Is it time to start valuing ourselves and others more effectively? Once upon a time – in an epoch before social media followers, annual salaries, KPIs and student grades – personal success was a matter of meaningful action and invaluable participation: a young hunter with extraordinary agility and prowess; an old crony with an uncanny knack for healing; a stoic leader with the strength of character to hold a community together through great challenge.

Through these early human millennia, success was intrinsically linked with contribution — and the value you added to your community, your family, or your tribe.

However, as our lives and mindsets have become more mechanized, so too has our concept of success. These days, the inherent value of personal contribution (and personal exceptionalism) is often overlooked. “Success” is only obtained if, and when, your talents and achievements can be quantified, and when they compare favorably to others’ performances and/or meet an accepted standard.

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The modern definition of success is often solely reliant on superficial numbers and benchmarks: KPIs, ROIs, exam marks and school grades, social media followers, viewers or readership, money earned, money spent, votes gained, profit margin, or monetary value added. All of this ignores the immeasurable (yet often more profound) impact our personal contribution has on our businesses, our community and our world.

Of course, this move toward calculable success keeps things nice and tidy for the authorities, statisticians and those keeping score. But it completely misses the boat in terms of our actual value as human beings and the traits that have genuinely made humans succeed and flourish through the centuries. Here are some modern concepts of success:

1. Encourages a focus on breadth and superficial accumulation, rather than depth and authenticity. A brief interaction with 50,000 Twitter followers is considered more successful than an intimate relationship with three clients. A sprawling mansion full of loneliness and despair is considered more successful than a humble trailer brimming with love and laughter.

2. Devalues and belittles those whose daily contributions are impossible to calculate; i.e., full-time parents, caregivers, the unemployed and retirees. Those who don’t earn or study often struggle to determine their personal worth and find it difficult to recognize and celebrate the value they add to society. Additionally, this mindset drives many parents to seek validation through the actions and achievements of their children — successes that can be measured numerically — and to compare and compete with other parents.

3. Reduces the opportunity to seek purpose, meaning and inspired action in daily activities. In many of life’s pursuits, we are given a set of numbers to attain or aspire to, and we are somehow supposed to be inspired by these meaningless digits. There is no purpose in the quest or the result, and therefore most employees, students, and citizens are inherently uninspired and disengaged.

4. Rewards conformity over contribution. Seeking to be validated in socially-acceptable ways, many people ignore their personal desires, intuition, and talents in favor of accepted or ‘proven’ processes, methods, and practices. Individuality is diluted, and innovation is avoided for fear of perceived failure.

5. Perpetuates the illusion of control. Almost inevitably, the leading indicators of modern success are entwined with the actions and decisions of others. If we are to meet our sales targets, become a best-selling author, secure that dream gig, garner the promotion, make millions off our investment, and so on, we need to have the full support, agreement or cooperation of others. Sadly, we are conditioned to believe that we can control any situation; if we follow the right process, pull the right strings, behave the right way, say the right words, we will bring others onside and succeed in our quest. If we fail (we are told) it is because we didn’t try hard enough, or follow the right procedure. The concept of success based on external validation is deeply flawed in this regard; we may be in charge of our lives, but we are never, ever in control.

6. Ignores the most important qualities humans possess: cooperation, innovation and resilience. An employee’s ability to calm conflict and offer sound advice can easily be overlooked if they regularly miss their sales quota. An imaginative and inquisitive child may be counseled if they do not read or write to an ‘acceptable’ level. A courageous and hard-working single parent may not be widely appreciated if they cannot earn enough to rent their own home. Cooperation, innovation and resilience are the three most important characteristics in human evolution, and yet they are often overlooked and undervalued in modern society, for the simple reason that they cannot be easily quantified.

The need for measurable success is ingrained in our modern psyche and fulfills a purpose in our ongoing need for societal structure. But it is time to acknowledge that there is more to life — more to the value of any human being — than pure numbers can express. If we can expand our concept of success and remember the importance of non-numerical contribution, we can inspire people in more innate, natural ways to be a valued part of their workplace and community.

Importantly, if we begin to celebrate the multitude of intangible successes in society, we offer everyone an opportunity to recognize the real value they offer the world, no matter how isolated or indefinable that contribution may be.

Here are 10 questions you should be asking yourself to achieve authentic success:

1. How many times did I genuinely smile today?
2. How many vulnerable and honest moments did I have today?
3. How and who did I inspire today?
4. How did I allow myself to be inspired?
5. What did I change about myself today (beliefs, perception, behavior)?
6. What did I do better today than yesterday?
7. What can I forgive myself for today?
8. What can I forgive in another?
9. What action did I take today that honors my current dream/goal?
10. What have I done today that I can be proud of?

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Working with one eye on the future is never easy, especially when the weekly and monthly pace of change demands your immediate attention.

With CEOs spending an average of 62.5 hours a week at work, according to the Harvard Business Review, that doesn’t leave much time for strategy — which the same report shows is only 12 hours of a CEOs working week. YPO, the preferred partner organization of Real Leaders, recently published a series of articles to help inform and assist the busy CEO and entrepreneur — from future trends, to the value of mentors and strategy tips. 

Megatrends Shaping The World Beyond 2020

Every leader wants to know what the future holds. Many ask: “What’s after what’s next?” EY (Ernst & Young), one of the largest professional services firms in the world and one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, put together a Megatrends report in 2018 that took a deep dive into the key disruptive trends that will shape our world beyond 2020. The report suggests that the next waves of technology and demographics will result a concept called “multipolar” — different countries becoming increasingly connected, regional rebalancing and huge infrastructure programs spurring it all on. Read More

93% Of CEOs Believe Business Should Create Positive Impact Beyond Profit

The annual Global Leadership Survey by YPO received more than 2,200 responses from chief executives in 130 countries. A staggering 93% of respondents said that business should have a positive impact on society — beyond pursuing profits and wealth. More surprising was the fact that these executives now rank shareholders fourth in importance, after employees, customers and family. Read More

Stepping Into The Shoes Of A Mentee

Most people seek out a mentor because they typically have an issue that needs to be resolved. Catherine Hodgson, the co-founder and CEO of The Hodgson Group in South Africa, reckons that being a mentee is not defined by age or work experience. Her personal story demonstrates how becoming a mentee brought fresh perspectives, an enriched self-awareness and instilled new communication skills for her professional — and personal — use. Read More

Five Strategies To Help CEOs Grow As Leaders

Ongoing professional renewal and development is critical for success in leadership roles. Yet education takes a meager 3% of CEO time and even that tends to fall prey to grueling schedules. CEOs are expected to have all the answers. Unfortunately, this expectation can create a fear of failure or lead to over-reliance on past successes, which in turn creates blind spots as they are unable to acknowledge to themselves that they have a need for learning new skills. Here are some ways leaders can adopt to learn and grow. It will not only help them, but also their organizations to grow. Read More

The challenges facing the current U.S. president and congress is unlike anything in living memory. In case you haven’t noticed, the citizens of America are angry, and our patience with the dysfunction and corruption in Washington DC has run out.

This election campaign in 2016 may have been a warning shot over your bow, your last chance to take action before a more violent revolution takes hold in the most heavily armed nation on the planet. We ignore these signs at our peril.

Fast-forward to 2019 and with elections looming in 2020, it’s time for our elected leaders to stop misleading us and become real leaders, who address the real problems facing real Americans. How do leaders solve these problems when citizens disagree on so much? That is the biggest question!

Things to consider: Start by avoiding the temptation and tradition of playing to your base, which would further alienate half the country. Instead, bring the country together by identifying and acting on the issues that most Americans agree on.

Stop playing to your base and talk respectfully with each other, not at each other, and most importantly, listen for areas of agreement on which to build compromise. There are many areas that most Americans would gladly address, such as:

• Taking the money out of politics and making us feel as if you actually represent us – not the lobbyists, special interests and rich donors.
• Ending the dysfunction and doing your jobs (your job is to work together as Americans to do what is best for Americans, NOT to get re-elected or put yourself or your party over our country).
• Revive the American Dream, where hard work assures us a good life. Invest our tax dollars in the real issues to improve life for all Americans, not in foreign wars.
• Rebuild America’s infrastructure.

Show us that you can work together on important issues and prove that democracy can work for all of us, and that our institutions will have a future. If you fail then the great American experiment will be replaced by something else. We have no reason to believe that this “something else” will be as good as what you might have saved. And that’s something that we can all agree on. Let’s rise to the challenge, embrace our common interests and be real leaders.

Despite all the focus on engagement tools to better motivate employees, evidence shows they fail to spark a real sense of belonging. Although 87 percent of organizations listed engagement as a top priority in a recent study, a mere 15 percent of employees report actually feeling engaged in the workplace.

For employees to perform at their highest levels and be dedicated to the collective success of the organization, they need to love where they work. They need to feel an Emotional Connection (EC): a motivating sense of satisfaction and intellectual alignment that can only come from feeling appreciated and part of a shared and worthy purpose.

When employees see how their work positively affects organizational outcomes, and that it matters to their managers, colleagues, and the wider world, that’s an emotional connection. It requires something deeper and longer-lasting than financial incentives. Increasing salaries, offering huge bonuses and other perk-based plans will not create legitimate, long-term buy-in from employees, despite the cost. Neither do engagement efforts, as they are often executed by HR departments, which keeps leadership in the dark and detached from the process and from employees. Employees want the opposite: they want to feel aligned, and connected, with leaders.

When employees feel supported by leaders and able to be themselves, and profoundly connect to each other, it shifts their perception of their workplace to being “In Great Company.” It’s a positive dynamic: you’re in a place you love, you want to give more of yourself, and you choose to add value. As a result, you are more willing and able to achieve your business goals.

Not only is the state of emotional connectedness possible, it’s instrumental to organizational success. “Emotional connectedness undoubtedly inspires discretionary effort and passion from our employees and our customers,” says Bob Maresca, CEO of Bose Corporation. Dozens of other CEOs, including Hubert Joly, Chairman, and CEO of Best Buy, concur.

Leaders need to tend to five critical elements to spark emotional connection and improve workplace engagement and productivity. These elements are ubiquitous, implementation-focused, and together create a great workplace in which everyone is inspired to perform at their peak:

1. Respect: Feeling genuinely respected is the prime reason people love their work and are happy to be there. The sense of emotional connectedness is far deeper in environments where respect is established as a type of social currency and exchanged reciprocally. Making respect a part of the organization’s ethos and talent management processes, as Starbucks and Wegman’s have—is essential to applying this dimension. Respect is the element that catalyzes all the others to drive peak performance, the match that sparks the flame.

2. Alignment of values: Employees thrive in organizations that place emphasis on higher-order qualities such as honesty, integrity, and resonance with personal beliefs. The emotional connection is established when leaders and peers all embrace common values, and everyone holds each other equally accountable. Granular practices may be as simple as doing what you say you are going to do, or speaking a truth instead of avoiding it. More conceptually complex methods include living the values and ethics the company espouses, such as what happens in Patagonia and Johnson & Johnson.

3. Positive future: Employees thrive in progress-focused cultures that foster innovation and passion. Since positivity is a cultural contagion, emotional connectedness is achieved when individuals use it in a unified way to move forward together to achieve results. Although positivity may seem like a by-product of emotional connectedness, it’s also a powerful catalyst for creating an emotionally connected culture — as happens in WD-40 or Big River Steel.

4. Systemic collaboration: Employees feel part of a great company when true and functional collaboration becomes a part of the inner workings of the organization and its decision-making processes. Working in small teams, they co-create results using open communication channels, where information and advice for being better in the future are shared freely and frequently. Companies such as KeyBank and Atlassian observe several specific practices to co-create a sustained connection that drives results.

5. Killer achievement: Killer achievement delivers a combination of financial and emotional upside that amplifies the effect for everyone. Employees need to be empowered to focus on the customers and critical goals, with extraneous minutia, eliminated. Objectives should be simply stated, with the system removing competing interests that block the path to success. This entails identifying and measuring the elements most important to the organization, and allowing easy options for leadership, organizational development, and executive coaching. Companies like Best Buy and Netflix ensure their people can create killer outcomes, keeping the organizations relevant, strong, and innovative.

It takes leadership buy-in to establish these five elements, that makes aligned values, collaboration, co-creation, respect, and a focus on achievement all intrinsic parts of the organization. Frequent measurements should be made to gauge the changes happening in the organization. Establish a consistent pattern of follow-up, and make sure everyone in the company stays involved. When this dynamic is set into motion in a workplace, everyone is aligned — and willing to do whatever it takes to preserve and grow the business together. In that scenario, everyone wins.

Conventional wisdom says there are two kinds of leaders. Transactional leaders solve immediate problems: they make expedient deals, please people and keep the enterprise moving. But they falter at complex problems where the solutions are uncertain and the parameters are murky.

For that, you need strategic leaders: people who can transcend limits and achieve extraordinary goals, not once or twice, but routinely and repeatedly.  

The times clearly call for that kind of leader. And it’s becoming clear, from studies of the mind (the locus of mental activity) and the brain (the physical organ) that there is a way to train yourself to make decisions more strategically.

Imagine any complex moment of choice facing you as a leader. It could be an ethical dilemma (whether to fudge numbers or pay a bribe), a recruitment for a complex position (or a layoff), or an investment opportunity that could either solidify the enterprise’s future or squander it. How do you ensure you make the right choice this time – and build your capacity to make the right choice in the future?

The way you think about other people, at that moment of decision, makes a difference. You could focus on what you want, what they want, and giving everyone what they want. Psychologists call this type of mental activity subjective valuation; it activates and strengthen the “low ground,” as we call it, of your mind and brain. The low ground is essential for anyone in an accountable role. But it’s limited.

To influence effective change, in your organization or the world around you, you need to activate the “high ground” of your mind and brain. Instead of thinking about what people want, you think about what they are thinking, and what they’re likely to do next. Psychologists call this “mentalizing,” and for many people, it’s a bit uncomfortable. Indeed, it’s associated with people of low status. But when you’re an executive leader, thinking in this way, you galvanize your influence and effectiveness.

So the next time you have a major decision, don’t just think about how to make people happy – including yourself. Think about what has led others to the position they hold. That will help you strengthen the high ground of your mind and brain, and thus to build strategic leadership into a habit. The experience of this type of leadership can be compared to listening for a voice within yourself: a kind of “wise advocate,” seeing you as others do, but also looking out for your deepest fulfillment.

The more prowess you gain as a leader, the stronger this voice becomes – and the easier it is to take on a similar voice of strategic influence in the organization around you.

This is an adaption from the book “The Wise Advocate” by Art Kleiner, Jeffrey Schwartz and Josie Thomson.

Kleiner is the editor in chief of strategy+business, the management magazine published by PwC. Schwartz is a research psychiatrist at UCLA School of Medicine and a leading expert in neuroplasticity and Thomson is an award-winning executive coach, speaker, author, and two-time cancer survivor. 

Human potential is the only limitless resource in the world. Not time. Not money. Not skill. Not fame, beauty, or charm. I don’t care if you’re jaw-droppingly gorgeous, at the top of your vocational game, or have more money than you know what to do with, at some point, those wells may run dry.

Wrinkles will show up, and your vitality will begin to wane. The needs of the marketplace may shift. The stock market might plummet, leaving you with an empty or depleted portfolio. But that is never the case with human potential. Who you might become is forever before you, beckoning you onward. What you might accomplish keeps whispering your name. However much of your potential you unleash, there is always more, just waiting to be tapped into.

We have all heard stories about children whose potential was recognized early – as a dancer, a chess master, a debater, or a lawyer – and who grew up surrounded by people who helped them realize their potential and live a full and fulfilling life. But for most of us, life isn’t like that. If you’re like most of the women and men I have worked with, this process of realizing your fullest potential will feel like something inside of you is being unlocked.

We’ve all had the experience of feeling “locked up.” Perhaps nothing has improved my prayer life quite like running for president. Let me tell you, all those cross-country flights on mini-me airplanes that require you to duck your head as you make your way to your seat, lest you crack your skull on the ceiling, force a deep faith. When we would hit turbulence, I would reflexively flatten my palm against the window, as if I could single-handedly keep the plane aloft. Just get this thing on the ground safely, I would silently will the pilot, who was seated only six feet away. Locked up is precisely how I felt.

Or what about when you’re stuck in bed sick while others are out having fun? I was due to fly to Chicago one time for a series of meetings that mattered greatly to me, and yet on the morning of my departure I awoke with a bad case of laryngitis. When I tried to greet my husband, I sounded about as smooth as a Texas bullfrog. Wanting to verbalize but having no voice? Yes, that’s a bit like being locked up.

And then there’s dieting. If you want to experience a certain locked-up sensation, give the Whole30 plan a try. No bread. No cheese. No ice cream. No fun. But to the diet’s creators’ credit, at least it’s only thirty days.

Indeed, what helps us move through these experiences of feeling locked up is the realization that it’s only a feeling; we’re not actually locked up. We know that eventually the plane will land, the sickness will abate, and we’ll eat bread and cheese once again. But what about being endlessly locked up? How would we cope with that?

Consider those who suffer a life-changing event – a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, a devastating car accident – that forever alters their mobility, their personality, their ability to function. When I went through treatment for breast cancer – the chemo, the hair loss, the ensuing surgeries and infections and pain – I wondered about things like permanence. Would I ever feel whole again? And then when Frank and I lost our younger daughter, Lori Ann, at age thirty-five, only eight months after that devastating diagnosis, it made my darkest days even darker.

You and I both recognize these two types of being locked up – the temporary and the permanent. And yet there is a third, and most tragic, form of paralysis that we often overlook – that is, the locked-up states we choose for ourselves.

Just off Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco Bay, between the Golden Gate Bridge and Treasure Island, sits Alcatraz Island, where, between 1934 and 1963, the most hardened criminals in the country were sent. Yet, even within the walls of this notoriously tough prison, there was a place where even the roughest, toughest prisoners admitted defeat: D Block.

D Block was where the solitary-confinement cell was located, a soul crushing “time out” for prisoners who misbehaved.

Known as “the hole,” solitary confinement was a soundproof, six-foot-by-eight-foot space outfitted with only a bed frame, a toilet, and a small sink. Prisoners who were viewed as an imminent threat to others, or who violated prison rules, were placed in solitary confinement for up to nineteen days, during which they had no human contact and no exposure to light, except for during the three-times-daily check-ins by a guard. During those meal breaks, the heavy outer door would open, allowing a shaft of light to stream through the room’s inner metal bars, and a tray of food, all lumped together, would be slid through a special opening. After about twenty minutes, the tray was returned, and the doors were closed, casting the cell back into pitch darkness.

Still today, if you visit Alcatraz, you can experience one of these isolation chambers for a few minutes. After being ushered into the cell, you are given a quick overview, and then the heavy door is slammed shut. There is nothing quite like the sensation of being in a space so dark and desolate that you can neither hear the outside world nor see your hand directly in front of your face. Whatever good you might bring to the world around you fades to black as you stand there hopeless, helpless, and afraid.

Now, imagine choosing this fate not as an hour-long tourist attraction, but as a way of life. Real life. Your one and only wild and precious life.

Whether we’re talking about an introvert in a sea of Type A personalities, a thoroughbred trying to survive in a donkey-paced work environment, an imaginative dreamer tucked inside an accountant, a willing friend who finds herself friendless, a contributor who questions her ability to contribute, a would-be success story needing assurance that she won’t fail, nobody in their right mind stays locked up voluntarily. And yet this is exactly what I see countless people do each day, in every imaginable vocation, location, and walk of life, when they forfeit the freedom that can be theirs. To keep your potential locked up is to look at the offer of all-encompassing liberation and say, “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

May this never be said of you – or me. May we instead be the kind of people who welcome our better, stronger, sturdier selves with arms opened wide – no excuses, no apologies, no regrets.

This is an adaption from Carly Fiorina’s new book “Find Your Way: Unleash Your Power And Highest Potential,” releasing in April 2019 from Tyndale House Publishers. Find it on Amazon

Humanity is at a crossroads. Every day we hear stories of division, of a loss of connection to human kindness, and of people treating each other as though they don’t matter.

Every day we hear stories of positive action, of strangers reaching out to help each other, and of joy, kindness and celebration. Every day we hear, read and create both realities.

We know enough to solve virtually all of the world’s problems, but we don’t do it. We have the intelligence, knowledge, technology and capability to create a world that brings out the best in organizations and allows people to live in fairness, greater harmony and opportunity. Why would we choose anything else? Yet every day, people and organizations choose a different path.

If we change our businesses, we can change this path. Our organizations can, by embracing a new cultural paradigm, become beacons of positive action. Culture is both the key and pathway to making this choice.

When businesses are out of alignment with their people, their culture, and their ability to anticipate and implement change, they most likely haven’t reached their full human and profit potential. What we know from quantum physics is that alignment matters. For example, the energy it takes to exploit your employees to increase profits far outweighs the energy it would take to generate more revenue by respecting your employees. As more businesses choose brilliance, respect and kindness, the effect will be cumulative, changing the tenor of how we handle business. Your organization’s ability to proactively respond to change is a key factor in your strategy, innovation and consciousness in the world economy.

3 things every business should acknowledge to make the world a better place.

1. A business exists to do more than make money. Even if its primary function is to make a profit, a business impacts its workforce, the community in which it resides, and society as a whole through its branding, products and services.
2. A business influences the fabric of our larger culture, our societal interactions, and the health of our planet. Take the iPhone, for example. Although only one product, it has changed the way we look at technology, communicate, and view the role of smartphones in our lives. Need I say more? Companies have an enormous impact on us in both positive and negative ways. Businesses like Apple have reshaped our communication, connection, what we value, and how we spend our time.
3. Our workforce is human. The workforce is comprised of social beings with a need to connect, to be treated with dignity and respect, and to develop their talents, skills, and competencies. I dislike the term “human capital.” We are not human capital; we are human beings. Everyone who works for a business is a person.

When a company chooses to tap its full potential, the opportunities for creative problem-solving and business success are exponential. These cultures become brilliant: they proactively respond to change in ways that decrease stress, inspire learning and promote organizational success.

For years, I have seen companies work around their cultural issues rather than confront them. I’ve seen them avoid telling the truth about behavior, and, over time, allow their culture to devolve into something nobody wanted, rather than evolving into something great. Often this occurs unintentionally, the result of corporate leadership not understanding how culture shapes the organization and how, simultaneously, the organization molds the culture.

Why would an organization create a culture it doesn’t really want, or create a culture that’s pretty good but could be much better? Consider these factors:

Organizational culture thrives in truth.

As a culture consultant, I’ve witnessed amazing transformations when companies begin to recognize and tell the truth about themselves. I’ve seen leaders in a family business who were barely speaking start to communicate again, allowing them to implement positive, strategic changes that helped their culture evolve. As a consultant for an energy company, I’ve coached a leader who designed an organizational structure that allowed the brilliance and talent of several previously siloed departments to coalesce. And unfortunately, I’ve also seen organizations shy away from telling the truth about their cultures and stay stuck in mediocrity. This refusal to recognize and see the truth, in turn, continues to support tremendous inefficiency, which causes talented people to leave at regular intervals.

You are always in a culture, and your culture is evolving at this moment.

You are always in a culture. Culture in your company isn’t an “extra” you can sideline or avoid until you have time. It isn’t a chair you stick in the corner and ignore. Instead, it’s like standing in the middle of a swimming pool. Every minute of each day the culture in your organization is evolving and you are immersed in it.

When a company hires a new CEO, the cultural foundation shifts. When an organization decides to reorganize, the culture allows or constrains the success of the reorganization. When an engineering department of a software company decides to create a new product, the culture will influence the product development. If the product is a huge success, the culture will evolve and change accordingly.

Why is culture always evolving? Organizational culture operates as a system, and like most systems, it’s in a continual state of evolution as new people, ideas, and decisions enter the system. At the same time, people, processes and old ideas exit.

As business attempts to improve its culture, it reduces culture to superficial elements or adopts a one-size-fits-all approach. In other words, business takes action without understanding how making a change in one part of the culture will affect the rest of the system. This may dilute the potential in other parts of their culture. You have an opportunity – and a responsibility – to rise to this occasion.

Larry Fink challenges. Tucker Carlson rants. David Brooks moralizes. Others wonder Can American Capitalism Survive?

They all correctly diagnose the problem—a broken economic system that is not meeting the needs of the vast majority of people and that has embedded incentives that make it designed to fail in the more perilous times ahead—but they all fail to see clearly how long we’ve had this problem, what is its root cause, and what is required for its solution.

Capitalism did not go off the rails in the last 40 years. It may have metastasized into a financialized cancer, but capitalism’s cancer gene has been there since the beginning. Unconstrained, growth-at-any-cost, profit-over-purpose capitalism has destroyed the lives of millions upon millions of people for hundreds of years. They just weren’t people we typically cared enough about to behave differently or to question the system, as long as it was working for us. By “we” and “us,” I mean those who created and have benefited most from the capitalist system. But we are coming to a day of reckoning. If we do not properly diagnose the root cause of our potentially fatal illness, we will fail to develop or—worse—fail to use a promising cure.

That such diverse public figures as Fink, Carlson and Brooks are now recognizing what everyday people around the world have known and felt for a long time is good news. System change can only happen if there is widespread recognition that the current system is failing. But that is not enough: System change also requires a credible alternative.

Our Historic Opportunity

Certain moments in history are pivotal. Those of us in positions of power lucky enough to live in those moments have the opportunity to shape the contours of history for future generations.

To understand better the opportunity we have today, it is useful to look back to previous pivotal moments that have shaped our lives in ways at once profound and invisible—like the quality of the air we breathe.

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was the most powerful institution in the world, and it was in desperate need of reformation. In response, a relatively unknown monk named Martin Luther posted 95 Theses to the public bulletin board of the day, challenging the Church’s fundamental corruption that let people off the hook for their bad behavior as long as they made charitable contributions to the Church. That single act of courage catalyzed the Protestant Reformation which, along with the Age of Discovery, accelerated the culture shift that gave birth to the Scientific Revolution, ushered in the Enlightenment and, perhaps most profoundly, unleashed the ethic of Individualism and the forces of Capitalism, which have increasingly dominated our culture globally for the last 500 years.

Fast forward to today: Capitalism is the most powerful institution in the world. As did the Church, capitalism shapes every part of our lives in myriad ways, from the beautiful to the destructive. Growing populist anger and the internet’s potential for radical transparency in the decade since the global financial crisis are elevating a fundamental public debate about the role of business in society and whether business should put purpose before profit. Others across the ideological spectrum have pointed out the obvious: hyper-individualism and its offspring, winners-take-all-capitalism, have together become an economic system that is in desperate need of reformation if it is to deliver on its unfulfilled promise to create prosperity for all, and for the long term.

But who will accelerate the necessary culture shift today and nail 21st Century Theses to capitalism’s door?

As it required a monk to reform the Church, it will require business leaders to reform capitalism.

Today every business leader in the world has the power tounleash a new reformation—a Capitalist Reformation—that has the potential to shape our history for the next 500 years.

The Capitalist System in History

The history of capitalism is like the history of humanity: complex; full of darkness and light; a reflection of who we are.

The British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company were the world’s first corporations. They were both founded around 1600, about 80 years after Martin Luther’s courageous act—and about the same distance as we are today from World War II and America’s “Greatest Generation.” For hundreds of years, these and other early corporations literally added to our spice of life and made our lives sweeter. Increased trade helped ideas flow more freely, particularly in the Western world. It also helped innovations multiply; comfort, convenience and leisure increase for many; and wealth accumulate for some. Yet, imperial capitalism came at a high cost with devastating negative consequences: colonialism, enslavement and land expropriation, genocide. In fact, it was the horrid that provided the capital—human, natural and financial—to support the immense and rapid advancements that today define our world.

One horrifying example looms large: Over more than 400 years, 12.5 million African people were kidnapped, enslaved and sold to build wealth and power largely for white men in the United States, the Caribbean and South America, as well as in Portugal, Spain and the UK. The first enslaved Africans were shipped directly to the Americas in 1518, one year after Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church. The centrality and largely unconstrained profit motive in capitalism has been with us since the beginning.

We are all making decisions—and have been making decisions for centuries—within the cultural and legal context of the economic system of capitalism as it has has been designed: in order to maximize profit. Since its beginning, that system has been based upon perverse incentives—incentives that led capitalists to enslave 12.5 million human beings. Those incentives led business people to pack human beings like cord wood, chained together in inhuman conditions, because that was the best way to ship container loads of “product” to maximize yield. It was business people—not just slave traders and plantation owners, but also their bankers and insurers—who priced their “product” to account for 20 to 30 percent loss in transit; 20 to 30 percent loss of human lives; 20 to 30 percent loss of mothers and fathers, of daughters and sons. That cold calculation was a result of the embedded incentives in the same economic system upon which our current global economy is based.

Any righteous judgment today of the individual ethics and morality of those business people does not address our willful blindness or lack of motivation to fix the still-present flaw in the design of an unjust system and the structural inequities and loss of our humanity that result.

But the point of looking clear-eyed at the history of capitalism is not about individual actions or inactions. It’s about having the courage to recognize the hard truths of the economic system in which we have been operating. The profits from the business of slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution that created the world we know today.

If business leaders want to take credit for all the good that has come from capitalism, then we also must reconcile all the bad that has come along with it. One way to do that is to use our unique power and privilege to design and invest in a better system that serves all of us, not just some of us.

A Capitalist System for the Future

The perverse incentives inherent in a largely unconstrained capitalist system still exist. These incentives drive behaviors that increase inequality, reduce social mobility, devalue communities, deplete soils, acidify oceans, destroy biodiversity, trigger mass migrations and social instability, and fuel violence and war. These perverse incentives lead to concrete business practices such as predatory pricing, wage suppression, insufficient investment in a just transition to zero-carbon business models, as well as business trends that are or are likely to impose huge costs on taxpayers resulting from rising contract labor, accelerating automation and worsening natural disasters. From the perspectives of a growing number of business leaders, investors and policy makers, these incentives are now creating unacceptable systemic risk. This is why the systemic design flaws in unconstrained capitalism are creating unlikely bedfellows such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vice President Mike Pence and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

BlackRock manages more than $6 trillion in assets, making it the largest investor in the world. Fink’s just-released 2019 Letter to CEOs titled “Purpose & Profit” challenges CEOs to lead with purpose and follows his 2018 letter which served notice that if both publicly traded and private companies can’t demonstrate that they’re creating positive social value, they might lose their license to operate and, more pointedly, lose BlackRock’s support. These are big words from the largest institutional investor on the planet. One observer called it “a watershed moment on Wall Street, one that raises all sorts of questions about the very nature of capitalism.”

One of the most powerful arguments of the counter-reformation is used so often it has an acronym: TINA, which stands for There Is No Alternative. Sometimes this argument is used with condescension, sometimes in resignation.

The good news is that today There Is a Credible Alternative. It is no longer acceptable to lament the constraints of market forces, wishing there were a tool that could harness unconstrained capitalism’s otherwise amoral power for a higher purpose than profit maximization. That tool is here today, and it is in use by companies across the globe.

Vice President Pence and 16 other Republican governors have passed legislation to create a new tool for corporate governance that attempts to solve capitalism’s system design problem. Today, 34 states and two countries have passed benefit corporation laws that give business leaders and investors a choice to use this new corporate governance structure that aligns the interests of business with the interests of of society. Roughly a half dozen other countries are at various stages of considering similar legislation.

Companies that adopt benefit corporation governance create greater accountability to serve the public interest (that’s all of us, by the way) because they are required to consider the impact of their decisions not only on their shareholders but also on their workers, customers, suppliers, communities and the environment. More than 8,000 businesses—so far predominantly disruptive private companies such as Allbirds in footwear, Lemonade in insurance, and Beta Bionics in medical devices—have already voluntarily adopted benefit corporation governance. Collectively, they have raised more than $2 billion in venture capital, private equity, and in the first initial public offering by Laureate Education led by KKR. Fortune 500 companies such as Unilever, Danone, P&G and Nestle are using benefit corporation governance or similar structures for their purpose-driven subsidiaries.

Seeing promise, in August 2018, Sen. Warren (now a presidential candidate) introduced the Accountable Capitalism Act to accelerate adoption of this new corporate governance tool by making it mandatory for large companies. The legislation would require the fewer than 4,000 corporations in the United States that generate more than $1 billion in revenue to adopt benefit corporation governance so that the purpose of these businesses is aligned with the interests of society. David Leonhardt of The New York Times called this “the most intriguing policy idea to come out of the early 2020 campaign.” Others, including Nobel Laureate in economics Robert Shiller, have also found benefit corporation governance a promising innovation.

Whether you think Sen. Warren’s regulatory approach is a good or bad idea isn’t really the point. The point is that the world’s largest investors, political leaders and thought leaders across the ideological spectrum agree on one thing: We need to evolve this institution of capitalism so that it is serving the interests of all people and communities, not just the interests of shareholders. We need to reform the institution of capitalism so that “in order to maximize profit” is no longer the driving force and sole purpose of business.

And the stakes are getting higher.

In a world where machines and humans are integrated, where corporations track our every movement and curiosity, where algorithms manipulate us to buy things at certain times or vote certain ways, we are putting into the hands of business leaders the power to answer fundamental questions: What does is mean to be human? Does privacy exist? Is there free will?

This raises the big question: What operating system do we want for capitalism in the 21st century?

If the operating system says business leaders must make decisions “in order to maximize profit,” then we will deploy these new technologies accordingly, and we will end up in a very different world than if the operating system says we must make decisions “in order to maximize benefit for society.”

A recent article by the U.S. business editor of The Financial Times asks “should business put purpose before profit?” After surveying the landscape of people wrestling with this system design question, he concludes: “For this capitalist reformation to succeed, however, it will have to prove it has more substance than spin, survive the market’s down cycles and persuade a public whose faith in corporate and institutional elites remains fragile.”

In answer to that challenge, today more than 8,000 businesses have adopted benefit corporation governance and 2,600 businesses have met the performance, transparency and accountability requirements to become Certified B Corporations. The leaders of these businesses share one vision: to replace the source code error in the operating system of capitalism—shareholder primacy—that dictates every decision seek to meet the objective “in order to maximize profit,” and to replace it with an operating system that empowers every decision to seek to meet the objective “in order to maximize benefit for society.”

A Capitalist Reformation is about reimagining the purpose of business and redefining success.

Certified B Corporations and benefit corporations are part of a much broader global movement of people using business as a force for good: Conscious Capitalism, Circular Economy, The B Team, Sistema B, Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, Social Venture Circle, LEED, Fair Trade, Organic, Impact Investing, to name just a few in this diverse ecosystem of reformers.

We are all parts of a global culture shift to reform capitalism so its purpose is to create value for everybody, not just a few. The role of Certified B Corporations and benefit corporations in this broader movement is to make sure that this movement is meaningful and lasting: that there are real legal structures to support this behavior, performance standards to address understandable skepticism and public transparency to invite improvement on our inevitable shortcomings.

We are at the early stages of a Capitalist Reformation. The doctrine of shareholder primacy is a form of oppression and resistance to our basic nature as human beings. We have been born into an economic system that treats us as less than human—as Homo Economicus. This old system does not value our humanity. But a new system is being born. This new system serves a 21st century model of leadership whose purpose is to create value for all stakeholders, not just shareholders. And this new system will help us live into our full potential as human beings.

Here is the Declaration that one group of business leaders is nailing to capitalism’s door:

“We envision a global economy that uses business as a force for good.

This economy is comprised of a new type of corporation—the B Corporation—which is purpose-driven and creates value for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

As B Corporations and leaders of this emerging economy, we believe:

•      That we must be the change we seek in the world;
•      That all business ought to be conducted as if people and place mattered;
•      That, through their products, practices and profits, businesses should aspire to do no harm and benefit all.
•      To do so requires that we act with the understanding that we are each dependent upon another and thus responsible for each other and future generations.”
•      Will you be part of the reformation or will you settle for a failing system?

What will you do to create a capitalism that works for everyone and for the long term?

This story originally appeared at Forbes.com

My dad was recruited by an American valve company in 1965. Being a British citizen he filled a position that the company could not fill with an American worker. That being a highly skilled machinist with substantial knowledge in metallurgy. My Dad flew over the pond first and my Mother followed on the Queen Mary II. Two years later yours truly was born.

Over the course of my Dad’s life he continually learned and attained the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Something he would not have been able to do in England. Prior to his passing he had a number of US patents to his name in the valve industry.

In my high school years I remember speaking with my mother discussing the differences in how Britons and Americans approach problems. She said the key difference was that Americans would find a problem, come up with a plan and begin to quickly implement their ideas. She said that Americans seemed not to fear failure but rather embraced it when it occurred learning from the failures and moving on to the next course of action.

In contrast she said Britons would hold meeting after meeting until all theorized failures were accounted for and then they would begin to implement their ideas. If their ideas failed there were more meetings with more people and more time was spent in committee. She said, in her opinion, that the committee tasks became the work and the solution for the problem became an afterthought. By the time the Britons were beyond their committees the Americans had solved the problem. In her opinion Americans focused on the result far more often than the Britons.

My Mothers theory was reinforced for me while I watched an episode of the Ricky Gervais show. Karl Pilkington, one of the cohosts, was telling a story about his experience at a British station prior to joining the show. He explained that he was a wage employee or per hour employee in American, and the management kept calling meeting after meeting cutting into his paycheck and adding to his work load. Some of the comments I remember were Karl saying things like “They would spend 20 minutes discussing whether they should have croissants or doughnuts for the following meeting.” He further said it felt like “watching dung beetles pushing bullshit from one end of the room and back!” He said it was infuriating.

These are examples of what I like to call busy work. In other words doing work that does not add to a desired outcome. For a problem solver such as myself this phenomenon is absolutely infuriating. It reminds me of an old Seinfeld episode where George discovers the art of busy work. If you look annoyed and are short with people continually discussing the process you can actually go years before people discover you have accomplished nothing.

Well guess what, busy work is alive and well in America. With the advent of mass media both professional and novice you can actually make a profit for yourself as an expert pseudo solver. Yes you can continually drone on about a problem and all of its nuances over and over. Given enough frequency and coverage you may even be bestowed an expert by the masses with never uttering anything resembling a solution. You can write books and profit. You can do interviews and profit.

You can create committees and organizations and profit. The one thing you will never do is create a solution. Why? Because solutions require work in the unknown. You may or may not make a profit. So it’s far easier making money as an expert in problems than making money as an innovator in solutions. And this is where America is today, in my humble opinion.