Moral compass not quarterly figures must dominate in business

When I listen to executives apparently at the top of their game, they leave me in shock. Many feel so stressed by daily pressures that their physical symptoms are alarming. They have reached the point where KPIs have become meaningless to their staff, and values have become equally empty concepts. Quarterly figures dominate their world and preclude any considerations of the environment, ecology or even human needs. They feel that the moral compass has done a bunk.

But, at the same time, pouring into my inbox and springing forth at meetings come examples of initiatives that amaze me because of their audacity and ingenuity.

In 2012, sales of solar lights reported by social venture SunnyMoney, which aims to eradicate the kerosene lantern from Africa by 2020, rose 600% on the previous year. Jeremy Leggett, founder and chairman of parent company Solarcentury, says the organisation “holds the potential to become a poster child as a renaissance company – one fit for purpose amid the ruins of our broken, modern form of capitalism”.

Karen Downes pioneered the aromatherapy industry in Australia, taking a cottage industry into mainstream healthcare. She built a start-up business into a multi-million dollar enterprise.

In 2014, Downes fell down a flight of stairs and broke her back. After the relief of learning that her spinal chord was intact, she lay in hospital reflecting on the lessons learned from this sudden pause to her fast-paced, successful professional life. She wrote about the invaluable self-knowledge arising from the experience – knowledge that has now taken her into advising businesses to transform the way we live and work.

Jochen Zeitz is another of my heroes. Now chair of the Kering sustainable development committee and a leader and co-chair of The B Team, he introduced new values at Puma, the company he led for 18 years of his career.

At a monastery in Banz, Germany, under the ancient arches of a large refectory, Zeitz brought together the leaders of NGOs specialising in fair trade, ethical sourcing, and environmental responsibility. Rather than lecturing from the rostrum, these influential individuals huddled in small groups deep in deliberation with the executives of Puma. The two-day meeting was arranged annually by Zeitz during his tenure as Puma chief executive so that his team could have face-to-face conversations with their fiercest critics.

One year I attended the event. On the final evening, Zeitz asked the entire gathering a question. He said: “I am aware that, although we have done a great deal better than most, we have hardly yet scratched the surface of the actions we as a company need to take to be ethical, sustainable, and fair. Should I say this when I talk to the press?”

There followed urgent murmuring across the room. The consensus was, yes, he should talk to the press on this issue – even at the risk that the share price might wobble. He did; it didn’t.

Rediscovering their moral compass, thousands of highly-paid professionals in their 40s and 50s are quitting well-paid jobs to devote their skills to the good of the planet. There are many examples in the west, but the trend is spreading. Anupam Jalote, for example, quit one of the most senior jobs in Indian telecommunications to develop anaerobic digesters so that villagers all over the sub-continent could cook with local sources of renewable energy. Work like this flies below the radar. You might have missed it. Most of the international media certainly have.

These pioneers are fuelled by their vision of what a new world could look like. They dare to take on what has never been done before. Now, when so few people have any vision at all of the future, this spirit embodies the kind of leadership so deeply needed across the globe. Today’s pioneers are sufficiently in touch with the planet, and with their inner voice, to know what needs doing and how to do it.

What I’m expressing here has been known in all the great spiritual traditions, but is now being reclaimed for a secular world in crisis – and in language that we can all understand. Without leaders of this type in every sphere and sector, our chances of survival are grim. But working together with such leaders, we can build a world of which our grandchildren will be proud.

Dr Scilla Elworthy is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and a member of the World Future Council. She is the author of Pioneering the Possible: awakened leadership for a world that works

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