What is your outlook for the global economy in 2011?
If you ask 20 or 30 people for their outlook on the global economy right now,
you get 20 or 30 different answers so I am not going to try to give an outlook on the
global economy.
What I can say is that as I travel around the world, which I've been doing over the
last six months on all four major corners where business is transacted, I see
business folks intent and intense on trying to make their businesses better,
more effective, more efficient, and to compete in the global market place - the
global market place. Some are growing faster than others,
some are struggling on their way back, my expectation is though that those efforts
will pay off and that as we go through 2011 and 2012, we'll continue to get
better.
In your travels, have you detected a sense of optimism for 2011?
I think it is positive. I think folks are focused on the new
technologies and what can be done with those technologies.
It's an interconnected world. It's a global world.
It's a global business environment and we need to understand and accept that
and compete in that market place. How do business and government work together?
Over regulation stymies an economy. I think that discipline and structure are
necessary parts of business. I think it's incumbent upon chief
executives to ensure that in fact they run their business in a controlled type of way
for the interest of their customers, their shareholders, and their employees but to
over control a business causes that business to focus on things that are not
core to what it is they're trying to do. So I think all governments and all
regulatory organizations need to be cautious about what they ask business to
do.
How can organizations develop resilience in this new world of risk?
I think risk is a part of business. I think risk is a part of what we do.
It's a necessary condition for us to excel and for us to succeed.
And I think economies and businesses around the world accept that risk.
They attack that risk and they put in place the systems they need and the
organizations they need to compete in that environment.
Frankly, that's where I think a lot of the exhilaration in an organization's
experience comes from. It's a challenge but it's good in the way
we drive forward.
Are innovation and risk linked? Innovation and risk are absolutely
connected, they always have been, I think they always will be.
And I think that businesses and economies that approach it that way, that understand
that the two are connected, that to put things in place that are required to
control what you're doing are a necessary part of the way we challenge the economy,
the way we challenge our competitors, and the success we're able to build in the
things that we do.
How can companies turn sustainability into a competitive advantage?
I've been in business now 45 years. I've been trained and guided that good
executives take the best advantage they can of all the resources they have:
their facilities, especially their people, to use them in the most efficient,
most productive way they can, it is the way to run a business and to drive a business
and to grow a business. You need to do the same with the
resources we have that our natural resources.
Sustainability, I think, is a natural part and a natural extension of running the
business in the right way. Sustainability is a good business -- it's
a good business approach. It uses more effectively and more
efficiently the resources we have. And for an executive to say "I focus on
my employees and try to make them more efficient but I don't focus on the energy
that I consume and try to make it more efficient" to me just doesn't compute.