2Sustain

I must say I was pretty inspired to see so many enthusiastic, energetic people at the Business for Social Responsibility conference a few weeks ago here in San Francisco. Getting 1000+ senior executives to carve out three days from their busy schedules to get together and share ideas on building more sustainable businesses is no small feat…and the success of the conference says a lot about where sustainability now ranks in the pantheon of public awareness, corporate priorities, and citizen consciousness.

It also speaks to a fascinating convergence we are seeing among the worlds of business, government and nonprofit advocacy. For evidence look no further than the event’s keynote speakers: Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla, Mattel CEO Bob Eckert, Greenpeace Executive Director Gerd Leipold and KPMG Chairman Sir Michael Rake, most notably. What’s more, the attendees were a veritable who’s who of nonprofit sector leaders, top government officials, and heads of sustainability for Fortune 500s.

It was a fantastic and very telling convergence, a convergence not only of the private, public and nonprofit sectors, but also of two forces: sustainability and profitability. These forces are now converging with amazing speed and certitude, and within a few years there will be no distinction between “doing well” and “doing good.” And it’s great to see this convergence occurring.

Another very telling convergence was what I’ll call “2007: The Complete and Utterly Undeniable Resurgence of Al Gore.” What a year the guy has had. First the Academy Award, then the Nobel Prize, then the Kleiner Perkins announcement, all topped off with the Oval Office photo opp. with his old nemesis George W. Amazing. Talk about being on fire. So there’s Gore Monday in his “icing on the cake” moment standing in the Oval Office with George W. You had to imagine the soundtrack in his head went something like this “So…wow…this is cool…I just won the Nobel prize, I won the Academy Award, the country is begging me to run for President, I’m running a multi-billion dollar private equity fund with ex-Goldman Sachs partners, I was just named a partner at Kleiner Perkins, the world’s top VC, and I’m running around with Bono, Jeffrey Sachs, George Clooney and Richard Branson saving humanity…sweet!” And here’s poor W, the least popular President in modern US history facing a disaster in the Middle East, having mismanaged nearly every aspect of his foreign policy and war effort, facing economic turmoil at home, with a largely stalled legislative and policy agenda and a less-than-enthused Democratic Congress. Oh how things have changed from the days of hanging chads. It must have been quite a moment for him, and in my opinion it was well deserved.

So as I sat there thinking about Al’s internal soundtrack I realized that his convergence was really a personal, individual version of the communal, collective convergence I witnessed at BSR, and of the greater convergence taking place in the marketplace. Gore has been a senior government official, he’s led nonprofit, grassroots advocacy efforts, and he’s now a very successful capitalist. He, more than any single person on the planet today, represents the convergence sweeping through the public, private and nonprofit sectors. His experience and success offers a fantastic template for other business leaders seeking to impact more than their companies’ bottom lines. The Al Gore convergence shows them, and all of us, that you can do it all – positively impact people’s lives and the health of the planet while simultaneously building profitable businesses and increasing personal and collective prosperity.