Sustainability makes good business sense, and we're all on the same team at the end of the day. That's the truth about the human condition.
Paul PolmanRead
I see business as an ecosystem.
Interpretation
Business should function collaboratively like an ecosystem, where all parts support each other.
In this quote by Paul Polman, he emphasizes that businesses should operate not just as isolated entities seeking profit, but as interconnected systems that support and nurture one another, much like an ecosystem in nature. This approach encourages sustainability and mutual growth, highlighting the importance of cooperation and responsibility in the business world.
In practice
During a business seminar discussing corporate responsibility, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of sustainability.
Sustainability makes good business sense, and we're all on the same team at the end of the day. That's the truth about the human condition.
I think the most important thing is to achieve what you set out to achieve. Just being a CEO in itself is not success. I would not relate success to a title or a position.
Let's work together to make our economies strong and our climate sustainable. It can be done.
I discovered a long time ago that if I focus on doing the right thing for the long term to improve the lives of consumers and customers all over the world, the business results will come.
Permissible growth in the future has to be based on sustainable and equitable models.
The young give us hope because young people are certain their best days still lie ahead - which explains why they're absolutely convinced they can change the world for the better.
Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay. The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse CEO - aided by his handpicked VP of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo - all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.
Profitability, growth, and safeguards against existential risks are crucial to strengthening a company's long-term prospects. But if these three factors constitute a company's 'hard power,' firms also need 'soft power': public trust and acceptance, won by fulfilling a company's social responsibility.
Entrepreneurs have only the murkiest picture of the future in which they are making their bets, and also there is ambiguity: they don't know when they push this lever or that lever that the outcome is going to be what they think it is going to be - there is the law of unanticipated consequences.
Almost all decisions based on cost accounting are utterly wrong.
We believe that business is good because it creates value. It is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange; it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.
Eventually, all companies are replaced.
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