Joe Bower and Lynn Paine “had me at hello” (to quote Jerry Maguire) with their new HBR article, “The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership.” Laying out their data, they find that long-term oriented companies create more financial value and more jobs. In fact, if more American companies were focused on the long term, they estimate, investors would have an additional $1 trillion, workers would have an additional 5 million jobs, and the country would have more than an additional $1 trillion in GDP.

I agree with their vision of a future in which more companies focus on the long term and become more productive for the world (their findings accord with my own work on the dangers of short-termism). But I long for actions that go beyond admonitions to managers and boards to do better, that give both parties a better chance to stand up to capital markets players, like activist hedge funds, pressuring them to become too short-term focused. While no one thing can or will drive the transformation, there is one change that I think is doable and would make a real difference: holding-period-based voting rights.

Read the full article at Harvard Business Review Magazine.