RESHAPING SYSTEMS
Son after Hurricane Sandy devastated large parts of the New York City area, I spoke with Jonathan F. P. Rose, a founder of the green community planning movement, who was writing a book that looks at cities as systems.6 "We're at an inflection point about the belief that climate change is a serious long-term problem we must deal with," Rose said. "Sandy's worst hit was the Wall Street area. You don't hear any climate warming deniers down there these days. In the Wall Street culture a quarter is a long time away. But Sandy may have gotten them to think about a much longer time horizon. "If we reduce our production of heat-trapping gases today, it would still take at least three hundred years for the climate to begin to cool, perhaps much longer," Rose added. "We have strong cogni tive biases toward our present needs, and are weak thinkers about the long away future. But at least we're starting to recognize the degree to which we have put human and natural systems at risk.
What we need now is leadership. Great leaders must have the es sentiallong view that a systems understanding brings."
Take business. Reinventing business for the long future could mean finding shared values supported by all stakeholders, from stock owners to employees and customers to communities where a company operates. Some call it "conscious capitalism," orienting a company's performance around benefiting all such stakeholders, not just aiming for quarterly numbers that please shareholders (and studies show that companies like Whole Foods and Zappos with this broader view actually do better on financials than their purely profit-oriented competitors).7
If a leader is to articulate such shared values effectively, he or she must first look within to find a genuinely heartfelt guiding vision. The alternative can be seen in the hollow mission statements espoused by executives but belied by their company's (or their own) actions.
Even leaders of great companies can suffer a blind spot for the long-term consequence if their time frame is too small. To be truly great, leaders need to expand their focus to a further horizon line, even beyond decades, while taking their systems understanding to a much finer focus. And their leadership needs to reshape systems themselves.
RESHAPING SYSTEMS
Son after Hurricane Sandy devastated large parts of the New York City area, I spoke with Jonathan F. P. Rose, a founder of the green community planning movement, who was writing a book that looks at cities as systems.6 "We're at an inflection point about the belief that climate change is a serious long-term problem we must deal with," Rose said. "Sandy's worst hit was the Wall Street area. You don't hear any climate warming deniers down there these days. In the Wall Street culture a quarter is a long time away. But Sandy may have gotten them to think about a much longer time horizon. "If we reduce our production of heat-trapping gases today, it would still take at least three hundred years for the climate to begin to cool, perhaps much longer," Rose added. "We have strong cogni tive biases toward our present needs, and are weak thinkers about the long away future. But at least we're starting to recognize the degree to which we have put human and natural systems at risk.
What we need now is leadership. Great leaders must have the es sentiallong view that a systems understanding brings."
Take business. Reinventing business for the long future could mean finding shared values supported by all stakeholders, from stock owners to employees and customers to communities where a company operates. Some call it "conscious capitalism," orienting a company's performance around benefiting all such stakeholders, not just aiming for quarterly numbers that please shareholders (and studies show that companies like Whole Foods and Zappos with this broader view actually do better on financials than their purely profit-oriented competitors).7
If a leader is to articulate such shared values effectively, he or she must first look within to find a genuinely heartfelt guiding vision. The alternative can be seen in the hollow mission statements espoused by executives but belied by their company's (or their own) actions.
Even leaders of great companies can suffer a blind spot for the long-term consequence if their time frame is too small. To be truly great, leaders need to expand their focus to a further horizon line, even beyond decades, while taking their systems understanding to a much finer focus. And their leadership needs to reshape systems themselves.
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..
