Courageous Boards Can Drive the Profit-People-Planet Agenda: Halla Tomasdottir, CEO of Virgin's Richard Branson's social purpose nonprofit The B Team, talks about the role directors need to play.

• Author: Tahmincioglu, Eve
• Position: THE CHARACTER OF THE CORPORATION - Interview

The decades-old notion that profit is the sole driver of corporations, and directors need to care only about the bottom line, is becoming an anachronism, says Halla Tomasdottir, the CEO of The B Team.

The question we should be asking today, she stresses, "is how to make business the driving force for economic, environmental and social progress that benefit all stakeholders?"

That concept is the central mission of The B Team, a nonprofit co-founded by Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz, the former CEO and chairman of Puma.

Tomasdottir says the cofounders, along with a group of business and civil society leaders, including Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, UN Foundation president Kathy Calvin, Tata Group chairman emeritus RatanTata, and former PepsiCo chairman Indra Nooyi, among others, "collectively agreed that 'business as usual' was no longer an option and together they set out to catalyze a movement where business would become a driving force for social, environmental and economic benefit. B Team leaders have since encouraged each other, as well as others, to embrace courage and do what is right, not just for profit but also for people and the planet."

Below is a Q&A with Tomasdottir on the role of corporate governance in creating the profit-people-planet agenda.

Why do you think we need an organization like The B Team?

We are running out of time on climate and we are in the midst of the biggest humanitarian crisis since 1945. The global economic model is broken and so is the social contract. Natural capital destruction is now set on an irreversible path. And the ever-widening inequality gap is marginalizing people in all parts of the world who no longer trust the world's leaders to do what is right.

Amidst this complicated landscape, many business leaders are still pursuing the incentives of short-term financial profit over long-term, sustainable benefit. That mindset is however no longer the view of the talent CEOs must attract, nor of their customers and other stakeholders.

To spark the action needed to shift this perspective, leaders need courage and community. That's what "The B Team Leaders" are for each other--a community that supports each other in becoming more courageous in tackling these challenges and to find ways to release the incredible potential that resides in empowering all of humanity. (The B Team Leaders--including 28 business and civil society leaders, nine of which are on the organization's board--set strategy and...