From Peter Burgess
to Randy
Dear Randy
It has taken a lot longer than I would have wished ... I guess I am getting older and slowing down!
But I am delighted to read your material ... and very much wish our paths had crossed a long time ago. In fact it is possible that they did, but we never noticed for a variety of perfectly good reasons. My excuse is that I spent a lot of my consulting career in remote parts of the world, and never picked up on what was going on in North America and Europe until a few years back when I stopped travelling!
I agree with most everything you talk about ... but I come from a different background. I read engineering and economics at Cambridge, then started working as an engineer and realized that big decisions were being made because of money and finance. I relaunched my education and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1965. I had a successful corporate career and became a very young CFO in the United States. Later I did consulting work with the World Bank, the UN and others and learned that conventional financial accountancy is not fit for purpose when it comes to making big decisions about all the big issues that determine the future of the world and quality of life for all the world. I can go on ... but what I observed over 25+ years in the 1980s, 90s and 00s suggests that we can do a whole lot better.
Your thinking seems to be very much in line with my own. My perspective may be a little different. I am of the view that we can have a significant impact if we can change the way in which the accountants do their work. Rather than conventional financial accountancy, I want to use all the established accountancy conventions in a way that embraces the Triple Bottom Line (people, planet and profit) and all the capitals (social capital, natural capital and economic capital). In my view the key is to have a way to 'number' of all these things. I don't think there will be anything except talk until we do the numbering in an acceptable way. Numbering is an important part of science, and engineering and ... I would add ... management. If we can get the financial world to think not only about corporate profit, stock markets and wealth, but also the impact economic activity is having on the depletion and degradation of natural capital and the diminution of social capital.
I would love to talk ... and figure out how I might be able to help. I don't want to get in the way ... but I think some of my ideas could be useful.
With best regards
PeterB
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Peter Burgess ... Founder and CEO
TrueValueMetrics ... Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society
True Value Impact Accounting ... Multi Dimension for ALL the Capitals
http://www.truevaluemetrics.org
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterburgess1/
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/PeterBurgess2/
Twitter: @truevaluemetric @peterbnyc
Telephone: 570 202 1739
Email: peterbnyc@gmail.com
Skype: peterbinbushkill
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