an old friend of mine who's a
cardiologist told me something shocking
40% of first heart attacks are fatal for
some people this comes as a complete
surprise but for many there were warning
signs diabetes obesity family history
you know luckily many people react to
these warning signs before it's too late
Men's Health magazine runs this regular
story called the belly off Club which
features someone like this man Tom who
lost 150 pounds every story includes
what the magazine describes as the
wake-up call that pivotal moment when
the man realized something needed to
change he was out with his kids and was
out of breath or his doctor told him he
would die people do change sometimes
dramatically they do what's required to
thrive now we as a business community
and as a species are getting wake-up
calls will we listen the first call
record-setting heat droughts floods and
storms are becoming the norm
last year Australia had to change their
maps to reflect temperatures ranging
from 50 to 50 degrees centigrade up to
nearly 130 degrees Fahrenheit the
comedian Stephen Colbert commented at
the time that's in January imagine what
it's like in the summer
it is the summer in Australia okay sir
no kidding aside the the scientific
community and the business community are
telling us that extreme weather is
already costing us billions of dollars
climate change is not some model or
future prediction to debate we are now
living in a hotter more volatile world
the second wake-up call the rising price
of resources as a billion more people
enter the middle class demanding more of
everything in one year China built 17
billion square feet of new space now
picture all of the commercial buildings
in Manhattan in that one year China
built not one commercial Manhattan but
the equivalent of 30 this relentless
rise in demand for resources is causing
a change a fundamental shift in how the
world works during the 20th century
according to McKinsey analysis the cost
of everything going into our economy the
commodities that we call metal and food
and energy dropped steadily with
exception for some world wars but in
this century the prices rose
dramatically wiping out a hundred years
of productivity gains in just 10 we are
living in a scarce or more expensive
time and the third wake-up call acts as
a multiplier on the other too radical
technology driven transparency is
opening up to public scrutiny everything
about how a company does business
including its suppliers and its partners
around the world we can now ask and
answer so many questions about every
product where did it come from who made
it where they paid a living wage what's
the carbon footprint did it use toxic
elements or scarce resources
this hotter scarce or more open and
connected world presents enormous risks
but huge opportunities trillion-dollar
markets in energy buildings
transportation consumer products and
Finance are all in play I think business
is uniquely qualified to tackle these
challenges but it's going to require a
very deep change in how we do business
what
I'm calling the big pivot now today
companies maximize short-term earnings
and then get to these big shared
environmental and social challenges when
there's easy wins or there's enough
pressure from outsiders we need to flip
our priorities and operate in a way that
tackles our largest challenges first and
then works back from there to find a way
that uses capitalism and markets and all
of the tools we have to do it most
profitably this is about resilience when
Hurricane sandy hit New York we learned
how fragile we really are the seas
rushed into lower Manhattan and a part
of the electric grid a transponder
exploded plunging lower Manhattan the
heart of the business world the heart of
the financial world into darkness for
four days we need to lessen our
dependency on old technologies in
ancient fuels Europe is waking up to the
fact that one-third of its coal oil and
natural gas comes from this man this is
my favorite picture of a world leader
ever Europe has not been resilient to
hurricane Putin as I like to call it now
Germany and Switzerland in other
countries they're moving away from
fossil fuels as fast as they can and
companies around the world are realizing
they need to move quickly to the clean
economy as well Walmart is the largest
buyer of solar power in the country
outside of the military and when they
announced an increasing commitment to
renewables one of the top executives
said hey this keeps us open and running
no matter what the weather is no matter
who else might be down this is strong
resilience aggressive resilience we can
sell more stuff because we're
independent and we're flexible but how
do we capture this this resilience and
the big pivot well out of ten strategies
that I think are required I'm focusing
today just on three really critical
issues that change how we see the world
our vision in our perspective first we
need to fight the plague of
short-termism in business
corporate leaders are trying to please
Wall Street which is now more of a
casino than a market where over half the
shares are bought and sold in
milliseconds less than a blink of an eye
how can that be about fundamental value
a few CEO is like Unilever's Paul Polman
are fighting short-termism
by changing the conversation with Wall
Street or by stopping those quarterly
meetings with investors that don't care
about real value creation second we need
to set bold science-based goals in
business we set our targets bottom up
asking everybody how much they think
they can do but now imagine we were all
in a boat and it was filling with water
what we would not do is ask everyone how
much do you think you can bail today how
much do you feel like you can do no we'd
start bailing immediately and we'd
figure out how much we have to bail to
stay afloat we now know how fast we need
to go on carbon in particular the
numbers guys at PwC have calculated that
we need to reduce the amount of carbon
per dollar of GDP
by more than 6% per year indefinitely
it's far faster than we're going today
now a few companies have done what's
required and set their goals based on
science Ford Motor Company figured out
what its vehicles would need to look
like in the coming years to help the
world meet the carbon reduction goals
better engines biofuels electrification
and much more this strategy led directly
to the announcement that the f-150 for
2015 would be 700 pounds lighter due to
a shift from steel to aluminum this is
risky heretical work for Ford I mean
this is their number one best-selling
most profitable vehicle that they're
fundamentally altering it's a pretty big
pivot but consider now also Tesla the
most successful maker of electric cars
that's asking an even more heretical
question why do we need an internal
combustion engine and this brings me to
my third strategy which is asking
heretical questions that challenge the
way we do things can we collaborate with
our direct competitors or even with our
bitter critics to solve big challenges
can we operate with no fossil fuels or
water this building the bullet Center in
Seattle generates more energy than it
needs so can we build so called
regenerative businesses and products
that through their existence improve the
world yes can we challenge business
models
cBS a major drugstore chain with 125
billion in sales stop selling tobacco
recently and renamed itself CVS health
they asked a heretical question can we
stop selling products that don't fit
with our strategy of improving people's
health or stop supporting products that
have no place in a thriving prosperous
world some companies are trying now to
connect their products to purpose a
larger purpose like bringing energy or
water to the developing world or
teaching young children hand-washing
skills to save lives like Unilever is
doing now this may sound like
philanthropy and on some level of course
it is but there's also a cold hard
business logic here if children don't
survive easily preventable diseases they
can't grow up to contribute to society
or become part of the marketplace as
customers or employees if people have no
water or energy they can't buy detergent
or computers as many wise people have
said business cannot thrive unless
society and the planet are thriving as
well we're not separate our mega
challenges and our economies are all
connected so let me ask you how will you
challenge how you live and how you do
business to deal with the realities we
face and take advantage of the
opportunities we need business to
innovate and create new products new
business models that bring about a
thriving future we need business leaders
to think with their heads and their
wallets for sure but also with their
hearts what's your heresy
what if our future and our lives
depended on the answers because they do
thank you
you