Built for Social Good: The Unique Role of Business

Earlier this year, I attended the Canadian Business Hall of Fame dinner in Toronto, where I spoke with a young business graduate – a top achiever in her program and a recipient of a major national award. She shared with me the challenges she and her peers face for their interest in pursuing careers in business; explicit is a criticism that they should be directing their talents toward other careers where they could be making a “bigger” social impact.

Unfortunately her concern was familiar to me from the time I’ve spent recruiting students on campus for BMO. However the strength of the relationship between the business community and young people, and their perception of what it means to pursue a career in business is critical to the strength of our economy and our future.

We need our most talented young people choosing to pursue careers in business – which means we must do a better job sharing what kind of social impact they can make with that choice.

I believe our bank exists to convene, to catalyze, and to empower change that sustains growth for good. Part of “growth for good” means promoting growth that is sustainable, inclusive and broad-based.

Each day we bring to life our license from the people of Canada to run a bank by deploying the capital we supply businesses and people to use. But sustainable and inclusive broad-based economic growth means much more than working to efficiently deploy capital to the benefit of our shareholders. It also requires addressing the inequality of opportunity in our communities.

We need our most talented young people choosing to pursue careers in business – which means we must do a better job sharing what kind of social impact they can make with that choice

We do this by leaning in to influence the forces that shape our economic conditions, instead of simply reacting to them. Our role doesn’t stop with what we’re doing as a company. We’re regularly consulted by governments on public policy initiatives to stimulate growth.

To grow, our economy needs more people working more productively. It needs economic growth of higher quality.

This drives more income, more business investment, growing payrolls, and increased tax revenue for governments. Higher revenue for governments provides more capacity to improve publicly-funded research, public services and schools at all levels – a virtuous circle for productivity growth.

More people working more productively can mean many things – including examination of immigration policy – but a clear opportunity is improving the economic participation rate of working age women; and there is a playbook to follow.

Last year the Province of Quebec’s participation rate for working-age women was approximately 87% - the highest in Canada by a wide margin. If the rest of Canada were to increase similar participation rates to that level there would be roughly 400,000 more women in the labour force. Quebec achieves this performance in part by ensuring women have equal access to employment opportunities, providing supports for re-entry to the workforce, and the province has a greater cultural acceptance of men taking paternity leave.

To grow, our economy needs more people working more productively. It needs economic growth of higher quality.

Publicly-traded companies get top marks for earnings that come from sustainable growth that drives revenue performance and income. Meanwhile they get marks taken off for earnings that come from one-off boosts to profitability that don’t seem to represent fundamental or sustainable performance. We should be applying a similar lens to the quality of our economic growth too.

I understand how the perspective of a young person can easily be shaped by stories of historical excesses of greed, or a view that making important civic contributions are somehow excluded from a career in business. But consider how businesses have made a difference in some of the world’s most intractable problems.

The challenges of global poverty and inequality seem so significant that it’s easy to be cynical about how far we’ve advanced. However, according to the World Bank, since 1990, global trade has helped to cut the number of people living in extreme poverty in half. While government creates the conditions for increased trade through agreements it is businesses competing and trading with each other that go the last mile.

We need to change our mindset as a Canadian business community to look for new customers beyond borders.

The opportunity to increase trade flows is on Canada’s doorstep. Indeed, the export market potential for small and medium-sized Canadian businesses has never been stronger.

In the coming years, only one G7 country – Canada – will have free trade access to every other G7 country. And only Canada will have free trade access to all of: North America, the 28 member of the European Union, and the 10 economies of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Potential export growth doesn’t mean much if it’s not realized. We need to change our mindset as a Canadian business community to look for new customers beyond borders. And we need young people to be a key part of this journey.

It is an incredible time to be embarking on a career in the world of business and making an impact in our local and global communities – a point that can be lost in the incredible amount of information we are bombarded with 24/7 across all media platforms, including social media. 

For a medium designed to increase connectivity, to bring people closer together, it increasingly feels like its most powerful effect is to reinforce boundaries of various groups among us; inhibiting communication and driving greater polarization of public debate.

My career has taught me that sameness ultimately leads to ignorance, while diversity of thought breeds innovation.

We can easily be convinced of a hunch on something after we see it on Facebook because we searched for it on Google. Algorithms that provide relevant search results are increasingly shaping our view of the world by tailoring the information we consume.

To thrive and grow as a society we need to constantly have our views challenged. My career has taught me that sameness ultimately leads to ignorance, while diversity of thought breeds innovation. This is true of our workforce at BMO and I believe it is true of our population. We need to place a premium on critical-thinking skills as information floods our networks and we must consider carefully measures we take that limit our exposure to different ways of thinking.

As business leaders, we must get better at sharing our values and stories with younger generations. When they see so many of their values shared, they will consider a career in business and see the legitimate route to developing sustainable and inclusive broad-based economic growth that it is. 

I elaborated on the comments above in a speech earlier today at the Canadian Club of Montreal. A copy of that speech is available here.

For more information on the work we’re doing to promote sustainable, inclusive, broad-based growth, learn more about our work with the United Way here.