Foreword
When the compass meets the bottom line I believe deeply that business is a force for good. Not as a slogan, but as a lived reality, rooted in more than a century of family history. When my great-grandfather founded Roche in 1896, his purpose was clear: to serve the patient. Not shareholders. Not markets. The patient. One hundred and thirty years later, that compass still holds. And it is precisely because it holds that Roche is still here. But let us be clear-eyed. For too long, our economic system has been obsessively tilted toward short-term financial gain, at the expense of people and the planet. Externalities have grown too large to ignore, because they make value creation itself increasingly difficult. We behave as though nature were inexhaustible, as though social capital were free, as though human capital renewed itself automatically. That is an illusion we can no longer afford. This is where this playbook comes into its own. Jonathan Normand and the B Lab ecosystem are not offering yet another management guide disconnected from reality. They offer something rarer and more necessary: a framework for developing leaders' inner capacity to navigate the moral complexity of our time. In my work at the Capitals Coalition, I champion the idea that the four capitals – financial, natural, social, and human – must underpin every decision we make. That “what gets measured gets managed,” and that it is time to radically expand what we measure.
But impact accounting, indispensable as it is, is not enough on its own. Metrics do not change behaviour by themselves. It is people who change systems. And to change systems, we need leaders who have done the inner work – who have cultivated the trust, consideration, consistency, and courage that this compass describes. The 7C Compass thus aligns with a conviction I set out in The New Nature of Business: we do not need to discard the capitalist system, but to amend it profoundly. To become nature-positive. To build with intention and measure our impact. And above all, to lead and to enable leadership in others – recognising that to create a new economic system and a new social contract, many leaders must emerge, at every level of society. What I appreciate most in this playbook is that it does not separate being from doing. My experience has taught me that a business without purpose and societal benefit, without respect for and investment in all forms of capital, is not merely imprudent – it is inexcusable. But for a leader to carry that conviction into their daily decisions, knowledge alone is not enough: personal transformation is required. That is precisely what the 7C spiral offers. I am also convinced that this work of transformation is profoundly intergenerational. Research shows that leadership teams with greater age diversity are best equipped to enable sustainable innovation, because they combine learning from past experience with the exploration of new ideas.
This playbook, born of the collective wisdom of the B ecosystem, is precisely that – a bridge between generations of leaders. If we are to create lasting prosperity – not merely financial, but social, human, and natural – we must invest in the benefits of systemic change. And the first investment, the most fundamental one, is in the people who will carry it forward. André Hoffmann Vice-Chairman, Roche Holding AG Interim Co-Chair, World Economic Forum Chair, Capitals Coalition
© 2026 JONATHAN NORMAND. THIS WORK IS LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION NONCOMMERCIAL 4.0 INTERNATIONAL LICENSE (CC BY-NC 4.0)
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