Instinctively I have been advocating for a long time that the financial and accounting paradigm is the cause of much of the world’s economic and social well-being woes. Not only do many decisions made based on conventional (and often short term biased) financial (accounting-based) measures damage sustainable economic growth, development and social upliftment, they often positively encourage courses of action that destroy sustainable economic well-being and upliftment.

Practices such as the balanced scorecard, that amongst other emphasises aspects such as “responsible citizenship,” is but one of the many trains of thought aimed at countering the biased impact of accounting-based financial measures.

Political and social systems such as communism and socialism are also evidence of movements aimed at finding solutions for long term sustainable economic upliftment and well-being; although we know today that, while pure in theory, their application had the opposite impact, counterintuitive to beliefs at the time.

Similarly, public conscience pressure groups such as the “green people” and other environmentalists are in effect trying to counter the negative impact of short-term financial accounting based measures.

A key concern is that, by and large, financial measures form the basis of most reward and incentive schemes, thereby often positively encouraging behaviour and decision-making that is “making the world economically poorer”. In addition, so much human and intellectual effort is spent (wasted?) on engineering creative costly solutions simply to “improve the financial ratios”, with no regard to true economic upliftment and well-being.

The solution? There is no silver bullet, but at least the awareness is growing that traditional bases of financial performance measurement does not encourage decisions and behaviour aimed at ensuring the long term survival of earth and mankind.

Perhaps the ultimate question should no longer be “What will shareholders say?”, but rather “What will our children and their children one day say of the legacies of their forefathers?”

Once again thank you for taking the time to post these two pieces of information that in many ways force us to think or re-think what is important in life and the fact that if measure success is a continuum, and it will look much different than if we place our gauge at only discrete locations.

Prof. Christensen makes extremely important points as far as what are our priorities, Of course I am biased in many ways to his way of thinking because he is a fellow BYU grad and therefore our philosophy of life is the same. But on ceteris paribus if people measure success from the point of view not of accumulated material goods, but rather a combination of personal satisfaction, family life, knowledge and understanding plus the financial rewards for your effort.

Then success has an added dimension and will help us to have happier lives.

The old idea that he who collects more toys at the end of the game (life) wins, will have no value. Because what are you going to do with the toys if you have no time to play with them? You will never hear a dying man when his family surrounds him to say “I wish I had spent more time at the office”

Cheers
Rogelio

Thank your taking the time to compile the information that you shared with us in your blog, I agree with many of your views in particular with the silly position that some of the head of state and the “top brass” of many MNC who are responsible of the problems that we are facing in great extent and love to blame others for their stupidity, in addition to get big bonuses while reducing the work force in their organizations.

I was very happy to see the final paragraphs where you point out to the comments from the younger generation as far as listen to all people, and hear the comments in particular of the youth. Reason being the fact that they see things from a fresh perspective and conduct business in ways that they older generation has no clue about, I often laugh when I see advertisers trying to reach the youth using the slogans and techniques that were carved when TV was the most powerful means to influence consumer behavior, because the show absolutely a lack of of touch with their audience. Younger people don’t even watch TV (at least they are not glue to the set in their living rooms) if they watch they prefer another of way of delivery their own mobile phones, their laptops or the ubiquitous I-Pad.

So if they fail to understand how to reach them, can they own a piece of the real estate in their minds with their commercials? The obvious answer is no!! and therefore all the money that they spent in ads is wasted.

I guess we need to listen to all constituencies with interest and attention also because they will provide us with very valuable market intelligence and also will show us where the unmet needs are so that the next generation of our products and services will satisfy them and thus we will be able to generate sustainable growth.

I am sure that if we take an objective way of how things really are around the world, we will realize that with some effort and innovation we could unleash tremendous growth that will benefit people around the globe, but we need to see where those dislocations are and find solutions that have mass appeal, while also watching over our planet I will modify somewhat the scripture and say “what does it profit to humanity if we win the world and trash our planet? Can we or our children live in it?

Cheers
Rogelio