Afterword

by Lim Siong Guan

Completing Capitalism: Heal Business to Heal the World is a thoughtful look at where all good business and social initiatives need to get to. So it is essential reading and essential thinking for all leaders who want to be “in time for the future.”

Some readers may consider the ideas to be ahead of their time. But they will be wrong. Not thinking through the ideas will be falling behind in time.

Everything we do needs to have a worthy purpose. Completing Capitalism makes us think about the purpose of capitalism. Should it be only about lifting the wealth of shareholders, or should it be also about boosting the well-being of everyone who has a stake in the life and purpose of the enterprise?

Economics is the rational allocation of scarce resources. And financial metrics have been the standard way by which to measure the sensibleness of the decisions. However, financial capital is not what is lacking in the world today. So why should financial metrics be the only perspective for good decisions in the allocation and utilization of resources for meeting the needs of people wherever they may be in the world?

What is very much lacking today is good deployment and utilization of human capital for improved productivity and an engaged workforce, good generation of social capital for well-functioning communities, and good exploitation of natural capital for the well-being of future generations.

Human capital relates to people. How can people be encouraged and developed to be the best they can be? How does each person attain the best chances to realize their potential in intellect, knowledge, skills, and experience? How well is everyone motivated and enabled to do their best and contribute the most they can? And how are all their efforts synergized so that the business or organization is the best it can be? On the principle that “what gets measured gets done,” we need good measures on the deployment and utilization of human capital. This book offers interesting, practical ideas.

Many organizations call for teamwork and collaboration as essential virtues for sound operations and congenial workplaces. Social capital is the grease that makes people look out for each other and makes human beings “human.” People yearn for identity; they seek to be loved, they seek to be respected. We need to measure our accretion or depletion of social capital for the sake of “knowing what is going on” among our workers and communities. This book offers insightful, enlightening perspectives.

The world speaks much about climate change and the overuse of natural resources. We need to be good stewards of our world. This is no soft-headed notion. It is enlightened self-interest for the generations to come. Whether it be air and water, oil and gas, or sand and minerals, we need a way to measure how we utilize the natural capital at our disposal. This book offers sound, thoughtful viewpoints.

Financial measurement offers just a singular, narrow perspective on whether a business is being run in a sustainable, effective manner. A comprehensive slate of measures that goes beyond looking at financial capital but also covers human capital, social capital, and natural capital is urgently needed to give us a complete picture of the sustainability of success in what we are doing.

Completing Capitalism offers a practical, holistic perspective on the responsible, sustainable leadership of business. If leadership is “making good things happen which on their own would not happen,” every leader must give due attention to the urgency in the call to do what is good and right in delivering on our responsibility for sustained success into the future. To “wait and see” is to “wait and die.”

All of us want to succeed in work and life. This book makes the point that if we do not measure what we are doing in a comprehensive way, we may well be on the wrong track. Indeed, our instincts tell us that we cannot be on the right track if our workers feel disengaged in their jobs, new employees are merely “satisficing” in their job delivery, the clarion call for “work-life balance” suggests that work is not fun but a “necessary evil” for earning what is necessary to “enjoy life,” members of societies show little concern for their fellow citizens, “me-centeredness” seems to have totally crowded out “other-centeredness,” decisions are made for the comforts of today’s generation with little thought for the next two generations . . . the list goes on!

Completing Capitalism seeks to offer maximum freedom for business to realize optimal, sustainable, long-term success for the business, its people and the communities they operate in, and our planet. And it does so by offering useful ways by which to measure what we are doing and to address the gaps in our actions. They are actionable metrics for transformational effect. The future is now! We must not miss the turn.

—Professor Lim Siong Guan, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public

Policy, National University of Singapore; former group President (2007–2016) of GIC, fund manager for Singapore’s foreign financial reserves; Chairman of Honour (Singapore), a charity promoting the virtue of honor for the well-being of the nation; coauthor of The Leader, The Teacher, & You (Imperial College Press, 2014) and Winning with Honour (Imperial College Press, 2016).