The UK government has today announced that UK water companies will be required to "put customers and environment at the heart of their objectives" as part of their governance.
This is a wonderful (and very welcome) example of recalibrating the central principle of a business. UK water companies have had a terrible record in recent years - dumping sewage into rivers and sea, and experiencing huge financial problems too. The new government has announced that these companies will in future be required to put customers and the environment at the center of purpose and considerations.
It's timely, necessary and elegant. It's a beautiful and powerful example of what I call becoming Life.Centered - putting what really matters at the center of:
-> Work
-> Organisations
-> Society
What we put at the center of business and governance matters
If you look closely you can see that - whether we notice or not - all systems are expressions of essential or central qualities. This is true for a tree, a human being, a school class and a multi national corporation.
What we put at center - of our lives, work, organisation and society matters tremendously. Governance and regulation is one way of doing this (there are many others).
The polycrisis we face - environmentally, socially and politically are expressions of having put unhelpful, distorted and misguided things at the center. For many decades our organisations, businesses and institutions have done exactly what they were meant to do. It's just that what they were meant to do was based on having misguided, outdated or confused central principles and essential qualities.
A water sector that places shareholder profit at the center - will inevitably create environmental damage because it has money rather than life or healthy water at the center. Money is neither negative or bad. But it is an inappropriate principle or goal to place at the center.
Looking after those who use and drink the water, and looking after the natural environment from which the water comes, are very fitting and coherent principles to place at the center.
And this will change a great deal.
It's wonderful to see this example of a government beginning to realign distorted priorites, and to bring insituations back to healthy and generative central principles.
What would be healthy and fitting central principles for say a transport industry? or the education sector? or for local government in the town where you live? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
(ps you can read more about Life.Centered and the yogic origins of this worldview here)