Mid-Course Correction Revisited - GreenMoney Journal Guest Article

You always remember your first. Book, that is – you always remember your first book. You know, the first one you write. What were you thinking of?

In my case, the first book is also my only book. Whether I go on to write a hundred more or keep authorship in my rearview mirror, Mid-Course Correction Revisited will always be special to me. The reason is simple. It has everything to do with who my co-author was.

Many people just called him “Ray.” Some of his employees stuck to the habit of calling him “Mr. Anderson.” Fortune Magazine called him “America’s greenest CEO.” My mother and aunt were the only two who could call him “Dad.” I am one of five lucky souls who grew up calling him “Daddy Ray.”

His story is legendary. In 1994, in his 60^th year of life and having successfully founded and grown Interface into the world’s largest manufacturer of carpet tile, Ray read a book. Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce showed Ray that his business, and all of the industrial world, were complicit in the destruction of the biosphere. Worse, business and industry were the sector responsible for the greatest amount of environmental degradation. That said, they were also the only sector large enough and well enough organized to fix our challenges.

From that moment on, Ray was committed to a new moral imperative. He sought to make his large, publicly-traded, industrial manufacturing company truly sustainable, and eventually restorative. In the years that followed, he and the people of Interface showed how much was possible when a business authentically pursues environmental sustainability.

Read the full article on GreenMoney.com.