Gmail Peter Burgess
Re: Sustainability Leaders Dialogue
8 messages
John Grosskopf Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 12:06 PM
To: Kirsten Anderson , Alan Hurt , Peter Burgess , Michael Porch , John Milliman , William Borges
Cc: 'oz.paez3@gmail.com'
Hi all,
I wanted to do quick follow-up to thank you all for the generosity of your time to discuss the future of the Sustainability Leader’s Dialogue.
2 hrs of your time and nearly that with Kirsten before that, which to me, is an indicator of Dialogue’s value. As promised, I’ll prepare a follow-up in the next few/several days. I encourage any follow-up thoughts and reflections from any of you via e-mail. And I’ll reach out for personal discussions.
So sorry you were unable to join us Peter.
John Grosskopf
jwgrosskopf@gmail.com
Tel: 949-709-0237
Peter Burgess Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 1:14 PM
To: John Grosskopf
Cc: Kirsten Anderson , Alan Hurt , Michael Porch , John Milliman , William Borges , 'oz.paez3@gmail.com'
Dear John
Sorry I missed the ZOOM meeting yesterday ... around 2 pm my computer system went into a death spiral. I am ot sure what was the cause ... maybe old age, but not sure whether that is the computer or the operator ... or it might have been something to an electrical surge / outage in a storm about 24 hours ago. In any event I was in a computer blackout yesterday afternoon ... and it is only now that I seem to have reasonably fully recovered.
I am particularly sorry to have missed yesterday because the issues regarding sustainability that need to be addressed are huge ... with at least 5 major issues that need to be priority and all addressed simultaneously and as a priority and at scale. In my view this will not happen as long as investors prioritize profit over triple bottom line sustainability and corporate leadership panders to the investors rather than getting the right balance between all the stakeholders.
Hopefully I will be able to catch up with you all in due course ...
Best
PeterB.
_____________________________
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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John Grosskopf Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 4:51 PM
To: Peter Burgess
Cc: Kirsten Anderson , Alan Hurt , Michael Porch , John Milliman , William Borges , 'oz.paez3@gmail.com'
Thanks for letting us know Peter, and sorry for the bad luck. It was a good and productive discussion that you would have enjoyed and valued. I’ll be sending a summary of the session next week.
Glad your up and running again.
We’ll be in touch soon.
Regards,
John
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John Grosskopf Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 10:36 AM
To: Kirsten Anderson , Alan Hurt , Peter Burgess , John Milliman , Michael Porch , William Borges , 'oz.paez3@gmail.com'
Hi Everyone,
Thanks to those who have responded to our last Dialogue. I suspect, like most everyone, we’re all distracted by the election, COVID, and the holiday season. I’m of the firm belief that 2021 and beyond will change for the better, and Sustainability -in all its forms- will continue to transform the landscape, but at an accelerated pace.
If ever there was a bellwether, it might be this: in addition to my O&G Dallas client and their Env-CSR (ISO14001/26001) efforts , 2 other O&G firms in the DFW area - just last week - are advertising for Sustainability/ESG Directors. In TEXAS! In TEXAS! ESG (Env-Social-Governance) is increasingly the way investors score and rate firms. A new sustainability rating system is quickly gaining traction; SASB, the Sustainability Auditing Standards Board - that may overtake the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as THE marker/rating for firm’s sustainability efforts.
In closing, stay safe everyone and have a wonderful holiday season!! And for those that look to the stars, tonight is the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, not seen in 800 yrs. Take a look!
John
jwgrosskopf@gmail.com
Tel: 949-709-0237
Peter Burgess Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 1:04 PM
To: John Grosskopf
Cc: Kirsten Anderson , Alan Hurt , John Milliman , Michael Porch , William Borges , 'oz.paez3@gmail.com'
Dear John
Great ... I am sorry I missed the last dialog ... but my interest in the subject remains pretty intense.
I have been folloiwng what is going on in the sustainability reporting arena for several years. I was active with SASB when it first started. A short time ago SASB announced a collaboration with GRI and quite recently there has been an announcement about collaboration between IIRC and SASB. I have not seen any announcement yet from IRIS+. All of this should be good news.
Sadly, I am not impressed ... and a bigger and bigger collaboration around an extremely weak methodology is ... bluntly put ... a massive waste of time and effort. My gripe about all these initiatives is that they avoid the key issue of how on earth to actually measure and quantify issues around social and environmental impact. There is quite solid consensus around the money metric, profit and wealth when it comes to economic impact, but quantification about things like quality of life and environmental degradation (in all their complex manifestations) seems to be studiously ignored.
Worse ... the conventional wisdom that more and more GDP has to be good, is a nonsense. This was an issue when I was a university student 60 years ago, and the idea that GDP is still a core metric of economic performance is thought provoking. There must be a reason, and I would propose the idea that it simply suits those with power, wealth and influence and makes it much more difficult to put in place policies that would be more effective for society at large ... in other words, everyone else.
These are interesting times ... but also very dangerous. In 1918 Keynes walked away from the Versailles Conference because of his concern that it would destabilize Europe. Current policies are setting up to destabilize everything ... and that is not going to be pretty.
I think it is interesting that ESG has become a talking point central to impact investing ... but it is really a bit like GDP, a seriously flawed analytical framing. Environment and Social performance need to be measured ... but in relation to Economic performance NOT Governance performance. Governance is a part of a management portfolio that helps to achieve performance ... it is NOT performance per se. Early in the days of SASB there were academic studies to try to demonstrate that more profit resulted from more social and environmental responsibility. It was not very convincing. Most people who have any real experience in business know that profit maximization is not assisted very much by investing in social causes or environmental causes ... they have costs which reduce profit, and in some cases reduce business profit substantially. I want to see metrics that show social, economic and environmental performance both for the corporate entity, but also embedded in the products they produce that flow through the system, and the places where the business the entity operates (together with its supply chain and use/waste chain. This might be summed up as wanting to see all the externalities accounted for in a complete manner.
Thank you John ... we have a technological foundation that supports amazing productivity ... but the idea that most of the population of the world is seeing a serious degradation of their standard of living over years and decades suggests that something is very wrong with the system and that it should be fixed.
Best
PeterB
_____________________________
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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William Borges Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 2:13 PM
To: John Grosskopf
Cc: Kirsten Anderson , Alan Hurt , Peter Burgess , Michael Porch , John Milliman , Ozzie Paez
Hey, John,
Indeed, SASB and GRI should be . . . and can be . . . complementary.
Peter did a great job of pointing out the conceptual flaws of SASB, et al. However, getting to a point where lofty concepts meet cold-hard realities is going to require vast enterprise-level experience gained throughout the global and regional economies. The only way to get that experience is strike out and just try to make it all work together. Opportunities for improvement in the concepts and methods will be immediately apparent and ongoing. The real challenge in the face of implementation frustrations will be to act effectively on the lessons-learned and not just give up. 😉
It's important to recognize that, although they share common concerns, SASB and GRI have different focuses. SASB first and foremost is focused on board-level and C-suite ESG concerns, specifically the materiality of environmental and social impacts on financial performance. Although GRI includes ESG concerns, it's primarily focused on the environmental and social impacts of operational and administration activities.
Both SASB and GRI have the same weakness, i.e., they rely on end-of-the-pipeline reporting that may or may not be the result of intentional planning and organizational control. However, that's where ISO-style continuous-improvement (CI) management systems (MS) come in. Using highly disciplined CI-MSs organizations are able to plug-in SASB's industry-specific materiality factors and GRI's reporting topics into their needs-assessment processes. Then, using the organization's most-pressing needs identified in those processes, company-specific key performance indicators can be produced at strategic, tactical and operations/administration-unit levels. This approach can enable an enterprise to produce intentional measurable results aligned with SASB and GRI objectives. Contrast this approach with the hope-and-a-prayer drivel commonly seen in far too many GRI reports.
Just the ramblings of a COVID-addled mind . . .
Cheers,
Bill
On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 8:59 AM John Grosskopf wrote:
Yep, I got sloppy, thanks for the correction Bill! I hope GRI and SASB succeed, as they're really fundamentally different things. and SHOULD be complementary.
John Grosskopf
jwgrosskopf@gmail.com
Tel: 949-709-0237
On Dec 21, 2020, at 9:56 AM, William Borges wrote:
Hi John,
A slight tweak . . . SASB: Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Our associate, Katie Schmiitz-Eulitt, is a highly placed functionary at SASB.
BTW, SASB and GRI have been working together to make the two schemes complementary.
Cheers,
Bill
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Ozzie Paez Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 2:19 PM
To: John Grosskopf
Cc: Kirsten Anderson , Alan Hurt , Peter Burgess , John Milliman , Michael Porch , William Borges
Thank you, John! I'm glad you mentioned the conjunction. It's been so long that I'd forgotten what it looked like last time around! lol.
Since I'm the odd-fellow in the group, I'll give you a quick update on my adventures. Just finished a five-course set from Stanford Medical on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine; I'm struggling with a tough Artificial Intelligence class taught by a former Stanford Professor and, like the conjunction situation, trying to remember lessons in linear algebra that I learned what feels like centuries ago! I'm also working through additional training on epidemiology from Johns-Hopkins as a precursor to considering AI applications in that context. It's is like teaching a new dog new tricks, but I like to think that I'm an old dog with a young mind - I know a few women who disagree!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and a wonderful New Year to one and all!
Oz
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--
Ozzie Paez
CEO
MIT Big Data and Social Analytics
https://www.credential.net/od89b2it
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www.ozziepaezresearch.com
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Ozzie Paez Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 2:31 PM
To: Peter Burgess
Peter - I don't entirely agree with you, but you do give me much to think about. That makes you invaluable! One of the worst reflections of our current body politic is everyone running to news shows, opinion mongers, and others who validate their points of view. No wonder it often feels like the world is becoming increasingly dumber! I would love to discuss the social, political, and military implications of Artificial Intelligence with you someday. For me at least, they make all the other concerns appear tame by comparison!
Have a wonderful Christmas! All my best to you and your family,
Ozzie
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