide example shows how radical transparency can affect not only food choices but the business sector at large through a feedback loop of informed consumers steering companies toward healthful products and strategies by their purchases. But because this data-rich model may not appeal to everyone, disruptive innovation and public policy need to evolve in tandem. Green Buildings The CEO of Serious Materials, Kevin Surace, reminded the audience that building operations and material manufacturing are responsible for 52 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. He also highlighted the little-discussed fact that 80 percent of all building materials come from China, where production costs are cheaper due to the lower environmental, health and human rights standards.Surace offered the recent episode of toxic drywall from China that found its way into Florida homes as a perfect example of the sector's systemic problems and the need for policy to promote or require sustainable manufacturing in the U.S.
Surace believes the U.S. building industry is ripe for change in part because the current, government-backed Energy Star labels do not require high enough efficiency standards -- much higher levels of efficiency are possible with current technologies, Surace told the crowd. Serious Materials won the bid to replace the 6,500 existing dual-pane windows in the Empire State Building with super-insulating ones by reprocessing the glass onsite; this will result in a three-year payback, even though Surace was repeatedly told it was impossible. Another example of Serious Materials' disruptive innovation is its 2009 purchase of a unionized manufacturing company from which the owners walked away; Surace uses the facility to produce energy-efficient windows, and his efforts at creating green jobs in a tough economy have been acknowledged by President Obama. Greening the Commons
Speakers at Turning the Tide also represented environmental conservation of the oceans, rivers, and other shared open spaces (also called "the commons"), detailing how they physically engaged with what they intended to protect. For two of the speakers, radical transparency took the shape of documentary photographs or films of their efforts. Bryant Austin made it his life's work to produce high-resolution, life-size photographs of whales that are currently being hunted in huge numbers, mostly by Japan and Norway. His photographs (a small example is posted at right; for many more visit StudioCosmos.com) are the most detailed of any taken to date and required him swimming just five feet from the whales. Martin Strel brings attention to ecological crises by swimming the world's dirtiest rivers in their entirety. His last feat was swimming the full length of the Amazon River to bring awareness to deforestation and pollution; the documentary entitled "Big River Man" records his journey. He has also swum the Yangze, Mississippi and Danube Rivers. Alice Waters, co-founder of Chez Panisse and vice president of Slow Food International, has created sustainable communities around healthy food. A tireless advocate of locally-grown organic produce, neighborhood gardens and healthful eating habits, she believes that children should receive "edible education" from K to 12, as the Berkeley school system has adopted. Waters hopes public policy will support "edible education" programs nationwide to help address the high rate of lifestyle-induced disease among children. The Yale Sustainability Food Project started out as a way to provide organic, locally grown produce to her daughter's dining facility at Yale University. The endeavor quickly grew and it now manages an organic farm which provides food to dining programs across the Yale campus and supports other research and educational efforts. Human health and environmental health are inextricably intertwined and so the solutions to the critical issues need to be connected as well. Promoting radical transparency, disruptive innovation and public policy alignment across sectors are steps in that direction. Kathy O. Brozek is a management consultant and writer working with organizations that have a social mission, including firms focused on socially responsible investing. Previously, she held both finance and marketing positions in the financial services industry. Photo CC-licensed by Flickr user (matt).
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As public and private organisations around the world seek to limit their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental impacts, information technology (IT) stands to make a significant contribution. Addressing the direct environmental by-products of IT use is one way that green IT solutions can help organizations reduce these emissions and address sustainability concerns. But an even bigger opportunity lies in helping other industries in their response to climate change. IT solutions can eliminate or otherwise redirect business activities that generate emissions.
The need for increased efficiency and automation is spurring demand for IT equipment and services. As IT procurement officials and other IT practitioners seek to fill this demand, employing green IT strategies will help move their organizations that much farther down the path to realizing their objectives for environmental responsibility and sustainability.
Download the full paper here
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Today The Hon Julia Gillard announced that Australia are now 'Moving Forward' - heading toward another federal election.
Does that come with a handshake and a punch as per this old image of her?
We would have no problem with this if we had policy to elect on.
However both major parties do not have a confirmed policy on:
So the public have 5 weeks to absorb all the new policy and make a decision on which party takes office.
Also, any of the new people to the electoral roll have very limited time to enrol.
So at the end of the day the decision looks like being on personality rather than policy detail.
But isn't that always the case? Isn't that what leadership is about - "Folow me at your profit or peril!"
Another leader who seems to have batted off half cocked today is Jobs from Apple - within one paragraph admitting that things are not right - agreeing with the customer; then saying he believed that everything was blown out of proportion - arguing with the customer...
Then offering everyone a rubber band solution...
These PR responses to policy announcement are quickly being acknowledged as 'Pathetic'
Previously people would use comments like 'Moving Foward' 25 times to ensure the media heard it
Now, everyone interested are watching and responding on Twitter - from wherever their mobile is with them.
The future will resolve who purveys the best result on both of these platforms -politics & technology
Though one thing is for sure - the tweeters are going to have a ball...
And for those not listening to the tweets - this is the basis of any PR breakdown still relying only on traditional systems...
A fun time ahead...
Refer to this article:
Australian Brand Sites Losing to The Social Web
For additional reading I refer you to an article written when the Hon. Kevin Rudd was ousted:
Leadership Turmoil in The Magical Land of Oz
So, are they 'Batting off Half Cocked' or 'Leading with Authority?'
We look forward to comment...
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Kind regards
Grant Crossley
Director
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This softly spoken gent has a few ideas that could be relevant for Australia as well...
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