Umair Haque at Harvard Business Review:
Dear Big Cheeses Who Run the World,
We regret to inform you that you’re fired.
We’re really, truly sorry about this, but we’re going to have to let you go. It’s time for you to pursue other opportunities.
In case you haven’t noticed times are pretty tough lately, and we’ve got to cut back somewhere.
In fact, that we’re beginning to suspect that maybe, just maybe the entire contract between us, you, and tomorrow … is fatally broken.
Value has simply been extracted — not actually created. Income isn’t translating into outcome and it’s outcomes that count.
Though we got a little bit richer, did we actually realize tangible, enduring benefits that mattered? Or did we just get more insecure, obese, unhappy, and disconnected?
Our economy’s engines and engineers — corporations, CEOs, investors — are uninterested in making stuff that actually makes us better off; they’re just interested in making a quick buck.
Forporations: Consider then, a radical idea: that the corporation as we know it just might be past its sell-by date, an obsolete tool that’s outlived its era.