TrueValueMetrics Website
Proposed Improvement

Some proposed revisions to the home page text

Burgess COMMENTARY
A friend has pointed out that the very first paragraph of the TrueValueMetrics home page makes the initiative sound like the aim is to create a left leaning right bashing space, when in fact this is not the aim at all. I used to describe myself as being 'somewhat to the right of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher' because of a very deep conviction that meaningful economic activity should be dome by an entrepreneurial private sector and not by government. At the same time, I did then, and do now, believe that government has a very constructive role to play in society including enabling initiatives essential to a decent quality of life for everyone ... and that there are some things (not many) better done by government than by for profit private business organizations.
Peter Burgess

On the TrueValueMetrics website now:

Why TrueValueMetrics?
You manage what you measure. The modern money profit capitalist market economic system is in crisis following several decades of economic mismanagement arising in large part because the metrics of corporate profit, investor value and GDP growth cannot be used to get the best outcomes from a modern highly productive modern economy ... or, for that matter from the vast population who are in abject poverty at the 'bottom of the pyramid' A system of metrics that includes both the money profit and the concept of value can go a long way towards enabling reform of the global economic system.

Why TrueValueMetrics?
For almost 20 years I was a successful corporate management accountant and a CFO very interested in corporate performance. In this role I learned how important it was to have the right incentives in the company so that everyone was pushing towards the same corporate goal. My work on this helped the companies I worked for improve profit performance substantially. In 1978 I started a small international management consultancy firm that applied management accounting inside major business organizations and tried ... rather unsuccessfully ... to bring accountability and performance metrics into the public sector at home and abroad.

TrueValueMetrics is an initiative of Tr-Ac-Net Inc., a company I formed in 2003 to continue the activities of my consulting firm. Tr-Ac-Net was short for Transparency and Accountability Network, an initiative that was seeking to enable better accounting in both private business and public sector organizations. TrueValueMetrics has now emerged as the core activity of the company because of the vital importance of measuring what matters, and specifically measuring not only money profit, investor value and GDP growth but also all the other factors that go into making for a better quality of life for the people who are employees, suppliers, customers, family members and the community at large, and also all the factors that go into a sustainable environment. TrueValueMetrics is value accountancy where both money profit and valuadd are measured and reported together.

TrueValueMetrics is an essential component of the emerging social business asset class. A social business may not have fast growing profits and a high capital market valuation, but this can be made up by fast growing social valuadd and a high valuation on the emerging social business exchanges.

QUESTION? IS THIS BETTER?

I describe myself as being 'somewhat to the right of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher but to the left of Barack Obama'. I have a very deep conviction that meaningful economic activity should be done by an entrepreneurial private sector and not by government. At the same time, I believe that government has a very constructive role to play in society, especially through initiatives essential for a decent quality of life for everyone ... and that there are some things (not many) better done by government than by for profit private business organizations. The point is that the TrueValueMetrics project is devoted to the adoption of sensible accounting standards so that leaders, political leaders and business leaders are provided with the information needed to make their decisions. Without adequate accounting standards, politics is just posturing and business is blind search for profit.