Our 2025 Wish for Business Leaders: Clear Eyes and Steady Hands
As the year begins, we reflect on bets placed in 2024, where we made progress, and the need to think openly about what is possible in this moment. We can’t stand still.
In December, we spent a half-day with a dozen experts who advise or sit on corporate boards. We were testing how to deploy our focus on leadership development in the business sector with a specific target in mind: board directors. The ideas flowed freely, fueled by extraordinary changes in the business ecosystem and growing demands on business leaders across industries.
Then the group confronted a sobering thought. The complexity and breadth of business challenges that would benefit from board inquiry or oversight may be beyond the capacity of a “normal” board. New board structures, capacities, inputs and ways of working are needed to manage both the risks and opportunities unfolding in this moment. We woke up the next day to news of the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare—a stunning, and sobering, marker in an intense year with business under the spotlight.
What will be needed from business leaders in 2025?
Global events and national tensions demand directors stay flexible but also lean in to support the executives on long-term goals and execution against commitments - many of which come to fruition in the year ahead. The end game is business decisions that advance the long-term health of society.
Progress requires a clear understanding of the business, including risks to the human and natural systems on which the company is dependent. Take the example of?Costco—which displayed both courage and confidence in?its?response?to?a?shareholder?proposal to?pull back from?so-called?DEI policies:
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“Our board has considered this proposal and believes that our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect & inclusion is appropriate & necessary.”
Amen.
The Aspen Institute Business & Society Program will approach 2025 by supporting leaders working for change, and by listening to and learning from those on the frontlines of business. Here is just some of what lies ahead:
Are there practices and protocols—on boards, within the executive and through collaborations—that inspire you and deploy the capacity of the business sector to address issues of real consequence? We’d love to hear from you!
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Sustainability Leadership Scientist & Practitioner | TEDx Speaker | HBR Author | Top 1% most cited social scientists worldwide | Download my new whitepaper on influencing your Scope 3 stakeholders to reduce emissions
1 个月Judy Samuelson thanks for sharing this positive perspective to start the year. I would also love to see business leaders embrace stakeholder led solutions more from suppliers, employees, customers, and community leaders. And to invest in sponsoring or supporting these through peer learning collaboratives, rather than trying to persuade through marketing or top down compliance. When we bring more leaders together they will have much greater buy in to the solutions. In particular Scope 3 and EPR regulations mean we need to use multi-sector collaborations and end user solutions. I understand many corporate leaders are not trained in leading such large scale orchestrated change, but we have many fantastic models that work from our healthy sustainable cities efforts over the last 2 decades.
Executive Director at The Data Equity Project
1 个月Thanks Judy Samuelson. A thoughtful framing of 2025. We expect capitalism to become more intense (distilled?) in the New Year. Our commitment is to move boldly to create a healthier economy, welcoming collaboration from inspired leaders.