What Matters Now summary

Recent decades have witnessed great change, but such change has also raised the stakes. In our rapidly moving, globalized world, leaders have far more power and responsibility than ever before.

And a lot more to answer for if something goes wrong.

Global leaders must be conscious of the impact their decisions have. One bad decision could lead to a compromised food product, for example. Yet where once such a slip-up might have just affected a small town, today the health of hundreds of thousands of people could be at risk.

Many leaders are already grappling with how an interconnected, international economic system can amplify the fallout from a decision. Sometimes it’s necessary to pay up to contain a mistake before it spirals out of control.

In 2011, for example, French and German banks moved to bail out the financial systems of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain spending almost $900 billion in an attempt to maintain the euro’s stability and prevent an even larger currency crisis.

Think about today’s global leaders. Do you trust them to keep small mistakes from turning into global catastrophes?

The internet and other new technologies have become effective tools to drive a global sense of consciousness and, importantly, keep world leaders in check. Injustices are harder to sweep under the rug; news stories travel around the world in the blink of an eye. As a result, the pressure to create change and increase social responsibility is far greater.

In 2008, Coca-Cola came under fire for using unsustainable methods to extract water from a drought-stricken region in India. As the news spread, Coke sales dipped all over the world. The then company CEO announced the company would become “water neutral” by 2020.  

Yet as a global society we can no longer rely on government or private sector policies as the sole method of damage control. Read on to find out what sort of change really needs to happen.