Wall Street will crumble!

Wall Street never really fell before.Has the money, fame, power — 2009 policies just rattled the cage but business is as usual. Intelligent people joining for high paychecks to crunch numbers and game the system. The real pain will be felt when the best & brightest avoid working for Wall Street and instead join companies with the same pay but improve the world.

Ask anyone working in finance: “What are you doing to make the world a better place?” and their face goes blank with shame but the color fills in starting with dollar signs in their eyes. Now ask the same thing for others in other industries especially high-tech companies even places like Microsoft once declared the “Evil Empire”. Older companies have a diluted mission, but there’s still an insistence to change the world for the better. Now ask people at Google, Facebook, GitHub, … I mean just any startup that has more than 10 employees and you’ll see starry eyed people talking about a better future (sounds like campaign ads, except they get shit done).

This is conversation is less about Wall St vs Tech (that battle has been won ;), it’s more a conversation about why Wall St. will radically shift its direction. It’ll never disappear as it’s vital to the economy and we’ll always need banks, investors, experimental financial firms, and other financial institutions but they will refocus on delivering lasting social change on a global scale. Triple bottom line is real and it’s less about “feel good”, it’s about what makes more money. Also, it turns out when consumers have power (like they do now) it’s what works best for them collectively which is the same as what improves their lives (social) and what improves the future of the their world (environmental).Exploitation phase is over, it’s the exploration phase (though it’s cyclical).

Exploitation — extracting more value from customers. Exploration — finding better ways to increase value for customers. Wall Street must adhere to the new principles or they will get washed out by innovative financial firms outside Wall St that’ll eat their lunch. For example, watch out for Bank Simple, even if they fail they’ll breed a new generation of ambitious entrepreneurs who will make it their life mission to destroy the leading banks.

What makes money is what empowers the largest amount of people. Finance seems to think that empowerment is about controlling their power allowing themselves the greatest concentration but it’s the opposite. It’s about distributing power to all people and positioning yourself as the inspiration to the idea.

See: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html