Economists deny that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was ever intended as a metric of overall country progress or well-being. However, that’s how it is being used. Leaders express alarm if the GDP—the value of all goods and services produced within a nation in a given year—falls. Countries are ranked by GPD or GDP per citizen, implying that countries with higher rankings are doing better overall than countries with lower rankings.
What nonsense. We need a better metric for improved quality of life and progress. We need a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) that accounts for not only monetized economic wealth but, more importantly, includes vital environmental and social factors. Here are five reasons why it’s time we replaced the GDP with a GPI. Read more
Aligning ESG Benefits with the Income Statement
/by Bob Willardclick on image to enlarge
We need to make it easy for CEOs, CFOs, and others in the C-suite to see how embedding sustainability strategies into the company’s strategies and operations will contribute to the firm’s success. That is, we need to connect the dots between typical financial statements and the benefits that can be realized from smart environmental, social, and governance (ESG) approaches and programs. Aligning ESG benefits with income statement elements helps executives see the relevance of sustainability initiatives to their current financial priorities.
Read more
Aligning ESG Benefits with Executives’ Top 10 Priorities
/by Bob WillardWhat is the secret of selling executives on using sustainability strategies? Show how the benefits of those strategies help them achieve their existing priorities on which they are already being measured. Executives are juggling way too many key focus areas to welcome adding another one like “sustainability” to the batch. That means sustainability champions need to align the set of benefits that are yielded by smart environmental, social, and governance (ESG) / sustainability strategies with executives’ top priorities.
Read more
4 Reasons It’s Time to Raise the Standards Bar for Companies
/by Bob WillardHow would we recognize a sustainable enterprise if we saw one? That question has been nagging at me for years. When we celebrate companies ranked as being the most sustainable (see my April 5, 2011, blog: 5 Lists of the Most Sustainable Companies), are they really just the best of a bad lot? When a company is certified as making significant progress towards its aspirational sustainability-related goals (see my April 19 blog: 5 Reasons ULE 880 is a Bellwether Sustainability Standard), are those goals setting the bar high enough?Are we ready for a more rigorous assessment of where Mother Earth would position a company on its journey toward being a truly sustainable enterprise? I think so, for four reasons.
Read more
5 Reasons ULE 880 Is a Bellwether Sustainability Standard
/by Bob WillardWhat if a company wants to be branded as a sustainable company, to improve its reputation with businesses, customers, employees, and investors? In my recent blog, 5 Lists of the Most Sustainable Companies, I showed the need for a standardized process for assessing and rating organizations as sustainable enterprises. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were certification process for sustainable companies, as there is now for some products and buildings? ULE 880 intends to fill that vacuum for manufacturing companies. There are five reasons it could be a bellwether sustainability standard.
Read more
5 Lists of the Most Sustainable Companies
/by Bob WillardWho’s the most sustainable company?” I am asked that “mirror-mirror-on-the-wall …” question a lot. The winner depends on who the judges are, their assessment criteria, and the intended audience for their selections. Lists that are done for investors identify companies that are doing the best at avoiding sustainability-related risks and capturing sustainability-related opportunities. Based on publicly available data, here are five lists of the most attractive sustainable companies for investors to consider.
Read more
5 Realities vs the “We’re-Not-Allowed-To-Do-Sustainability” Myth
/by Bob WillardI love this Navajo proverb: “You can’t wake a person who’s pretending to be asleep.” Corporations sometimes defend their inaction on their social and environmental impacts by hiding behind Milton Friedman’s adage that “The business of business is business.” They claim that being more proactive on sustainability issues would be violating their fiduciary duty to shareholders. Nice try. They are just pretending that they are unaware of five realities that reveal that they could do more if they wanted to.
Read more
5 Reasons Why a GPI Should Replace the GDP
/by Bob WillardEconomists deny that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was ever intended as a metric of overall country progress or well-being. However, that’s how it is being used. Leaders express alarm if the GDP—the value of all goods and services produced within a nation in a given year—falls. Countries are ranked by GPD or GDP per citizen, implying that countries with higher rankings are doing better overall than countries with lower rankings.
What nonsense. We need a better metric for improved quality of life and progress. We need a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) that accounts for not only monetized economic wealth but, more importantly, includes vital environmental and social factors. Here are five reasons why it’s time we replaced the GDP with a GPI. Read more
3 New Reports Signal We’re Making Progress With Sustainability
/by Bob WillardThree recent reports provide positive reinforcement that traction on sustainability is building in the private and public sector. This news reenergizes our efforts. We live on hope that our combined efforts as sustainability champions will accelerate the take-up of environmentally, socially, and economically responsible strategies. Usually, during economic recessions, we lose ground. Strangely, in the current recession, the opposite has happened: sustainability-related strategies have been embraced more strongly.
Read more
A Better Business Model: B Corporations
/by Bob WillardOur current economic and financial systems sanction obscene excesses at the expense of society. It’s easy and therapeutic to rant. It’s more helpful, but more challenging, to propose viable alternatives. In my last three blogs, I reviewed Hazel Henderson’s, Michael Moore’s, and David Korten’s thoughtful proposals on how to repair our economic and financial systems. We also need more responsible business models, like Benefit Corporations (B Corps).B Corps are a new kind of company which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.
In a little over 3 years, there are already over 370 Certified B Corporations from over 54 industries, representing $1.8 billion in collective revenues. Read more
David Korten’s 10-Point Recovery Plan
/by Bob WillardWe are encouraged to spend our way out of the economic recession—to consume our way back to normal. This recovery recipe has been used for decades. During the recession in the 1950’s, a reporter asked President Eisenhower, “What should citizens do to help the recession recede?”
The President replied, “Buy.”
The reporter asked, “Buy what?” Eisenhower replied, “Buy anything.”
Read more