In our times we have climate change, financial system instability, enterprise and investor irresponsibility, short-termism, extreme wealth and income polarization, a disappearing middle class, an abundance of money in politics, an erosion of civil discourse, a failure of education and various other ways in which different individuals and organizations characterize various aspects of this portfolio of existential crises.

In almost every case, these crises are framed by advocates of social change as some form of bad consequence caused by bad actors acting badly. The universal theory of change is to change the values that people value in the expectation that this will cause fewer bad people to get away with acting badly.

Enter the superfiduciary embracing their power to negotiate.

This opens up powerful new pathways for engaging the power of enterprise to take action for social change.

Right now, enterprise that chooses to securitize has to generate growth. It can also do whatever else it wants, as long as it generates growth, but it does not matter what else a securitized enterprise is doing, if it is not generating growth.

Growth is the value the Wall Street system of trading in securities derived from enterprise is purpose-built to value, and every enterprise that enters that system is valued for that value for as long as it remains in that system.

Modern day advocates for ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance values in public corporations and their institutional investors) have come to see this truth, and they are expending tremendous energy building arguments that ESG is a driver of growth.

There is another way.

Superfiduciaries don’t need to invest in growth. They can invest in enterprise cash flows, directly. This means they can also agree with enterprise leaders on a portfolio of values that will be valued within the enterprise, whether the pursuit of these values contributes to growth, or not. As long as they are also consistent with keeping the cash flows flowing.