Fellow CEOs: Reject the false choice between making a profit and making a difference.

If we want to rise to meet the many challenges we are facing in this moment, CEOs and the companies we lead have an obligation to serve as forces for good in the world—acting not only in service of our shareholders, but also in service of humanity.

That principle has always been embedded in HP’s DNA. Our founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, once said: “a company that focuses solely on profits ultimately betrays both itself and society.” More than 80 years after Bill and Dave started HP in their garage, those words have never had greater meaning than they do today.

As we have seen all too clearly in recent months, the world today is full of volatility. We are confronting a convergence of challenges unlike any we have experienced in recent memory: deep inequalities and systemic racism, a global pandemic, a changing climate, and significant macroeconomic uncertainties.

These issues are not only intertwined, compounding the effects of one another, they are also taking a disproportionate toll on people of color and low-income communities.

In the face of such unprecedented challenges, there is no roadmap to which CEOs can turn for guidance. In the words of an old adage, we are going where there is no path and leaving a trail.

And yet, CEOs do have a compass we can use. As we chart new paths forward, I believe the first thing we must do is reflect on and revisit our core values and let those values be our guide.

This is about more than simply saying the right things. It’s about doing the right things—and holding ourselves accountable to the commitments we make. That is what we’ve been doing at HP, from using 3D printing to produce Personal Protective Equipment for hospitals fighting COVID-19, to using our platform, tools, and resources to help advance the cause of equality and human rights, to making sure we are delivering a positive impact on people, the planet, and the communities we serve.

To show both the progress we are making, as well as the areas where we simply must do better, we are releasing our 2019 Sustainable Impact Report and our first standalone Human Rights Progress Report. Key highlights include:

• We continue to foster a culture of diversity and inclusion. HP has the most diverse Board in the U.S. technology industry, and 63% of our U.S. hires in 2019 were from underrepresented groups. With this said, our number of Black and African American employees is not where it should be. That’s why we plan to double our number of Black and African American executives by 2025. And we are committed to doing the hard work needed to help stamp out systemic racism and discrimination in all its forms.
• We have now reached more than 28 million students, teachers, and adult learners through our educational programs and partnerships—and we are tracking toward our goal of enabling better learning outcomes for 100 million people by 2025.
• We sourced more than 1 million pounds of ocean-bound plastic for use in our products, and we are on track with our plans to increase recycled content in our products to 30% by 2025. We also intend to eliminate 75% of single-use plastic from our packaging over the next five years.
• We are more than halfway to achieving our science-based goal of reducing product use greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 30% by 2025. And we were one of only eight companies to receive a triple-A rating from CDP for our work across climate change, forests, and water security.
• We continue to move toward a sustainable future for printing that is forest positive, carbon neutral, and supportive of a circular economy. For example, through the Sustainable Forests Collaborative, we are working to protect, restore, and manage more than 200,000 acres of forests in Brazil and China.

I encourage you to read the executive summary and review the full reports for more detail.

But as we all know, issuing reports has never been enough. We ought to be judged not only by our ambitions, but by our tangible results in making long-overdue changes to how our businesses interact with the world around us. And often, that means rejecting the false choice between making a difference and making a profit.

At HP, we’ve shown that taking all of these steps isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s also good for our bottom line. In 2019, our Sustainable Impact work helped drive more than US$1.6 billion in new sales—a testament to the high-performance, purpose-driven culture that unites our people and our partners.

There’s no question that we still have lots of work ahead of us, and plenty of new destinations to chart in the months and years to come. But as we do, we will continue to be guided by HP’s core values, forging a path to a more sustainable, equitable, and just future in the United States and around the world.