商界为何需要道德革命

Acumen公司的创始人杰奎琳·诺沃格拉茨在上周二的《财富》CEO倡议大会上对着全会场的CEO发出振聋发聩的呼吁：经历了科技革命后，商界现在需要道德革命。

诺沃格拉茨讲述了她的创业故事：30年前从一帆风顺的华尔街离职，在卢旺达成立了一家小微金融机构，发展到今天，在全球108家公司投资超1亿美元，其企业家精神共计为2.7亿发展中国家人民提供了服务。诺沃格拉茨用这个故事为CEO们讲述她的经验和建议，探讨如何能为解决世界性难题做出贡献。

根据诺沃格拉茨的经验，仅靠同理心是不够的，因为同理心无法动摇一个人。“如果我们仅仅是感受到另一个人的痛苦，并不一定会做出改变。”她说。解决世界问题需要的是商业领袖展开“道德想象力”。

她指出，合作对扩大规模至关重要。以Acumen和全球咨询公司贝恩八年的合作关系为例，期间贝恩派高级合伙人进驻Acumen，还提供了52000小时的无偿咨询。合作项目还包括 “反向学徒”，让贝恩的青年领导者参与Acumen的实践项目，比如去埃塞俄比亚、冲突后的哥伦比亚等，项目结束后他们往往对公司大客户经营的供应链及其它项目有了更深入的理解。“这让他们成为更优秀的领导者。”诺沃格拉茨说。

一路走来，诺沃格拉茨看到，成功的公司和创业家之间具有共同点，而失败者总有相似之处。她说，总而言之就是一个词：个性。她说：“如果一个公司的个性能够对抗官僚主义、对抗腐败，并且做到坚忍不拔，持之以恒，就能取得巨大的胜利。”就像孟买的一家公司用3500辆救护车重新定义了印度农村的紧急医疗服务，芝加哥的两位创业家成立了EthioChicken公司，培育高生育率、高抗病性的鸡，出售给小农场，解决了埃塞尔比亚的营养不良问题。

她说关键在于押宝“处于边缘”但理念正确的创业者，把他们推到舞台中央。

她还鼓励参会CEO拥抱民族和信仰间的矛盾，但要试着凭借“在虚伪世界里创造希望的想法”走向双方对立面的中间，还要鼓励其他人也这么做。“哪怕我们看起来有天壤之别，我也能找到你观念中的正确之处，向你走近。”她引用了鲁米的一首诗：“在对与错的观念之外，有一块地方。我将在那与你相会。”（财富中文网）

译者：Agatha 

Acumenfounder Jacqueline Novogratz issued a powerful challenge to the roomful of CEOs at Fortune’s CEO Initiative conference on last Tuesday: Business had the technology revolution; now it needs a “moral revolution.”

Describing her journey of leaving a successful career on Wall Street three decades ago to start a microfinance institution in Rwanda—which turned into more than $100 million in investment across 108 companies around the globe that has used entrepreneurism to bring services to more than 270 million people in the developing world—Novogratz shared lessons and advice for CEOs seeking to help solve the world’s most pressing issues.

Among Novogratz’s lessons: Empathy alone isn’t enough, she said, because empathy allows power dynamics to remain intact. “We don’t really have to change if we feel another person’s pain,” she said. Instead, solving the world’s problems calls for business leaders to channel their “moral imagination.”

Partnering, she said, is critical for scale. She cited Acumen’s eight-year partnership with global consulting firm Bain, which includes senior partners coming into Acumen’s offices and a total of 52,000 hours of pro bono consulting, but also “reverse apprenticeships.” These involve Bain embedding its young leaders in externships at Acumeninitiatives in the field—in Ethiopia, say, or post-conflict Colombia—after which they come back with a different level of understanding of things like the supply chains in which their large-corporate clients are working in. “It makes them better leaders,” she says.

Along the way, Novogratz says she’s learned a lot about the commonalities between the companies and entrepreneurs that succeed and those that fail. It comes down to one word, she says: character. “Those that have the character let them fight the bureaucracy and corruption and let them fight in long-term, gritty ways.” The enterprises that win, she says, “have won in really big ways,” like the Mumbai-based company that has redefined emergency health delivery with 3,500 ambulances in rural India, or two entrepreneurs out of Chicago who addressed Ethiopia’s protein deficiency by creating EthioChicken, which produces highly fertile, disease-resistant chickens and sells them to small farmers.

The key, she says, is betting on the right entrepreneurs “on the edges” and bringing them to the center.

She also encouraged the group to embrace the contradictions between peoples and beliefs, but try to move toward the center—and encourage others to do the same—in the name of the “radical idea of creating hope in a cynical world.” “Even if you seem to be at the polar opposite of me, I can find a partial truth and move toward you,” she said, citing the poet Rumi: “Beyond right doing and wrongdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”