As a young six or seven-year-old kid growing up in the early 1930s, my late father liked to spend time on Saturday and Sunday mornings with his dad–an ob-gyn doc–as he made his rounds of house-calls in the neighborhoods that spread to the east of Manhattan, in Queens and Brooklyn, New York.
They’d find a parking space, and sometimes would have to walk a few blocks to the patient’s home or apartment. My grandfather would carry a big black cowhide doctor’s bag filled with his essentials, and my father–he recalled–had his own miniaturized black leather bag and his own little stethoscope, as he tried to keep pace with his father.
My grandfather would live to see two of his four children follow in his professional footsteps, one of them being my dad, who would live to see two of his own children grow up to be doctors, and one of his 17 grandchildren–my niece Kate–get started as a pathologist in medicine in the past few years.
Walking two or three quick steps for every one of my grandfather’s strides, and stopping in to see those families on weekend mornings etched itself into my father’s being. He wanted to help people who were sick, or needed medical attention of some sort. He practiced surgery–mostly in New York City’s West Side–for the better part of 45 years.
And when he retired as a surgeon at age 65, he started a second career in health and medical care, with a couple of agencies that inspected hospitals, and finally, as a medical librarian, helping with the CDC’s National Program of Cancer Registries to properly document cases of cancer in an effort to unlock improved treatments. So, for 40 years my dad’s identity orbited around the idea that his surgical specialization in medicine defined who he was.
He’d learn in his second career, that surgery was only one facet of what motivated him as a physician–what he wanted, and what his job really was had more to do with his desire to help people get better, to live the lives they want to live, to be well.
The reason I like to tell that story is that, to me, the 6-year-old boy hurrying to keep up with his dad, with his own little doctor bag, and the 85-year fellow pouring over medical records to ensure that meta-data tagging, naming protocols, and taxonomies for cancer cases was driven by a purpose that fueled ambition, curiosity, satisfaction, and ultimately, purpose. That combination of motivators probably accounted for why my dad lived ’til he was 92.
In housing or in making communities, we have many people who specialize in many disciplines at many skilled and professional levels. Often, we identify ourselves by our skill or profession or the discipline in which we’ve achieved expertise. Often, we can forget the larger purpose–the real job–that our work and our companies and our industry sectors and business communities fulfill.
A few weeks ago, Larry Fink, chairman and ceo of Blackrock, drew a bright line that separates companies whose primary or sole goal is to throw off greater near-term profitability to the benefit of stakeholders from organizations whose mission and purpose is, well, different than that. Fink’s message to CEOs, many of whom are direct or indirect beneficiaries of Blackrock institutional investment strategies, is that quarterly-results-oriented profitability without purpose, without mindful contribution to efforts to improve human lives and the life of the earth itself, won’t cut it any more. Fink writes:
Companies must ask themselves: What role do we play in the community? How are we managing our impact on the environment? Are we working to create a diverse workforce? Are we adapting to technological change? Are we providing the retraining and opportunities that our employees and our business will need to adjust to an increasingly automated world? Are we using behavioral finance and other tools to prepare workers for retirement, so that they invest in a way that that will help them achieve their goals?
This is why we’re encouraged by the likes of DowDuPont’s recently announced alliance with the U.S. Green Building Council, whose goal is to lend consultative, materials, and financial resources toward modeling more sustainable communities and cities. We’re seeing Amazon, Google, Tesla, Bill Gates, and other individuals and organizations step up and dive into the political, economic, social, cultural, infrastructural, educational, and health cross-hairs of communities and cities, and anticipate that for-profit enterprises will take a more important role in how cities and communities find more sustaining and regenerative iterations of themselves if they’re going to continue to survive and thrive.
The DowDuPont commitment, in a sense, is a company that has produced value to stakeholders in various combinations and concerns for more than a century, but now recognizes–as Larry Fink notes–that “to sustain that performance, however, you must also understand the societal impact of your business as well as the ways that broad, structural trends – from slow wage growth to rising automation to climate change – affect your potential for growth.”
On an immediate level, DowDuPont and the USGBC will advise two cities–globally–to help them achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification. While this may seem to be a drop in the bucket in light of urgencies to reduce sheltered spaces’ carbon imprint, the initiative may create a process other communities can adopt and follow.
More profoundly, the DowDuPont investment reflects a recognition of who the organization is, what its job is, and what the organization wants to be as it continues to evolve. In very pragmatic, real-world ways, private enterprise has begun to awaken to its role as a deeply-resourced stakeholder in human well-being. Companies need to hire young talent, and to attract a next generation of brilliant associates, they need to have a heart and soul along with a mind set on earning financial results. Companies need investors, and increasingly, investors are voting with their feet to move their support to organizations with a core commitment to purposeful, life-affirming, profitability.
“From our perspective, where we have deep expertise, commitment, and resources in building science, green chemistry, engineering, structure, and the construction process, the energy policy focus of this alliance with USGBC gives us the ability to take action on a global scale that can effectively matter to cities and communities,” Greg Bergtold, director of advocacy for Dow Building Solutions tells me. “We’ve had a developing relationship with the USGBC for more than two years, and this venture is a culmination of our partnership that gives us a specific, meaningful action area that will serve the interests of the built environment.”
On the USGBC side of the equation, access to partners like DowDuPont gives the organization’s LEED for Cities push additional resources and opportunity to be effective on a larger, more complex municipal platform.
“Our enthusiasm for this partnership springs from our mission and purpose to extend the impact and effect of LEED from the granular level of individuals building homes, to commerical enterprises building the commercial, institutional environment, now to the scale of cities and communties,” says Peter Templeton, senior vp, global market development at USGBC. “Some of these communities have been working toward sustainability models, and now, we’ll be able to bring them standards and measures, and resources to help them with their connectivity with all stakeholders, policy makers, etc., to accelerate that process.”
DowDuPont’s core proficiencies, ability to generate value, and sustaining, exclusive promise to customers may come down to strategic leverage of science, engineering, construction, and design processes for building and materials.
But its job–just like that kid walking next to his father with a miniaturized version of a doctor bag in the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, New York in the 1930s–is the well-being of people and the planet. And its partnership with USGBC puts its words into action.
