A Quote by Jeffrey Hollender
Yes, I am optimistic about the environment. If you assume business is exerting the most negative influence on the environment and also has the possibility to impact it positively, there are a bunch of forces that are impacting business that are fundamentally different from the situation 3 or 4 years ago.
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Yes, business really does change. 400 years ago, corporations were formed by royal decree. 300 years ago, many countries were powered by slave labour, or its closest moral equivalent. 200 years ago, debtors didn't go bankrupt, they went to prison. 100 years ago - well, business is largely the same as it was a century ago. And that's exactly the problem. Business hasn't changed, but today's array of tectonic global shocks demands a different, radically better kind of business. Yesterday's corporations visibly cannot meet today's economic challenges.
What's so great about my business is that every day is different than the day prior. Today, the industry bears little resemblance to the one I joined 30 years ago, which is what's so exciting about it. But the one thing that hasn't changed is the notion that a successful business model is one that has the ability to respond positively to the unexpected shifts in the winds as they continue to present themselves.
If you look at Detroit, that mayor, it's been a train wreck for 40 years, the population has gone from 2 million to 700,000. This Mayor comes in, and he talked about streetlights, sanitation, jobs, policing, schools, affordable housing. He's doing it all, and it's growing for the first time in 30 years. Literally, one man. But that one man couldn't do it without business. And business couldn't have done it without a political environment where they wanted to improve things. If you had an antibusiness environment there, it would still be down there.
Fundamentally, if you look at where the environmental issues are coming from, it's all because of humans and our impact on the environment, so while it's true that one individual is not going to sufficiently fix the environment, it is a necessary thing.
No government is here forever. And there are other forces - the most potent force in our society, in fact, big business - doing good for the environment.
It took me awhile to not be ashamed to be a poet in the business environment, and to be a business person in the poet environment.
Fifteen years ago, if you said business will help save the environment people would have laughed at you. Today, I believe that is a serious proposition.
Just as with other great words, the word environment means different things. You might say that a cave woman twenty thousand years ago sweeping out the cave was improving the environment. Many people improving the environment think only in terms of the air they breathe in their hometown and the water in the aquifer under their hometown. My guess is very few are thinking centuries ahead or thousand of years ahead, but that's what we have to do.
I believe in 'business has a force for good.' You know, business has an impact on society. Of course, it creates jobs. It creates prosperity, but on the other hand, we also leave a negative footprint behind.
Long ago I added to the true old adage of "What is everybody's business is nobody's business," another clause which, I think, morethan any other principle has served to influence my actions in life. That is, What is nobody's business is my business.
I found out that the animal agriculture business has a huge impact on our climate, so by cutting down on your meat and dairy consumption, you can have a huge impact and help the environment.
I saw that we needed to grow but our top line wasn't growing, so we had to find other ways to grow the business. We had to reshape our business and acquire share in a non conventional way. But most tech leaders don't come out of a business background. They really have a parochial point of view. All they know are the go-go years of Silicon Valley. That's the environment in which they were raised.
I think the most important CEO task is defining the course that the business will take over the next five or so years. You have to have the ability to see what the business environment might be like a long way out, not just over the coming months. You need to be able to both set a broad direction, and also to take particular decisions along the way that make that broad direction unfold correctly.
A business leader has to keep their organization focused on the mission. That sounds easy, but it can be tremendously challenging in today's competitive and ever-changing business environment. A leader also has to motivate potential partners to join.
Everything we produce and consume has an impact on the environment, on social fabrics, and on the economy. This impact can be positive or negative and, frequently, some combination of the two.
It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.
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