More concern with the needs of customers would be a good idea.

“The three main challenges facing companies today are:
• Staying alive
•Producing value for shareholders, and
• Building an enterprise that will not only survive, but also succeed over the longer term."

No mention of customers, except to give it lip service at the bottom of your article, no mention of corporate social or environmental responsibility. Your company and most corporations are totally the opposite. No compassion, no morals, or ethics, just grab grab grab. The reason there are less companies and competition, is because the corporate slaves, (politicians) have cow tailed to you for their own greed and power.

“80 per cent of acquisitions or mergers fail to deliver value and would have been better left undone.”

Just look at the banking, service and food industries, no benefit to the customer, or worker. Except for the greed of CEO's, nothing for anyone really.

“Economic growth in the OECD has declined from 5.1 per cent in the 1960s to 2.5 per cent in the 1990s “

The policies followed by people like john Mc farlane, have destroyed businesses throughout Australia, no protection, no control of prices, charges, takeovers, monopolies, plus massive importation at the expense of peoples working and social lives.

“There is therefore real merit in the philosophy of "putting our customers first" and putting this into practice requires real commitment to this agenda.”

Don't make us laugh, people like you have one intent. Increase your ego, your wealth and power at everyone else's expense.

It is not a coincidence, that nearly 75% of jobs in this country, now come within the category of, part time or casual. Corporations in league with the brain dead politicians and beaurucrats have decimated the people of this country. To the point where, instead of technology improving our way of life, corporations have used it to enslave people so that they have to work twice as hard just to survive and live.

The value that corporations have given to society, is zero. The outcome very shortly, will be social and environmental collapse.

John, pull you tie tighter and do us all a favour

This is a timely and important statement you've made on behalf of a big company John. It makes a lot of sense. It's important to take a step back from the vitriol The Alchemist has just dished up and actually applaud a corporation for saying it like they mean it. Whether it makes it back down to a practical application within the Bank is something else but having the CEO make it a public mission in the first place will go a long way. So what about the customers? Customers have families and live in the same community and economy as the shareholders for the Bank. Haven't we been complaining forever that the banks are only about their profits and not about being proactive and responsible citizens? If banks are going to be the latter then they have to be more inclusive of ALL stakeholders and not just shareholders like John has said. Here's a thought - lets start picking on the shareholders for a change. That's where the a-morality starts ...

A profit-driven business is an amoral enterprise; it's only function is to create wealth for its stakeholders. A closer examination of how a company might operate towards the benefit of society at large is welcome, and all too rare.

The biggest mistake in my opinion was decades ago when some moron decided a corporation should have the same 'rights' as an individual. A pity they didn't add a few caveats to ensure corporations had obligations proportionate to their now immense power. Oh, and an effective regulatory body rather than our wishy-washy ICCC.

"The way we have managed and led our companies in the past is not the right way, given the lack of sustainability and humanity of our companies."
It's taken how long to work this out?

"I believe we are now firmly in a new age where spirituality, humanity and community will matter much more. "
I can't see how spirituality enters into it but he's right about the humanity/community bit. All we need now is a caring, sharing ASX.

Don't be too hard on the guy - don't forget, he didn't actually write this stuff, it was put together by his "Corporate Communications" department for him to read out at some event or other - I doubt he even saw it before the day he gave it. A quick look at the key managment variable, "platitudes-per-paragraph" is the giveaway.

The day I believe a banker is sincere about this sort of warm-and-fuzzy stuff is the day when one of them says "Hey, ripping off our customers to the tune of $4 billion a year - that's eleven million dollars a day, ladies and gentlemen - is setting a pretty poor example", and actually does something about it.

By any measure, the banking cartel in this country has to represent the most blatant example of consumer extortion outside the mafia or the triads. The profits they produce are there exclusively for two constituencies, the shareholder and the senior executive - their staff come nowhere (how many shall we retrench this week, Carruthers? we need to boost the bottom line again), and their customers are simply asked to open their wallets wider and wider with new "fee structures" that inevitably disadvantage the blokes with the lowest bank balance.

Come the revolution, the McFarlanes of this world will be first in the dock, and condescending speeches like this will be exhibit A.

It comes down to how we value widgets - good businesses value their ability to make widgets better/faster/prettier more than they value their bottom line. They value the widget for itself. This is why banks don't like/aren't good at managing businesses. Sometimes this infatuation becomes unsustainable because love is always blind.

But really good businesses plan on having children with their widgets(!), so they invest in R&D so that their widgets can grow and change into newer widgets. But R&D can fail as well because you can be blinded by science as much as you can be blinded by love. What matters in the long run is that we need to reproduce, as well as to produce, both ourselves and our businesses.

Reproductive costs (i.e. maintenance, sustainability etc.) are consistently under-estimated and under-invested. It's worthwhile to recognise that reproductive work is cyclical, time compulsory(e.g. emergency services) and necessarily social(as opposed to socially necessary).(credit Mary O'Brien "Politics of Reproduction")

Germaine Greer once pointed out that the Mughal Empire maintained a sohpisticated sustainable farming system by requiring that it's tenant farmers give one day(?) a year to the Emporer to maintain the canals , roads etc. The British converted this (reproductive)payment in kind into a financial rent, and within a decade the farming system had collapsed. Tradeability is anathema to reproductive assets and tasks, which is why there is so much opposition to the WTO etc.

The triple bottom line method of accounting goes some way towards addressing reproductive aspects of economics. Personally, I think that recognizing this as a feminist issue and engaging in a real debate between feminism and economics is the way to go. Look at micro -credit and the Grameen Bank for instance.