What are the skills required at each level of sustainable Capitalism?

 IMO

Front Line Employees: Willing to learn, try to do their best every time, good attitude—it’s easier to teach skills than attitude.

Front line Supervisors: Technical knowledge of the hands-on jobs. Willingness to help out when needed, good coaching skills on technical things, Willingness to be guided by their boss, high standards of performance, doesn’t play favorites, trustworthy (competent, caring, consistent), understand that not everyone is upwardly motivated.

Mid Level Managers: Let go of “if you want it done right do it yourself” VABE. What are VABEs? Instead believes “you can get more done through others.” Good coaching skills, understands how to run effective meetings (agenda built on questions not topics), knows how to build a team, understands team phases, able to translate executive visions into team charters (see below), open to change and constant improvement, likable, comfortable with being in between upper and lower management. No sense of entitlement. Understands Career Concepts and that not all are motivated by promotions.

Executives: Good organizational architects, good strategists, respect for all below them as the Craftsmen who do the work, able to create robust and inspiring charters, understand the importance of organizational culture and managing at Level Three (see my website at Level Three Leadership ), articulate describers of mission, vision, values, strategies, poised, able to represent company to outsiders, let go of “maximize profits” as core VABE and accepts “maximize sustainable profits” as responsibility of every citizen and company. Sustainable = protect not abuse the Commons: air, water, soil, flora, fauna, and underprivileged. Understand the value of Experts, Spirals and Transitories, not fixated on their own Linear career paths.

Board Members: Experienced executive level successful track records, understand the value of teams, accept the citizenship of “sustainable” enterprise, rather than short-term eviscerating profits, able to select good leaders, love of building sustainable on-going enterprises, innovative thinkers, visionary thinkers, willing to give more than they take, build “net-contributor” businesses,

Investors: committed to sustainable enterprise over short term returns, accept the citizenship responsibility of protecting not abusing the Commons, understand the citizenship responsibilities of Capitalists and of building a sound, robust society.

What global issues face us and how can large corporations help us solve them?

 Yes, there are many global issues, because we all share the “Commons:” air, water, soil, flora, fauna, and the underprivileged. Most people don’t care about the Commons and abuse them. Some, a few, do care and are working to protect rather than abuse the Commons. IMO every person, group, company and nation share “citizenship” responsibilities to protect not abuse the Commons. Abuse of the Commons continues mostly unabated today. Millions of tons of plastics being dumped into the oceans, CO2 concentrations rising in the air, toxic landfills overflowing on the ground, destruction of atmosphere renewing flora, poor management of fauna, and mass poverty and starvation in various parts of the world. And it’s all interrelated with local intensities.

So long as corporations continue to hold sacred the VABE What are VABEs? “maximize profits” they will continue to abuse the Commons. IMO only when an alternative VABE “to maximize sustainable profits” will things change. By “sustainable” I mean profits that protect not abuse the Commons. With that VABE in hand, corporations would acknowledge their social responsibility for end-of-life recycling of their products and packaging. Imagine how that would change the design of products and packaging. I’ve noted elsewhere in Quora macro and micro examples of this need. (another one was evident on my way to see the Great Pyramids of Giza and observing the canals in Giza filled not with water but with trash—to the brim as far as one could see. )

Changing VABEs is very difficult. Humans tend to be creatures of habit at three levels, Visible Behavior, Conscious Thought and VABEs. Almost 100% at the VABE level. CULTURE is a collection of shared VABEs. So not just one person or one CEO must change for us to address these problems, rather whole teams and regions and cultures must examine and adjust their dysfunctional VABEs. Very unlikely—even in the face of death: observe the number of people won’t wear masks and yet who while dying of COVID say this can’t be happening, what is this? VABEs “trump” solid evidence. Nobel Prize went to Kahneman for that confirmation.

As long as people have implicit VABEs that allow them to abuse the Commons and take more than they give, to be net extractors, things won’t improve. We need more people in power who want to be net contributors rather than net takers. Leave your “campsite” (the space around you) cleaner than you found it. Simple VABE. Not widely shared.

That said, I think business people have a better chance of working toward “world peace” (if not cleanliness) than political or religious leaders who both continue to press for conflicts to prove their righteous correctness. At least business people are willing to compromise to make a (profitable) deal. Which most religious and political leaders are not.

In retirement I wrote a book about these issues, A Song of Humanity: A Science-based Alternative to the World’s Scriptures. Available everywhere and introduced at my website(s) Level Three Leadership

What should we do with urban waste management and/or landfills in general?

So long as businesses worldwide operate on the core VABE What are VABEs? of “maximizing profits” the landfills of the world will continue to expand and overflow. The responsible alternative is IMO “maximizing sustainable profits” by which I mean profits that protect rather than abuse the Commons: air, water, soil, flora, fauna and the underprivileged. Every person, family, company and nation bears a responsibility to the rest of us to protect the Commons.

What that would mean in terms of urban and other landfills is that manufacturers would be responsible for recycling the end-of-life products and packaging that they produce.

A macro and a micro example. Japan has a law banning automobiles over ten years in age. This benefits the Japanese automobile industry of course. So they ship the ten year old, about one hundred thousand miles on them automobiles to central African nations who are happy to have the dependable cars with another 100,000 left on them. Problem is noted a student of mine from that region that when the cars are dead, everyone just leaves them where they die. His country, my student said, was becoming the junkyard of the world. At the opposite end of that scale, I had a hot tub for 36 years—it had “died” years ago but the manufacturer had gone out of business and there were no parts and no one would service it. A junk removal company wanted to charge me $450 to pick it up — and dump it in a landfill. So I cut it up into smaller easily managed pieces and my trash company (who recycles what they can) will pick up the pieces for $200. Non-biodegradable plastics and foams. Electric motor and pumps. Electrical panels and circuit boards. Still going into a landfill.

What to do? Manufacturing companies would predictably fight this suggestion with everything they had—yet if it were an acceptable VABE, imagine how they would rethink product and packaging design. Research into biodegradable products and packaging would blossom. Company funded recycling centers would sprout. Sustainable national economic policies would continue and accelerate. We are headed very slowly in that direction anyway because of the problems you suggest/imply. So long as business people hold onto the VABE of maximizing profits the world’s companies will continue to fill the world’s landfills. For executive teams to accept their citizenship responsibilities in a global economy and protect not abuse the Commons, we will continue to create more and more landfills and sadly “oceanfills.” The major rivers of the industrialized world continue to pour hundreds of millions of tons of plastic into the oceans. See Visual Capitalist.

The reality is though that VABEs remain nearly 100% habitual—mindlessly repetitive. Getting a person or a culture (which is a collection of shared VABEs) to examine and change a VABE is very difficult and largely unsuccessful. In the end, everything eventually comes down to VABEs. See Kahneman’s Nobel Prize. People make big decision based on VABEs over solid evidence. VABEs “trump” science.