US printer company Xerox recently replaced its first woman CEO with another woman, 30 year company veteran Ms Ursula Burns. Interestingly this curiosity was not only permitted but encouraged by a succession of mentors within Xerox who saw the benefit for the company of Ms Burns' talent. A close working partnership with the previous CEO helped to improve the performance of the company after a series of disastrous decisions taken in the 1990’s.

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iSelect is the largest private health insurance intermediary in Australia. It provides a convenient way for people to compare a range of insurance products and choose their preferred option. Around a million people have relied on iSelect to guide them through the complex process of choosing a health insurance plan.

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Any organisation that has "profit maximisation" as the sole guiding value is already occupying an unethical position and probably will go on to do something illegal. There are so many examples of this fundamental mistake. Making money is not in itself a bad thing, but it is too narrow, too uni-dimensional to be an overarching value. Being greedy is not a good thing; wanting a good life with many good things in it: healthy relationships, creativity, capacity to enjoy and wonder, the list can be very long. Innospec is another business that has made the same mistake.

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US President Obama recently announced a series of reforms to the US banking system aimed at avoiding a repeat of the recent financial crisis. The central principle of the reforms is to restrict the scope of banks to engage in risky investments by re-focusing banks to "their central mission of serving their customers". The initiative places banks' mission statements squarely in the frame for providing the key rationale for regulation. In this way it raises the stakes on statements of goals and purpose: nice sounding but vague mission statements may well be translated into regulatory regimes.
John Sweeney & Daniel Hill

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