The one-sentence summary

The current system is broken so we need purpose-driven leadership for a wellbeing economy.

Can’t be bothered to read it? Listen to the 5-minute summary in two parts.

Want to buy the book? CLICK HERE

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • A bold reimagining of leadership, governance and the future of our economy is urgently needed. We need purpose-driven leadership for a wellbeing economy.
  • This involves addressing the flawed decision systems in what the authors call Logic 1.
  • Logic 1 follows short-term self-interest.
  • Logic 2 (long-term financial self-interest) is slightly better but an unwelcome distraction.
  • Logic 3 is what is needed – purpose-driven leadership. To work effectively this needs to be enacted on 3 levels:
  • Macro: shifting from a GDP-based model to a Wellbeing Economy.
  • Meso: moving from profit-maximizing to purpose-driven organizations, including purpose-driven governments designing and operating wellbeing economies.
  • Micro: redefining work and life from financially driven to purposeful and meaningful, underpinned by our capacity to be purpose-driven leaders.
  • The reason this matters is because long-term wellbeing for all is the only sensible approach. Wellbeing has not been generated for all by any means, most economies lack resilience and do not deliver effectively, with many responses being woeful.
  • It’s easy to jump to the problem of climate change, but this is climate myopia. The energy sources we rely on and how we use it create distinct yet interconnected consequences, including greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, carbon dioxide absorption by our oceans, geopolitical instability, deaths from hazard working in fossil fuels, nitrogen disruption, destruction of biological diversity, undermining ecosystems, misuse of soil, misuse of water, misuse of antibiotics, misuse of chemicals, stresses on mental health, isolation, social exclusion and fragmentation, financial debt levels, rampant inequality and unplanned levels of population. It all amounts to a huge systemic problem.
  • Business as usual Logic 1 is based on a series of flawed assumptions including self-interest, the theory of rational behaviour, financial investors investing for financial gain, competition helps wellbeing, government intervention ideally being zero and many more. At the heart of this is one super-assumption – that financial capital accumulation (profit) equals wellbeing impact. It doesn’t.
  • The assumption that financial income is a proxy for wellbeing outcomes and impact has become so deeply accepted and absorbed into our global cultures that we have collectively forgotten what the purpose of maximizing financial income is. So we have been growing the wrong thing – financial income rather than wellbeing. People become entrenched in high-consumption lifestyles in search of elusive wellbeing, but they are motivated to pursue unsustainable lives.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • Herman Daly and Donella Meadows created what is known as the Daly Triangle to show what a balanced society should look like, with foundational parameters of natural, human and social capital and systems, a middle tier of financial capital aiding the ultimate goal of long-term wellbeing of all people and planet.
  • We wouldn’t need a word called “sustainability” if the economy had been working properly. Instead we are in a state of urgent and “end game time unsustainability.”
  • Macro level Logic 1 thinking is an unenviable list which includes investing in GDP, not wellbeing, more rather than better jobs, self-regulation over better governance, attracting investment at any cost, productivity above all, short-term fixes for social investment, neglecting meaningful metrics, and more.
  • Logic 2 isn’t enough because it’s addressing the wrong problem and it leaves too much to chance.
  • So what we need is whole triangle governance, or total sustainability governance.
  • Achieving meaningful impact requires courage and self-awareness. Tony Robbins, renowned life and business strategist, once observed: “Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade.”

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • This is a highly detailed read with many economic points, so you have to concentrate hard to understand the full depth of what is being proposed.