TheCorporateCounsel.net

I ran into our friend & former colleague Broc Romanek at SRI this week and we had a chance to grab lunch together. It was great to see him, and it reminded me to check out his latest post on Cooley’s “Governance Beat” blog. As usual, it’s worth sharing. In his post, Broc discussed the rapid growth in the length of corporate sustainability reports, which have apparently grown by nearly 20% on average since 2021. He cites a few factors driving their increasing length:

– Alignment with more reporting frameworks, creating many pages of SASB and GRI tables.

– More sophisticated and granular quantitative – particularly, climate – reporting, with a more detailed discussion of methodology.

– Attempts to focus reporting more on company-specific initiatives and issues, rather than broad generic topics, resulting in multipage discussions – with plenty of marketing gloss – about company programs, including case studies.

Broc doesn’t necessarily endorse this trend, noting that there’s frequently unnecessary fluff in longer reports and their length makes quality control more difficult. Also, the longer the report, the more plaintiffs have to shoot at.  Broc sums up his general approach to sustainability reports & life in general in the blog’s first paragraph:

As I get older, my motto has been “less is more.” That certainly works for a mindful lifestyle. And it also works for pickleball, as one learns to hit the ball softly and place it cleanly rather than banging away at it to earn points.

Broc plays a lot of pickleball, so I know his advice about the game is sound. I’ve played only a little pickleball, but I have also some advice for you if you’re thinking of giving the game a try. My advice is this – pickleball was invented by malevolent orthopedic surgeons, and this deceptively gentle-looking game carries a not insignificant risk of injury for Boomers & Gen Xers who take it up. As I will now explain, I know this from experience.

Last year, my wife signed us up for pickleball lessons at a local tennis club. All went well until the final class, when I was playing doubles, and my partner missed the ball. Since I firmly believe that I’m 62 going on 22, I determined that I would race across the court and attempt a daring save of the point. I failed miserably, lost my balance, and grabbed the tennis net behind me in an effort to break my fall. My hand got tangled in the net and, to make a long story short, I was soon on my way to the emergency room with the two middle fingers on my right hand pointed at a 45-degree angle.

This was unpleasant, although the folks at the emergency room seemed to enjoy the story of how I ended up there. Between giggles, the nurses told me they see a lot of pickleball injuries from geriatrics like me who refuse to go gentle into the good night. They also said that there is a widely held hypothesis among ER professionals that the game was invented by orthopedic surgeons to drum up business.

Fortunately, my fingers weren’t broken, just badly dislocated. The doctor popped my fingers back in and The Cleveland Clinic sent me a bill for $3,000. Because I didn’t cry about either of these events, my wife bought me McDonald’s for being such a brave little guy.

The bottom line is that I’ve played hockey ineptly for over 20 years without a scratch, but it only took me three weeks of pickleball to end up in the emergency room. So, based on my own experiences as I get older, my spin on Broc’s motto is that for me, when it comes to pickleball, “less is more.”

– John Jenkins