A Quote by Paul Polman

Too many companies are running their business into the ground, I would argue, by being myopically short-term focused on the shareholder. — © Paul Polman
Too many companies are running their business into the ground, I would argue, by being myopically short-term focused on the shareholder.
We don't really look at the stock, you know? Because for us, it's about the long term. And so we're very much focused on long-term shareholder value but not the short-term kind of stuff.
Some people would argue the other side: that the business of business is business, and companies should only be focused on profits. But in today's world, I don't think corporations can only be focused on profits, because they are inextricably linked with the communities that they serve. I do not believe you can be a leader in your industry without being a leader in your community. It's a fundamental shift in how you think about business.
My primary early interest was in marketing and my aim was to improve its theories, methods and tools. Early on I pressed companies to adopt a consumer orientation and to be in the value creation business. I didn't pay much attention to the social responsibilities of business until later. Now I am pressing companies to address the triple bottom line: people, the planet, and profits. I found that companies were too much into short term profit maximization and they needed to invest more in sustainability thinking.
The most important thing that a company can do in the midst of this economic turmoil is to not lose sight of the long-term perspective. Don't confuse the short-term crises with the long-term trends. Amidst all of these short-term change are some fundamental structural transformations happening in the economy, and the best way to stay in business is to not allow the short-term distractions to cause you to ignore what is happening in the long term.
Our responsibility is to maximise shareholder value, and if that means we can make short-term investment where we can maximise short-term value, we can do that.
I think a lot about intergenerational justice. Short-term versus long-term helps to explain a lot of the policy disagreements that happen between the parties, and I would argue that in most ways, we are the party with more long-term thinking.
The big companies are the private industry. But they're faced with a short-term need to show a profit in short-term.
We're very much focused on full shareholder-value return. We have to get our stock moving. But I won't do something in the short run that I don't feel is right for the long run. That, I've watched many CEOs do.
Too many investors overvalue companies in the near term while undervaluing them in the long term.
For too long, the world has been focused on short-term growth and development at the expense of our long-term survival as we have depleted our natural resources at historically reckless rates.
Being able to go to work every day with such a good friend - especially in this business where your jobs are short, the turnover's fast, and you're working all the time with so many different people, and there's so many different projects going on that the odds are that you could actually book something that hopefully, knock on wood, is a long-term job with one of your best friends - is too good to be true.
Every time I would arrive in China I would go through a few days of depression from being reminded of both short-term and long-term ruin; the ruining of the city that is happening in the short-term, and the ruining of culture and history that has happened over decades. When you see a building that says so much about the culture that built it being destroyed, there are a lot of emotions. You feel a lot of anger when you see a building being destroyed and realize that it's just a small part of what's going on in the entire country.
Politicians and the government have become too interested in short-term gains. Of course, if you look at the direct financial returns in the short term, human space flight is expensive. But they need to look longer term.
I focused my mind and energies on short-term Trump problems, which allowed me to avoid thinking about my own long-term Trump problem of having given him the benefit of the doubt for more than a decade, despite having many reasons not to.
We exist to build the business of our clients. The recommendations we make to them should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have.
Some argue we should get coal, oil and gas out of the ground as quickly as possible, build more pipelines and make as much money as we can selling it here and abroad. Their priorities are the economy and meeting short-term energy needs so we can live the lives to which we've become accustomed.
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