Blog

Our colleague in The Netherlands, Herman Mulder, has just published some sound and impressive recommendations for adjusting markets to accommodate “wealth” creation more comprehensively, as defined by the Sustainable Development Goals. I find his thinking closely aligned with the Caux Round Table’s vision of a moral capitalism.

You can read his piece here.

Herman now works with the Impact Institute. He is noted for being an advocate, expert in international law and a key player in the development of corporate responsibility, impact investment and ESG integration. Mulder is most notable for the initiation of the Equator Principles. He is currently a Chairman of the True Price Foundation, member of the board of the Dutch National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for MNE’s and the former Chairman of the Global Reporting Initiative.

Here in Minnesota, in response to concerns about “systemic racism” preventing the U.S. from providing “liberty and justice for all,” the Caux Round Table convened a round table to discuss how we talk and might talk about “racism.” Then, coincidently, following that event, Pope Francis issued his Encyclical Fratelli Tutti on dialogue and encounter with others.

A summary of our round table and a comment on the Pope’s important argument are included here.

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

Recently, our fellows held a dialogue to reflect on what has happened over the past few months to our global community as it has responded to the coronavirus pandemic. The various observations tabled for consideration had a centrifugal tendency to converge on leadership.

My summary of the discussion sent for your information is:

Modernity has lost its fondness for convergence. It is now diffusing and pluralizing its energies. Its essence is subdividing, morphing into different forms and expressions. Inconsistencies among cultures are escalating into wars of cultures.

Covid has exposed such vulnerabilities and shortcomings. Consider the subsidence of leadership. Self-righteous employees impose their will on those around them. Behaviors become toxic at will. The flow of trust ebbs.

The world today is audaciously complex, ambiguous and interdependent. It is easy to lose one’s confidence when the range of possible outcomes expands and there is no line of sight to reliably expected outcomes. Little can be foreseen. When everything might be possible, trust becomes impossible.

We have lost time for reflection. The rate of flow in which we try to swim towards our destinations increases daily and threatens to sweep us away from our lifelines at a time when we have no trusted heritages to use as life vests.

The qualities we need in ourselves and to perceive in others are: 1) courage, 2) understanding the other and 3) value organization. These can emerge from conscience which teaches us how to co-value ourselves and others, to become aware of our roles and duties; of how to appreciate our positions of stewardship bringing moral order out of chaos.

We are separated from one another by dispositions, psychological presumptions or world views. Some fall back on a will to power. Others are self-indulgent, but in the emotional Dionysian fashion. Yet more prefer Apollonian forms and structures. Still others are detached rationalists. And many are just materialists.

These disparate dispositions bond their respective followings into mini-cultural communities which become tribes. Leadership today is within the tribes, not daring to cross boundaries or risk contact with what seems to be a soul-destroying contagion or might lead to a draining away of self. We debate identities, teleologies in win/lose terms, not strategies for collaborations producing mutual benefit.

In such a world, there would be value in slowing down the mind-process and still the fever of emotions which can only afflict us with their distractions and their undermining of our self-control. There is also value in embracing each other.

Perhaps we need to develop the skill of mapping the domains of tribes, a social and cultural cartography where overlapping Venn circles might appear on the map.

But who has the courage? Acceptance of accountability is an expression of courage.

Values are the well-spring of courage. Courage will crystallize leadership.

The need is to convert this crisis into new possibilities through rethinking. The will to propose without fearing others would be most welcome. It would draw forth trust by setting an example of accepting responsibility for the future. Its impact would scale across the tribes.

It is said that the Greeks defeated the Persians in the naval battle of Salamis on September 29, 480 BCE.

It’s not often one can justifiably note an event of 2,500 years ago, but the Battle of Salamis may be such an occasion.

Here are some reflections for your consideration on the consequences for our modern civilization of that defeat of the Persians so long ago.

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

I send for your consideration a short essay by Karel Noordzy titled “The Impact of Corona: Curse or Blessing?” on the challenges we now face in a time of inflection between one era, the Post World War II order, and another, as yet not fully arrived and so not fully perceived and understood at all. What will that new era bring to us or rather, what will we bring to that new era: hope and wellbeing or anger, exploitation by the strong of those who can be turned to their advantage, resentment and repression of the best in human nature?

Karel worked as a Senior Consultant at McKinsey & Company. He then ran Schiphol Airport in The Netherlands and came up with the strategy of reaching out to regional American airports to fly to Schiphol as their point of entry into Europe, which turned Schiphol into one of the most used – and most highly rated – airports in Europe. Karel then ran the Dutch railroad system. He has been a leader of the Caux Round Table for over 20 years. Karel has written a book on leadership, which we will soon be published in English.

Karel has given us a serious and I think correct analysis of our time. By listing our difficulties so forthrightly, he jumpstarts the process of our figuring out what we should do and how we should do it.