Tag: Make the World Better

Sustainable development and purpose are intrinsically linked, and organizational purpose lends clarity and direction to the role companies can play in making a positive impact. Yet, business-as-usual and profit-centric models are hard to dethrone, especially when belief gaps exist around the power of purpose in business.

We spoke with Pat Dwyer, Founder of The Purpose Business, about how this company is getting more businesses in Asia on board with organizational purpose and propelling them toward a sustainable future.

What inspired you to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

In 2015, when The Purpose Business (TPB) was established in Hong Kong, the concept of organizational purpose was a pipe dream. At best, it was seen as trivial and no more than a marketing ploy. Despite strong headwinds, we were resolute in our conviction that sustainable business practices and the overarching goal of enhancing the wellbeing of people and planet can only be achieved by starting with clarity and activating a company’s intrinsic “why.”

Our journey began in the early days of corporate social responsibility (CSR), then the best expression of business contribution to social good. We recognized CSR as a first step was largely limited and didn’t encompass the business model transformation necessary for sustainable business practices to thrive. We saw an educational and belief gap around the role and power of purpose in business, presenting us with an exciting opportunity to lead the way in integrating purpose-driven practices in Asia.

We are determined to demonstrate that purpose is a critical lever for strategic change, not a peripheral consideration, and we are committed to guiding leaders to bridge the gap between corporate aspirations and action in order to propel organizations toward a sustainable future. 

What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you? 

TPB was born out of our genuine belief that businesses in Asia will one day be responsible business exemplars, surpassing the most admired Western companies. Within our first two years, TPB was working with Asia’s most established homegrown brands, listed companies, and multinationals who wanted localized impact. We’ve witnessed remarkable shifts in our clients over the past eight years, moving from extreme conservatism to viewing sustainability as a strategic imperative. 

We’re also experiencing, in real-time, the positive impacts of our efforts to advance organizational purpose as a tool for responsible businesses in Asia, both through our client work and educational outreach. We are particularly proud of our “Purpose and Values” work with the Philippines-based company, Universal Robina Corporation (URC), one of the largest branded consumer food and beverage product companies in the Philippines. Together with our strategic partner Within People, we helped URC to craft its purpose statement and related values and ambition to be a beacon for the company as a responsible business actor.

We knew from the start that raising awareness and investing in education for our wider audience — focused on corporate sustainability imperatives and the critical role of organizational purpose in driving change — had to be a key part of our offerings. We were among the first to introduce orientation sessions on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Asia, hosting events in Hong Kong and Manila to inspire companies to align with these global goals. 

Part of our ongoing educational offerings include our signature “Breakfast with Purpose” events, which feature highly engaging speakers and facilitate intimate dialogue touching on some of the most pressing sustainability issues. 

How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?

Sustainable development is intrinsically linked to purpose. If sustainability is about securing an equitable future that espouses wellbeing for all people and planet, then organizational purpose brings clarity to the role that businesses play in delivering positive impact. The cost of clinging to short-term profit maximization is untenable. Industry leaders who understand this are stepping forward, using organizational purpose as a strategic tool to stay ahead and align with societal and systemic pressures. 

Amidst the complexities of sustainability, purpose provides clarity and direction. It’s not just about ratings or superficial metrics; purpose positions us to make better investment decisions, rethinking business models that have traditionally been profit-centric. This shift allows us to move beyond shareholder supremacy, focusing on the wellbeing of all stakeholders. A truly purposeful organization is the gold standard for enterprises aligned with a sustainable future — it offers a blueprint for businesses to thrive while contributing positively to the planet and its people.

What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

Old habits die hard, and this is even truer for entrenched business-as-usual models. Globally, there’s broad consensus that our current path is unsustainable, and while there’s general agreement on what sustainability requires, the path to achieving it is less clear. Organizational purpose offers a way forward, serving as a moral compass for businesses and prompting crucial decisions, particularly at the C-suite level. However, this transformation challenges deep-seated successes built around traditional leadership styles.

Implementing purpose as a core strategy involves rethinking business models and operational processes, and this requires an overhaul of everything we currently know. Resistance to change, whether due to skepticism or inertia, is a natural obstacle, especially when nothing seems to be broken. We know that ultimately we need to shift business models to longer-term thinking — and that includes accepting the cost of capital, investing in longer-term horizons, and non-stop education and effective communication.

Measuring the impact of purpose-driven initiatives demands a mindset shift in the way we think of reward structures and returns on investment, along with the utmost transparency. While financial metrics are well-established for traditional business models, quantifying long-term societal and environmental impacts remains a challenge. Developing robust metrics for these areas is crucial for validating the approach and encouraging wider adoption.

In Asia, advocating for purpose is further challenged by continued population and economic growth, which translates into an increasing demand for resources and energy. As the world’s largest energy consumer with an industry-heavy economy, companies in Asia face the complex challenge of balancing growing energy needs with the imperative to decarbonize. 

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share? 

As we live up to our purpose of guiding leaders to elevate businesses in Asia as a force for good, we intend to be the convening entity of Asia’s brain trust of purpose in action. This means engaging with, learning from, and facilitating the open exchange of experience and learnings, as well as addressing the challenges that purpose transformation confronts in our ever-growing markets.

To this end, we were thrilled to kick off 2024 with a webinar on how to put purpose into action, featuring case studies and best practice sharing from purpose-driven companies from the UK and Asia.

This is just the first of several educational events we have planned for 2024, with purpose and sustainability at the forefront.  

What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?

It’s essential to first understand and internalize the concept of organizational purpose. This is a radical shift away from business-as-usual models. It puts aside profit maximization as the key driver for business and considers how a company contributes to the broader wellbeing of people and planet. How is shared stakeholder value created to ensure resilience and productivity for generations to come? 

People can advocate for this shift at every level, but it’s particularly crucial at the C-suite level. Leadership must champion, articulate, and live purpose in every decision and policy. This isn’t just about having a purpose statement; it’s about evaluating how much of your business is shifting toward sustainability and purpose, and how deeply these values are embedded in your operations and culture.

Ultimately, whether we are thinking through our lens as individuals or as employees, it’s about aligning with the greater good — shifting the focus from “what’s in it for me” to “what’s in it for all.”

This story was featured in the Make The World Better Magazine:

Crises surrounding collective wellbeing are sharply felt in urban contexts, where loneliness, isolation, and anxiety are commonly reported. Efforts need to be made to reorient businesses and our economy around positive impact so those living in cities can feel healthy, safe, and secure, all while protecting the environment for generations to come.

We spoke with Duncan Newbury, VP of Brand and Global Marketing Director at Therme Group, about how this global wellbeing pioneer is creating wellbeing experiences that foster health, connection, and community.

What inspired your founders to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy? 

At Therme, we are passionate about inclusive and accessible wellbeing. We believe everyone should have access to the highest quality wellbeing experiences regardless of their background or abilities.  

The modern Therme concept began in Germany as a technology-driven, person-centric approach to wellness. It has since been successfully introduced in Romania, with Therme Bucharest. We are now working toward delivering the concept in cities across the world to create a positive wellbeing impact for people and planet.  

Globally, we are seeing a crisis of wellbeing and nowhere is this more obvious than in our cities. Research has shown that people living in cities disproportionately suffer from mood disorders and anxiety, and that prolonged loneliness (a common affliction in modern cities) can have the same impact on mortality as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. We want to help create a future where humans can thrive in urban contexts. That means creating businesses and a wider economy that positively impact not only individual wellbeing but also communities and nature.

What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you? 

Together with our strategic partner, Thermengruppe Josef Wund, we welcome millions of guests each year to our wellbeing resorts. Building a community around these locations of people who are committed to wellbeing has been a hugely satisfying part of our work. We are now working closely with stakeholders across the globe to deliver new Therme locations.  

One of the biggest successes of delivering the Therme concept has been how communities have reacted to it and integrated wellbeing into their daily lives. Though our concept is new to many people, we have seen an openness toward and acceptance of the experiences we offer. For example, in Therme Bucharest, our aqua fit classes and Aufguss sauna rituals have been hugely popular activities. There is an appetite for new experiences, but ones which are based on the fundamental human need for connection to water, nature, and each other. 

How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better? 

The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) describes the Wellbeing Economy as: “designed to serve people and planet, not the other way around.” Looking beyond GDP to delivering wellbeing represents a fundamental shift in how we frame success.  

In shifting to a Wellbeing Economy, we can bring the focus of success toward connection, community, and the enhancement of physical and mental wellbeing. By centring these elements and placing them within the context of supporting the natural world, we can create a future where we can all thrive.  

The path we’re currently on as a global community is not sustainable. By putting wellbeing at the foundation of successful communities, we can drive sustainable economic growth. This means we need to reframe how we see success away from historical ideas of GDP and growth and toward more human and planetary values. For example, if we shift criteria to an emphasis on factors such as health, life satisfaction, social cohesion, cultural diversity, and environmental impact, we create cities that people want to live in, places where they feel healthy, happy, and secure. If we do this, communities — and by extension, economies — will thrive.  

What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

Our facilities include multiple saunas, adult-only and family areas, indoor and outdoor thermal and mineral pools, evidence-based nutrition, aqua fit classes, waterslides and wave pools, spa treatments, sports events, and art and cultural programming. All these elements are set amongst thousands of biodiverse plants and managed by seamlessly integrated state-of-the-art technology.  

Herein lies a challenge: as a multi-sensory experience, you can only fully understand it by going and experiencing a Therme. It isn’t easy for us to explain the wealth of what Therme has to offer to those who aren’t familiar with it without bringing people to one of our facilities.  

On the flip side of this, we have found that once people come and experience Therme, they are incredibly positive and want to return, alongside wanting to bring a Therme to their own city. After visiting, they can see that by combining scale and sustainable technology, we can deliver exceptional quality at an affordable price point.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share? 

We are moving into a very exciting new phase for our company. As well as continuing to innovate at our existing locations in Germany and Romania, we are developing the Therme concept in cities across the globe. In the UK, planning permission for the updated design of our new facility in Manchester has been approved, and we are working closely with our strategic partner Thermengruppe Josef Wund to deliver a new location in Bad Vilbel close to Frankfurt, Germany.

We will be delivering our first North American location at Ontario Place in Toronto, Canada, and we are working closely with the local government in Washington, DC, to explore site options for a project in the city. We also have a project in development in Incheon, South Korea, and are exploring options for further locations in Asia Pacific and the US. 

Additionally, we have partnered with a number of thought leaders and academic institutions. Most recently, we partnered with the University of Surrey, one of the world’s leading universities for tourism studies and research, on a project that seeks to transform the tourism industry’s emissions measurement and carbon trading with crypto-based systems. With the aim of forming a more sustainable future, the initiative will produce new digital platforms that significantly increase the tourism industry’s ability to measure and reduce its carbon footprint.

The partnership represents Therme’s goal of contributing toward the green economy of the future. A significant proportion of our carbon footprint is generated by guest travel. Therefore, gaining an understanding of our footprint and how to reduce it is crucial. By investing in research, we can also make the findings available to the wider industry so that, collectively, we can make steps toward a more sustainable and healthier future. 

What can people do to help spread the word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission? 

At Therme, we function a little differently. We are a connected, interdisciplinary ecosystem of companies, ventures, and partnerships. This approach allows us to challenge accepted norms, be more fluid in our actions, and work together to deliver our vision. Developing partnerships with like-minded individuals and companies that are committed to advancing wellbeing at an urban level and throughout the world is something we actively seek. 

We’re eager to hear from everybody and create forums of discussion that are not only about us but that explore our industry as a whole. We encourage anyone curious about new wellbeing environments to come and visit one of our destinations. Therme is really something that has to be experienced to be truly understood, and we’d love to welcome you!

This story was featured in the Make The World Better Magazine:

The roots of our economic system run deep, perpetuating environmental, climate, and social crises. However, we have more power to rewrite our economic story than most people realize. With creativity, open-mindedness, and collaboration, we can build an economic system that helps people and planet thrive.

We spoke with Tara Campbell, Wellbeing Economies Manager at the David Suzuki Foundation, about how the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada is building a hub to champion the global Wellbeing Economy movement in Canada.

What inspired you and your leadership to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

My work advocating for wellbeing economies is housed at an environmental non-profit, the David Suzuki Foundation. Some people are surprised when I tell them what I do and for whom: why is an environmental non-profit weighing in on economic issues? It makes sense when we understand that our current profit- and growth-seeking economic system is a massive force structuring our relationship to the environment. This search for growth leads to endless extraction, planned obsolescence and throwaway culture, and alienation from land and place. 

As an organization, our mission is to equitably protect nature’s diversity and the wellbeing of all life, now and for the future. We know that to transform society’s relationship to the environment we have to work on the roots of that relationship. We see our economic system as one of the roots perpetuating the intersecting environmental and climate crises we find ourselves in today.

This interest in the economy led to an affiliation with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) — a global collaboration of people working for transitions to economies that prioritize people and planet. WEAll has been doing some amazing work over the past few years developing new public narratives around the economy. WEAll understands that this global movement will be mediated through place-based organizing. As part of that effort, we are currently working on launching a WEAll Canada hub.

We are motivated by the idea of wellbeing economies not only because we see them as necessary for the environment, but also because we know they will make life so much better! The dominant economic system simply doesn’t meet people’s needs. Even in a wealthy country like Canada, many people struggle to find affordable housing, food, and energy. Many others struggle to find decent and meaningful work. We know it doesn’t have to be this way, and we want to tell a different story of what our economic system could look like.

What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?

We are working on a complex challenge that is massive in scope and it’s nearly impossible to attribute changes happening in the world to our actions. Because of this, we try to work on actions to create pathways for change, enabling conditions rather than outcomes. Our largest impact in this space has been cultivating meaningful relationships between individuals and organizations working for economic transformation and creating containers for imagination.

One of my most memorable recent projects, Toronto Imaginal Transitions, involved working with a small group of diverse community organizers and innovators to gather, build trust, and push the boundaries of their imaginations around what a Wellbeing Economy could look like in Toronto. One of these gatherings manifested as a magical dinner party where artists, organizers, entrepreneurs, and a city councillor spent an evening dreaming together. While this didn’t immediately lead to any big shifts in the local economic system, we worked on the conditions for change by planting seeds of these ideas and creating the foundation for collaboration.

How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?

Our economic system prioritizes profit and growth over community needs, including our need for a healthy environment. Transitioning to a Wellbeing Economy inverts this. The priority becomes meeting not only the needs of people but also that of the land and non-human creatures with whom we share the planet. It is important to stress here that prioritizing needs means not simply the needs of those of us in the Global North or those of us who are settlers.

While pathways for economic transition are always a source of debate, my view is that it will require everyone to get involved and deliberate over what we want and how to get there. This means that in addition to creating a viable future for our shared planet and ensuring everyone has enough to live in dignity and comfort, the transition to a Wellbeing Economy might see an expansion of the realm of democracy too.

I don’t see the transition to a Wellbeing Economy as an austere vision. I suspect that if we prioritize wellbeing over economic growth we will develop deeper networks of care, work less, and have more freedom over our time. I like to see this from the perspective of philosopher Kate Soper, who advocates for an “alternative hedonism” — a different vision for the good life that doesn’t depend on consumption.

What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

For many audiences, I find even suggesting the economic system could be different is often quickly rejected as unachievable. There seems to be a common sentiment that we have tried other economic models, they haven’t worked, and this is the best we have or that the system is too big to change. I think one primary purpose of our hub will be to support people, organizations, and institutions to see the current economic system as something that humans have designed. We can design it differently. 

There are a lot of myths and challenges to overcome, but we don’t need to start with a blank slate. There are so many functioning systems to point to as places of learning: the Cleveland Model, Indigenous economies, mutual aid networks, worker co-operatives, etc. Creativity, open-mindedness, and collaboration are how we will overcome the challenges we face as we push for change.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?

Many like-minded people are working for economic transition in Canada, which is really encouraging! We have been mapping the Canadian landscape of people, organizations, and networks working for wellbeing economies in some way or another, and we will be releasing an interactive map later this year. You will be able to find that on our website once it is released. We hope the map can be a tool for anyone looking to get inspired by all the work already happening.

We’ve also started a collaboration with Dark Matter Labs, a global non-profit building infrastructure for a new civic economy. Dark Matter Labs has been piloting an initiative called Cornerstone Indicators,  which involves bringing a community together to reimagine the metrics and indicators used to strive toward community wellbeing. They have experimented with this approach in Sweden and Scotland, and we are interested in piloting this with a community in Canada this year. We are also developing open-source tools that anyone could use if they are interested in these kinds of approaches.

What can people do to help spread word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?

We have been in an incubation period with the WEAll Canada hub for a while now and are getting ready to open it up for engagement soon. If the notion of a Wellbeing Economy is of interest, please come join and participate! This could be by subscribing to our newsletter or X (formerly Twitter) account to stay informed about wellbeing economies–related news, or coming to events and building relationships with other people advancing wellbeing economies throughout the country.

This story was featured in the Make The World Better Magazine:

Wellbeing Economy, Purpose-Driven Organizations, and Meaningful Work: Making Sustainability Real

By: Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti

There is increasing fear about the economic, social, environmental, and institutional crises the world faces (also known as the polycrisis), and answers seem to be getting more plentiful, technical, and confusing. So much time is spent debating different strategies (e.g. technologies and policies) to move away from this chaos and achieve sustainability, but we almost always forget to debate and pin down the actual shared goal of sustainability, that is, our ultimate objective. We also overlook the importance of identifying the parameters we want to stick within while achieving this objective. This renders our strategy — hydrogen or electric cars, tax cuts or tax rises — along with the incentives and policies to enact them potentially useless, or worse, counter-productive because it is these two aspects — the objective and parameters — that should set the basis of strategy. If these two core aspects of direction are not clear and not shared, then we may seem to fundamentally disagree when we actually do not. We may just have different ideas about the best way to respond to the challenge (the strategy), while agreeing that the objective and the direction of travel is right. The lack of clear, shared direction also means there is no way to be accountable for success or failure — success can only be judged in relation to achievement of the objective within the parameters.

In other words, without this clarity it just isn’t possible to innovate as a collective, agree on how to judge relative strategic options, and ensure they are carried out. In turn, it isn’t possible to govern. The key functions of governance (ISO 37000) are 1) direction: setting objectives and parameters; 2) oversight: checking if we have achieved the objectives within the parameters; and 3) accountability: are we accountable to significant others for whether we have achieved the objectives within the parameters and what corrective actions will be taken. This is true if you are governing the world, a nation, a company, or even your own life. So, without the direction, the rest is irrelevant: we literally can’t govern well without it.

What is most frustrating is that the world has been silently singing in chorus that wellbeing (the good life/flourishing) is the ultimate outcome we are all after and that the health of the social and environmental systems that we rely on to achieve this objective are the minimum parameters we need to stick to. 

Apart from wellbeing for society as a whole being the underlying point of an economy (see the first chapter in almost any economic textbook), this was also the global shared objective brought to us by international leaders with the 1987 Brundtland Report (also known as “Our Common Future”). It summarized an urgent warning about the unsustainable world we were creating and how sustainable development was about ensuring the needs of the current generation were met without jeopardizing the needs of future generations. As satisfying universal human needs underpins wellbeing, what the report set out was that the goal of sustainability was about achieving wellbeing over the long-term and for everyone and not just a few, i.e., long-term wellbeing for all. The report also made clear that our collective long-term wellbeing requires healthy social and environmental systems and that these were being destroyed in the process of what we were calling “development” or “progress.”

Humanity’s planetary-wide crises have only deepened since then. Instead of reminding us that we need to govern very deliberately for sustainability (long-term wellbeing for all within healthy social and environmental systems), we focused instead on the strategy, breaking this into three pillars, or 17 SDGs, and picking off those we could make work within our current economic assumptions. These strategies were never going to work without reminding ourselves and governing specifically at all levels against the objective (long-term wellbeing for all) within the parameters of healthy social and environmental systems. 

We are reaching the end game. People are starting to realize that we are at risk of losing what is most precious before we have really clarified what it is.

We believe these crises will continue to deepen unless we can acknowledge en masse that:

1) It is a defunct basis for governing the market economy that is causing unsustainability and that a new market economy needs to be urgently born (or else lose the market economy and end up in a command-and-control reality); 

2) We need to govern this new market economy by objectives and parameters that are very specifically aligned with a sustainable future, locking in success; and

 3) We know how to bring about and govern this new economy — but we need to come together with far more clarity and unity of voice to make it happen.

The Economy: Humanity’s Operating System

Let’s start from the most basic (and important) question: What is an economy? If you think about it, an economy can be considered an operating system for society. It is the key system we need to govern if we want to take our shared resources and turn them into something useful for society. In particular, the economy is a collective system of role allocation, which sets rules through which certain actors are allowed to access, allocate, and transform common resources. Similar to software or a board game, an economy embeds the objective to be achieved, the parameters for achieving it by defining the roles we play, how to measure the value that is generated, and how to reward participants according to their contributions to “winning.”

However, for some time, and supercharged in the last 50 years, we have the wrong objective and wrong parameters and therefore the wrong strategy. We have assumed that financial income is the core goal — the thing we need to grow, at a household, company, country, and international level — and we have assumed that stocks and flows of financial capital are the most important parameter. Why? Because we assume money is a valid proxy for wellbeing outcomes. We therefore tend to view gross domestic product (GDP), financial profit, and household income as our tickets to a good life, and we have assumed that social and environmental systems, stakeholders, and non-financial forms of capital are limitless and immune to harm.

If we grow financial income, for example by liquidating our planetary and social assets, then we have more “tokens” to purchase our wellbeing via consumer goods and services in the market. The assumption is that more of these goods and services are the best way we can increase our wellbeing and that those companies who are increasing their financial income capture from the market must therefore be doing a good job. Why would we buy their offerings otherwise? These companies also provide jobs, which give us more financial income to purchase that wellbeing. At a national level, we judge governments on how many tokens we have and how much our tokens can buy, which means that governments need to be playing this game better than other countries, and GDP and “economic growth” become the anchor that political success is tethered to. Worse, governments are complicit in leading society into this false belief that financial income and wellbeing are good proxies, hence when it comes to who to vote for we are already primed to favour governments that measure up to this view.

In this comfortable abstraction from reality, we have forgotten to check if financial income really is a good proxy for our collective long-term wellbeing and whether or not we were regenerating or depleting the health of the systems we rely on for it. Of course, we are now starting to be force-fed the answer through daily reports of existential threats to humanity’s ability to thrive, or even survive on planet Earth. 

So, from a macro perspective, what is needed is a shift from the current national and global operating systems — that dictate that financial income is the most valuable outcome which automatically results in long-term wellbeing for all and where the resources we rely on for this are unaccounted for — to a new operating system. A new market economy.  A Wellbeing Economy. This economy has high-quality governance at its heart. Stakeholders within it clearly and accountably optimize long-term collective wellbeing (sustainability) and do this while ensuring the health of collective social and environmental assets, stakeholders, and non-financial capital that result from them. Why should actors be given the right to take up precious resources on behalf of the collective if they can’t prove they are innovating for something valuable and that they aren’t asset-stripping these resources in the process?

While setting out the macro level governance of the economy is core, it remains a set of well-thought-out policy intentions unless these intentions are made real with governance within organizations — and that includes all types of organizations: charities, companies, community groups, and government as an organization. This organizational governance mirrors the macro level by being directed toward long-term wellbeing for all (sustainability) as the goal and setting organizational-level parameters that ensure the organization operates within the thresholds of healthy systems, stakeholders, and capital.

Through this system of macro and meso governance, we can also actively address the other big mistake we have made: assuming that, at a micro level, humans are primarily financially-oriented. This fits the existing operating system but represses the fact that we are purposeful creatures seeking meaningful lives and that we know this meaning is primarily derived from feeling like we have made other’s lives better, like picking up a pencil or opening a door for someone and feeling that “warm glow.” So, as Daniel Pink and others set out, while money — always a means to tangible ends — is a known motivator, purpose is a far more powerful one. It is this powerful and relatively untapped energy source that purpose-driven organizations unlock while operationalizing the Wellbeing Economy. Therefore at the micro-level, in the Wellbeing Economy, and made real by purpose-driven organizations, we find fully empowered human beings who perform a wide variety of roles in society. In this vein, and as many have argued over the years, the very concept of work needs a new definition to embrace all forms of value-generating activities, including volunteering, caring, community participation, ecosystem preservation, etc., which have wrongly been relegated to the uneconomic realm by previous approaches.

Sustainability Unleashed and Unsustainability Stopped

In the new market-based operating system, value that contributes to this objective within the parameters is deliberately generated through pursuits at different levels and through multiple pathways. All optimal strategic routes to long-term wellbeing are debated and pursued, like the regenerative approaches to sequestering carbon dioxide through well-considered habitat restoration, or moving to open data practices to restore trust, or raising the minimum wage. These may, or may not, require intermediary financial transactions and the need to create stocks of financial capital and growth in material throughout or at the level of financial transactions. While it is fairly certain that healthy stocks and flows of financial capital will always have a central role to play in investing in long-term wellbeing for all, meeting the expectations of stakeholders, and paying the bills, what exact role needs to be fully questioned.

In this new economy, growth of financial activity as a marker of success is no longer measured in terms of stuff we produce and consume regardless of the wellbeing impact. Instead, we measure and drive growth in terms of wellbeing for all and achieving and maintaining the health of the systems, stakeholders, and multi-capital that underpin it for future generations. This means the idea of “value” and “value creation” can have real substance, anchored to what we really care about. With a new definition of value, anchored to long-term wellbeing for all, (sustainability), the idea of “profit” in a Wellbeing Economy would be completely reimagined. No longer limited to financial outputs, profit must equate value-generation at multiple levels and in a multiplicity of forms socially, environmentally, institutionally, and in relation to the ends and resources that really matter.

The nested governance model that we propose can be summarized in the two illustrations below — a clear and sharable (please share freely!) expression of the task we need to undertake if we have a chance of achieving a “sustainable” market economy. And we say “market” economy deliberately. We are pretty sure we need the efficiency, freedom, and democratizing effects of a functioning market economy to address the urgent issues we face and to optimize wellbeing going forward. 

The first diagram summarizes the necessary transition between the current financial growth economy, in other words, the unsustainable business-as-usual (BAU) market economy, and a Wellbeing Economy, in other words, the sustainability-centred market economy. We believe that, unless we are successful at building this new market economy, held in place through a new governance model then, as the unsustainability crises compounds, we may very quickly see the collapse of markets and some form of command-and-control operating system, which has proven so many times to be ineffective. Just think how easy it was for us to be persuaded to give up market freedoms when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Unpicking the Meso Level

This second diagram is an adapted Daly Triangle and bridges the Wellbeing Economy (the whole triangle) to the practical detail of the three major worldviews/organizational “logics” that structure governance and therefore decision-making in organizations in real-time. These logics therefore frame the outcomes and impact that can be achieved by an organization. This is an adaptation of the great work of Herman Daly and subsequently of Donnella Meadows. In emails with Herman Daly the week before he sadly passed, he was very supportive of the work and the bridging of the macro (that he and Donella Meadows focus on with the triangle) with the meso-level of purpose-driven organizations.

LOGIC 1

In the middle of the triangle is the current BAU financial income-focused economy and associated organizational governance. Here the objective of the economy, and organizations, is financial capital accumulation, and what we ask them to spend most time protecting as a means to this end is stocks and flows of financial capital. We have constrained the basis of governance direction to intermediary ends and means. This means strategy is constrained within this, as are the core governance functions of oversight and accountability. This puts the proper innovative goal of long-term wellbeing for all out of sight, and, in fact, off limits because the BAU market economy puts the health of the values shared resources “off balance sheet.”

If you keep expanding such a global system — one that is governed to innovate for self-interested financial value capture fuelled by the wanton liquidations of shared assets, then it is easy to see why we have ended up with an existential threat to long-term wellbeing for all (unsustainability). What is most toxic is that if you are trapped in this way of viewing the world it isn’t easy to change the “investment case” and find a different reason to innovate for a sustainable future. The only arguments that “cut it” are those you can prove are alleviating a threat to short-term financial interest.

LOGIC 2

Given how hard and fast the unfolding social and ecological instability is revealing itself, some governments and organizations are moving to a state of long-term enlightened self-value (ESV). While financial self-interest remains the overarching objective, the governance parameters for decision-making are, in effect, broadened to encompass the health of social and environmental systems, stakeholders, and the health of stocks and flows of non-financial capital. 

This longer-term self-interest allows for a change in the investment case to divert funds that would otherwise be extracted or reinvested for more financial extraction to instead be used to bolster the health of stakeholders, employees, or ecosystem regeneration, for example. This is essentially a “do no harm” approach to a sustainable future. Making a case to invest because the long-term financial interest of the company is ensured because harm to the underlying assets is reduced is one thing, but innovation that actively solves unsustainability? There is no real basis for this. These organizations are therefore partially aligned to a sustainable future. Given how far degraded a whole range of social and environmental systems are, moving business models into a place where they really can claim to “do no harm” is far, far harder than most organizations realize and requires a level of innovation and energy far beyond where we are now.

While the move to ESV has been the major thrust of late (think ESG), we believe we need to be much bolder if we are going to avert the threats we face — and optimize the benefit possible. This is because these ESV organizations still filter their decisions against the goal of financial self-interest. This constrains the ability to innovate, collaborate, and harness the deep motivations of human stakeholders. They may be moving toward doing no harm, but will they get there and what opportunities to solve the desperate threats to long-term wellbeing for all will be forfeited in the process?

LOGIC 3

This is where the logic of purpose-driven organizations comes in — as the aligned vehicle for achieving the Wellbeing Economy. By focusing governance directly on the end goal of the economy — long-term wellbeing for all, purpose-driven organizations, and the Wellbeing Economy they service, in effect, reject the specific assumptions of the BAU market economy. Rather than relying on a BAU economy to auto-produce collective long-term wellbeing — there is active governance of this and the health of the parameters to achieve it. This means that innovation is untethered from static assumptions like the role of organizations in society, who constitutes reasonable partners to collaborate with and what counts as success. Core concepts of the economy like competition law and fiduciary duty can be actively and wisely rewritten to be “fit for purpose.” GDP and financial profits become one partial means to that end and other forms of value-creation become equally or more important. Certainly, helping liquidate one form of value (like an ecosystem) and turning it into financial capital could not be counted as organizational success.

In summary, we know where we have gone wrong, and we know how to fix it. The answer lies in good governance: setting objectives and parameters that are aligned to a sustainable future and adjusting all the “rules of the game” so that we achieve this. This will also enable us to ensure we can collectively judge the most effective strategies of economic and social development, allowing all different players (governments, businesses, and citizens) to collaborate for shared outcomes within shared clear parameters that protect our most precious resources.

The core issue is that we just haven’t been able to say this loudly and clearly. BAU is so powerful and embedded in our cultural subconscious that it is easy to doubt that a new way is possible. What would change this? Co-creating multi-stakeholder clear standards that put the collective view of the new governance needed onto paper, allowing for clarity of direction and the ability to oversee and hold ourselves accountable for these new practices. In this respect, the world now has a catalyst moment to co-create the governance frame to align action and drive accountability for the Wellbeing Economy. The first national standard in purpose-driven organizations, “PAS 808:2022 Purpose-driven organizations. Worldviews, principles and behaviours for delivering sustainability” is very likely to be put forward to be developed as an international standard (ISO), the world’s most highly developed multi-stakeholder consensus-building process. This a chance to unite the field via the 170 national member bodies that make up ISO, and hence their engaged citizens who can feed into and co-own the outcome. Through the ISO process, we move from talking (often obscurely) to engaging and testing views in a fair and action-oriented way.

If you agree with the problem and the solution we set out and want to make it reality, then please freely share the material we have laid out and speak to your national standardization body to find out how to get involved!

Dr. Victoria Hurth is a global expert; thought leader in sustainability, ESG, and purpose governance; and Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership Fellow.

Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti is the Founding Director of the Institute for Sustainability at the University of Surrey (UK), a member of the Club of Rome, and a former member of Parliament and Minister of Education, University, and Research in Italy.

This story was featured in the Make The World Better Magazine:

Wellbeing Economy, Purpose-Driven Organizations, and Meaningful Work: A Practical Revolution

By: Dr. Victoria Hurth and Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

― Buckminster Fuller

In our opening editorial, we outlined how a Wellbeing Economy is aligned with a sustainable future and an efficient, effective economy and how purpose-driven organizations operationalize this economy. In turn, purpose-driven organizations unleash and are dependent on the energy of meaningful work and lives of individuals, households, and communities. As well as being the power behind a Wellbeing Economy, the ability to contribute to and engage with purpose-driven organizations directly increases wellbeing through bringing a sense of usefulness, joy, and community through our daily activities. This is in contrast to the conventional wisdom that by increasing our financial income, we can purchase more consuming goods as a way to achieve a good life. 

This is why we advocate a three-level shift in the macro (Wellbeing Economy), meso (Purpose-Driven Organizations), and micro (Meaningful Work and Lives) realms of the market economy, thus turning a vicious circle (the current consumption-based economy) into a virtuous one, based on long-term wellbeing for all (sustainability).

Some may feel that we are outlining some unattainable utopia. We are optimists but please don’t mistake our optimism for naivety — we recognize that there is still a long way to go, and the ultimate path is not certain. However, we also know that there are no fundamental barriers in the way of achieving this shift if we collectively wanted to. It merely rests on collective imagination and faith that positive change is in our hands. 

The various insights revealed in this issue of Make The World Better Magazine were compiled to feed this faith and imagination. While they are just a partial window on the change that is possible, they represent a revolution that has been underway for some time. Once you tune in, you can witness everywhere, at all levels, and all around the world. 

The Macro Level

At a macro level, the Wellbeing Economy revolution is about a tangible shift away from governing as if GDP is the core objective — as if this is a good way of understanding if the economy is achieving long-term wellbeing for all — toward directly measuring and governing wellbeing outcomes. This macro-level governance needs setting at national as well as local levels of government. 

The insights in this magazine from the people working on the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada, the Network of Wellbeing, and the Canadian Purpose Economy Project all detail the widespread and expanding action to make the Wellbeing Economy a reality. The articles help bring to life the motivations for the Wellbeing Economy at the macro level and key ways people can keep up to date and get involved, from signing up for newsletters to engaging with key resources

Beyond Scotland and Canada, countries that are spotlighted in this magazine, the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo) also include Wales, Iceland, New Zealand, and Finland. In addition, a number of countries outside of this group have been pushing to develop the foundations of a Wellbeing Economy. For example, the EU has been pushing this agenda concertedly since its 2009 Beyond GDP project and the UK developed Quality of Life indicators as part of its Measures of National Wellbeing program in 2010. 

The work happening through the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and beyond builds on practical work that began in the 1990s with the UN’s Human Development Index, and in Asia, where Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) framework has long been a beacon of change toward a Wellbeing Economy. What is hugely important is that once you start properly measuring what matters, you realize how much real value is being lost through blindly growing financial income as if this will automatically result in wellbeing outcomes. 

Work has been expanding over the years at national and local administrative levels to expose “social return on investment.” These and other multi-capital accounting experiments have been gaining sophistication over the years, and we are starting to get consensus at the international level on the best approaches that put wellbeing as the central currency.

Action is also being taken by the world-renowned Club of Rome, which has spearheaded the global debate on economic transformation since the 1970s and openly advocates for a Wellbeing Economy to replace the contemporary growth-focused market economy in its latest book, Earth for All. 

The Meso Level

While the shift in ambition at the level of the macro market economy is vital, this needs to be made real through purpose-driven organizations, including governments as organizations. Purpose-driven organizations by definition routinize decisions that support the Wellbeing Economy. As we outlined in our previous editorial, it is governance that routinizes action toward an objective (within clear parameters), oversees whether or not this has been achieved, and is accountable for that fact to relevant others. In this nested system, we need the right direction, oversight, and accountability at the macro level of governance in order to motivate and retain the right governance at the level of organizations where the value-creation work happens. 

Recognizing this deep interconnection between the Wellbeing Economy and purpose-driven organizations, Mike Rowlands and his team at the Canadian Purpose Economy Project have been working to convene and amplify the voices of prominent CEOs and other organizational members to lobby for a macro environment that can help purpose-driven organizations thrive. Given that Canada has a history of being a Wellbeing Economy visionary, as Tara Campbell from WEAll Canada outlined, and that the purpose-driven business community is very active, this is a context where change could be supercharged.

At the operational level, inspiring stories of purpose-driven organizations working hard to make the Wellbeing Economy real at a meso level have been brought to life in this magazine by NATIVA, The Purpose Business, Therme Group, Anglian Water, and Inspired Villages. Together they help illustrate in real terms what business models look like when they exist to make a contribution to long-term wellbeing for all while ensuring they achieve that purpose in a way that protects and enhances the assets they rely on. 

Eric Ezechieli from NATIVA and Andy Brown from Anglian Water illuminated the role that the legal context plays in anchoring decisions to a clear, durable, and dedicated purpose. For NATIVA, the first certified B Corp in Europe, the Benefit Corporation legal form has been a central pillar of driving change. For Anglian Water, as one specific company on a purpose-driven journey, it has been about changing their constitution within traditional legal form and then using the British Standard in purpose-driven organizations, “PAS 808:2022 Purpose-driven organizations. Worldviews, principles and behaviours for delivering sustainability” (PAS 808) to embed this across the company. 

Regardless of whether you can change your legal form, it is the governance and management practices that make purpose, and therefore the Wellbeing Economy, real in day-to-day decisions. Like NATIVA, Pat Dwyer outlined how The Purpose Business is itself a purpose-driven organization that works with a wide range of organizations to support their lived purpose journey. While both work globally, NATIVA is more European-centric while The Purpose Business focuses on the change happening in Asia. Together these demonstrate the global nature of work to bring about the Wellbeing Economy through purpose-driven organizations. 

What these stories also well demonstrate is the blue sky thinking and hyper-innovation that sweeps in when you flip to a purpose logic of decision-making that is wellbeing, and, therefore, sustainability-oriented. Product and service ideas and the scope of collaborators open up as the business-as-usual (BAU) way of thinking about markets shifts from a marketplace of potential financial income capture to a marketplace of potential wellbeing outcomes. In addition, decisions start to become bounded by hard parameters that make the protection and enhancement of social and environmental systems (like healthy water systems) and the health of stakeholders a non-negotiable limitation. These parameters shape business model design and all strategy to achieve the purpose — thereby making sure value isn’t created through innovation in one place but destroyed through operations to achieve it.

The existing system that promotes asset-stripping of our shared resources in order to make financial profit makes it difficult to operate within parameters that protect social and environmental systems. At the same time, with the right mindset, research shows creativity is heightened with hard parameters. Furthermore, the expanded innovation mindset of purpose and freedom from old ways of thinking that purpose unlocks means that these organizations can find ways around problems others can’t see and gives energy to sustain grand plans. 

If you are purpose-driven, then you also care as much about governing for healthy stocks and flows of non-financial capital as financial capital, as well as ensuring the business model operates within social and environmental thresholds of health. You count what matters, you recognize you can’t always count it and seek multi-stakeholder insights, and you make decisions based on that fuller view. This is also the basis of being able to comply with the oncoming ESG reporting agenda, which, while starting out as an investor risk and values agenda, is ultimately about society saying to organizations that they can only exist if they can prove that they are not asset-stripping our collective long-term wellbeing. Purpose-driven organizations do this as part of their core processes and are set up to weather this revolution in reporting better than others.

By changing the objective and the parameters, which are the basis of strategy (i.e. how to achieve an objective within parameters) the rationale for action: the “business case” is also fundamentally changed in purpose-driven organizations. This goes hand in hand with leaning on the raft of new multi-capital accounting systems that have been emerging over the years.

Reflecting the shift from GDP at the macro level, we’ve had a couple decades of serious innovation in organizational-level accounting: everything from the Environmental Profit and Loss Account (EP&L) spearheaded by Puma, to full multi-capital accounting processes mainstreamed by organizations like the once-prominent International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and the Capitals Coalition, to recent pushes to provide estimated costs of externalities in the notes to the accounts in order to fulfill director duties to assure accounts are “True and Fair.”

One further striking aspect of what characterizes purpose-driven organizations is the collaborative approach taken to bring communities of practice closer together to drive advanced change. All contributions to this issue of Make The World Better Magazine in some way exposed supercharged collaboration and co-creation. 

Nowhere is this taking root more seriously than in the national standards-building work to build and expose the emerging consensus on the governance and management needed at the meso level. The British Standard, PAS 808, can be freely downloaded and was designed to be applicable globally and in any organization. 

However, while that was the intention, it is only when the question of “how is a purpose-driven organization governed and managed” posed at an international level can we really know what the consensus on this is. Twenty twenty-four may be the year this process kicks off within ISO (the non-governmental process of consensus building made up of 167 counties). Any pre-work to scrutinize and experiment with PAS 808 is a way to prepare for this, and you can join the implementors group on LinkedIn.

The Micro Level

The macro Wellbeing Economy provides the structure for the meso-level purpose-driven organizations to flourish, and this, in turn, unlocks enhanced meaningful work and lives — and hence, enhanced direct wellbeing — for those who work for, buy from, live near, or are impacted by them.

Duncan Newbury from Therme Group and Jamie Bunce from Inspired Villages brought colour to this by describing how being in service to a world of long-term wellbeing for all has led to business models that seek to enhance wellbeing directly. Both are using science and experimentation to understand more and more about what fulfills us as humans. They are brilliant examples of how businesses can flourish precisely because they care most about the wellbeing of those they touch with their daily activities.

While there has been decades of concerted research and practical innovation on the topic of meaningful work and lives, this has not yet been properly connected as a global movement and certainly has not been properly integrated with the meso level of purpose-driven organizations and the macro level of the Wellbeing Economy — the levels which underpin whether or not we can use our individual efforts to make sustainability a reality. 

To all those working directly in advancing meaningful work and lives, we would love to see recognition for the work you do and for your work to directly feed into and from the meso and macro levels described here.

Sparking the Three-Level Shift

The three-level shift we have described in detail is the necessary result of a period of economic paradigm “flux” that we have lived through in the last couple of decades. A period where business-as-usual thinking has deteriorated in the face of the wide-scale social and environmental system breakdown that it drives. It has felt confusing and difficult to move beyond describing “what is wrong” to being able to precisely describe what the alternative looks like. We believe that this is what the three-level shift represents.

We hope we have helped convince you that while there is, of course, a long way to go, we already have the base foundations in place and the basis to enact rapid change globally. In many ways, this is not about creating something new but taking away the barriers that stop the positive outcomes we as humans are motivated by. 

Imagine, for example, those who went into politics to improve their communities but became stuck in a game of sacrificing what matters to improve the national accounts. Imagine the number of purpose-driven organizations that couldn’t get off the ground because of a structured competitive environment that allowed profit-making from social and environmental harm. Or the entrepreneurs who put vast amounts of energy into solving a genuine wellbeing problem but whose only option was to borrow toxic finance from those who co-opted their governance for financial income capture. Think for a moment about the average person who would love to go to bed feeling that they didn’t just pay the bills but used their time, energy, and skills to contribute positively to the world around them, rather than feeling worse and worse about the effects of their talent. This is the potential waiting to be unlocked. And the first biggest barrier that we need to overcome is that the majority of the world understands this and can see the way forward outlined in this magazine.

In summary, we believe all the conditions are in place to reform the market economy at the macro, meso, and micro levels. What is missing is the clarity about the common goal, which we hope this edition provides some small impact on. It is this clarity that will build the unity and confidence for the hard work of directing, overseeing, and being accountable for this transformation — in other words, doing the hard work of changing how we govern the economy and organizations. More than that, this starts with how we govern ourselves as individuals and citizens, the ultimate governing body.

Dr. Victoria Hurth is a global expert; thought leader in sustainability, ESG, and purpose governance; and Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership Fellow.

Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti is the Founding Director of the Institute for Sustainability at the University of Surrey (UK), a member of the Club of Rome, and a former member of Parliament and Minister of Education, University, and Research in Italy.

This story was featured in the Make The World Better Magazine: