Sustainable Leadership

7From CSO to CEO

Out of the sighs of one generation are kneaded the hopes of the next.

—Machado de Assis, 19th-century Brazilian novelist/poet/playwright

WALKING FACTORY LINES to survey conditions was a big part of the job for Sophia Mendelsohn. The young executive traveled all over China on behalf of major brands to balance speed, quality, and global safety standards at manufacturing facilities. Air quality issues, waste and discharge, and even metal shavings were par for the course on these fact-finding missions that took her to the remote corners of the mainland, to factory towns that had often sprung up solely for the sake of producing goods as efficiently as possible, first for export and later for national consumption.

Walking through one factory, Sophia gathered information the way she always did when she was on site: by chatting to the people on the front lines in her fluent Mandarin. Through these conversations she learned about the process of manufacturing: the production line, efficiency or waste, the need for speed, and the motivations of the workers and managers. But never was an answer so stark as when she struck up a conversation with one local resident and asked him how his life had changed during the previous decade.

“I wouldn't give up the money and progress for the world,” he told her, referring to not only his personal salary but also the general economic uplift in his community and country. “But it's heartbreaking to see the negative consequences of development ...