An organizational opportunity for the world
There is no doubt that the world has changed, and there is no doubt that it will continue to change. However, one thing that will remain the same is the importance of companies and organizations, and it is worth asking ourselves what the new role is, not what we want, but what the world needs.
It is now widely accepted that businesses and projects must have a triple impact: economic, social, and environmental. They must be profitable while positively impacting social aspects and the communities where they live and, at the very least, not harming the environment and taking responsibility for their environmental impact. One could see it as something obvious, but unfortunately, it is not and has not been so.
We have understood companies as profit maximizers for their shareholders. Much progress has been made in this maximization, generating tremendous growth, new technological possibilities, and substantial improvements in the quality of life of a significant part of the global population. Still, at the same time, social and environmental issues have been left out, in many cases, as collateral damage in pursuit of growth in the quest for return on investment.
The triple impact appears then as a requirement not only of conscience but also as an urgency given that the profit-maximizing logic has already reached an edge that is not sustainable and puts at risk the future of humanity on this planet. A breakthrough towards this level of understanding would have a gigantic impact, but more is needed. In that logic, we see that while the triple bottom line is urgent and necessary, it is insufficient for the global challenges we face at the level of humanity.
At the base of the profit-maximizing and cost-optimizing culture is a fragmented conception that has been separating the inside and the outside for years and has polar logic, incapable of sustaining supposed paradoxes. This is manifested in the separation between the social and the non-social, in the conception of the environment as something outside of me, and in the logic of scarcity based on the premise that “resources are scarce and needs are infinite.”
It is this culture that we now need to integrate and transcend, incorporating all the advances and insights that have allowed us to get to where we are and giving space and promoting the emergence of a new culture that will enable us to address what we have in a complex and compelling, orderly and participatory, connected and autonomous way. This poses a unique organizational challenge. To go beyond the triple impact.
Social, environmental, and economic issues arise from a cultural framework clearly showing its limitations. We have referred to this as the fourth impact, the cultural impact. While achieving economic, social, and environmental results, we see the urgent need to leverage a new culture and enable structures to evolve towards higher levels of integration. Ultimately, this will translate into a new, permanent way of making decisions.
In organizations, it is essential to embark on this journey promptly. This starts by listening empathetically to the contexts in which they operate, broadening their focus from outcomes to impact, and distributing power with distributed organizational models that make the organization more flexible and adaptive. It also involves managers acknowledging that this is a learning journey into unknown territories and that their preferred formulas may need to be revised for the new complexity.
The fourth impact involves mobilizing culture and leveraging new decision-making processes so that it becomes evident that the benefit does not have to be just for me but for us, and beyond, for all of us.
The fourth impact, the cultural change, is the lever for a regenerative economy that can “turn the game around.”
Author:
Pablo Reyes Arellano, Executive Director of Memética
Photo by Inteligencia Artificial CANVA
