Corporate leaders are challenged to step up to greater commitments on sustainability, and to ensure they have performance measures for behaviour directly linked to responsibility and trust if they are to succeed. With sustainability driving trust and innovation, companies are making it core to their strategies and activities, so having stand-alone CSR (corporate social responsibility) departments looks like a fast-declining trend. This is according to global reputation auditors Echo Research, in their latest report, "A World in Trust - Leadership and Corporate Responsibility" with the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF).

The power to influence individuals' decisions is the power to change the world. Media has that power - it reaches more than 75% of the global population and the existence of an advertising industry demonstrates it can influence the decisions that we make. No government, no company, no supranational body has both reach and the ability to change our decisions. How can media help the world "accelerate out of trouble"?

Marking the 20th Anniversary of SRI in the Rockies offers more than an opportunity to review the hard-won progress of investors to prove that socially responsible investing is viable and now clearly out-performs traditional mainstream investing.  Since the credit crises of 2008-2009, we can now assert with confidence that investing for long-term sustainability and taking ESG factors as material to asset valuation could have actually helped avert these crises.   We investors are now winning the paradigm battle and cite the evidence to show that the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is bunk and by the same token show that the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and, yes, even the sacred tenets of the "rational investor" and the Black-Scholes Merton Options Pricing Model all are part of history.

The business world is in the midst of extraordinary change. Great leaders will come to the fore. They will be recognised for overcoming adversity with confidence and for rebuilding purpose for their organisations. They will need to take stock, scan their environments for possibility and use this information to bypass cultural paralysis and fear. To achieve this, they will require significant energy, both mentally and physically, to achieve the focus necessary to adapt and flex. They will require a Peak Performance mindset worthy of an Olympic athlete, a great statesman or a new generation of leader who is strong, visible and resilient enough to deal with the uncertainty and unpredictability that lies ahead.

Mark Goyder is the Founder Director Tomorrow’s Company, the business-led think and do tank, and co-author of the Family Business Stewardship report. In this article, first printed in the Raconteur supplement of The Times and in association with the Institute for Family Business, Mark discusses the role of stewardship as well as setting out the four major principles that underpin family business stewardship.