Chapter 4 : Change The Goal

“Systems, like the three wishes of a traditional fairytale have a terrible tendency to produce exactly and only what you ask them to produce. Be careful what you ask them to produce”.

As I write, it’s a week topped and tailed by Taylor Swift cancelling her Rio concert as the heat index hit nearly 60 degrees celsius, and Black Friday . It’s also the week that the UN’s Emissions Gap Report landed, delivered with something between world-weary resignation and near-comedic withering boredom with this title; “Broken Record: Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again)”.? And then, to make this week really punchy,? Oxfam published its Climate Equality Report with stark warnings about the richest 1% burning through the world’s carbon budgets, all the while effectively making the poor even poorer. “Only a radical reduction in inequality, transformative climate action and fundamentally shifting our economic goals as a society can save our planet while ensuring wellbeing for all” the report concludes.??

I am reminded of something Adam Kay used to tweet every Monday during Covid lockdowns; “It’s next f*cking week again” he’d say. This week is yet another week, upon many other weeks that came before it with worsening news on just how bad things are. Which begs the question. Why aren’t things changing?

This chapter is fundamentally about tackling the elephant in the room. It’s here I take on the conflict between growth and purpose.

The system, as it stands, is failing.

And we know this.

We know that the idea of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’ is a fallacy.

We know that the global economy is already much 'much bigger than its host' , and each year the economy grows, we hit overshoot day sooner.

And we also know that GDP growth as a measure of a nation's success is deeply flawed.??

“GDP is not fit for purpose” was the finding of the Dasgupta review , commissioned by the UK Government (2021).? Beyond the physical limits to endless growth, nature, “our most precious asset” is the “blind spot” in economics, said lead author Partha Dasgupta. Resulting commoditisation of nature aside, the point is, we know. And we can’t unknow it.

And yet, the system trundles on with GDP at the centre. We are stuck, like hamsters on a treadmill, unable to change course because the system demands something else of us.?

The latest Oxfam report is particularly scathing on growth;

“Our current economic system prizes economic growth of any kind above all else. This is a wrong-headed and highly corrosive premise that the best way to raise the incomes of the poorest to a level that is enough to survive is to raise the incomes of the richest too… [It is] a system that fails to measure, recognize or value huge contributions to our wellbeing… a system that is rooted in extraction and environmental destruction, yet conveniently fails to measure human impact on the natural world. In short, today’s economic system tolerates and accelerates both inequality and planetary breakdown. (pg 98)

SO what to do?

In systems thinking, it is understood that the ‘goal’ is one of the strongest leverage points for system intervention.?

If in economic terms we’re running toward the wrong goal, we change the goal.?

This is one of the principle pillars of Doughnut Economics .

Kate Raworth , pioneer of the Doughnut model advocates, instead of GDP growth, striving for ‘a state of balance’ - of thriving both within planetary boundaries and ensuring all basic human needs are met. Whilst the Doughnut model is new, the foundational thinking isn’t it. Raworth sites for example economist Robert Hielbroner , who, building on the ‘spaceship earth’ idea said in 1970 ;

“As in all spaceships, sustained life requires that a meticulous balance be maintained between the capability of the vehicle to support life and the demands made by the inhabitants of the craft"

I cite that here simply because it’s so difficult to argue against.

Oxfam calls for this balance in their report suggesting that “there is an urgent need to fundamentally change the purpose of our economies so that they serve the twin goals of human wellbeing and planetary flourishing”.

So far so sensible.

What does changing the economic system goal mean for business?

Even accounting for inevitable debate and ‘AAH-but-yes-but-no-because and what-about…’, if we broadly hold these things to be true;

1. Infinite growth on a finite planet isn’t physically sustainable..
2. Ecological life support systems and human wellbeing are being compromised by the current system…
3. GDP growth as the primary goal for the economic system is deeply flawed
4. That ‘the goal’ is one of the strongest leverage points for change in the system.
5. That it’s possible to change the economic system in part by changing the goal (and we probably should)
6. That business is a key driver of flows of goods and services in the economic system..

Then it follows that we need to change the growth goal for business too.

To reposition profit from reason-to-exist to the basic enabler to delivering something far more visionary and exciting. And the pursuit of growth for growth’s sake as a distraction from true purpose.

Now I’m just going to pause for a moment to say this chapter isn't about growth vs degrowth or bad growth vs good growth, green growth, post-growth or any of the other alt-growth growths. I’m going to elegantly side step that whole debate (probably quite inelegantly actually and more like doing the splits) because, I believe, they’ve become a distraction, often ideologically charged, a battle of paradigms, that takes our minds away from the problem right in front of us right here in this moment: which is; how to drive accelerated sustainable business transformation.?

On this I like what Meadows has to say which is sage advice for anyone in the business of change, including those leading change in their own businesses - if you revisit that diagram up there, it’s to stand back from the paradigm you're in, or at least have an awareness that you’re in one.

“There is one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms”, writes Meadows. “.. to stay flexible, to realise that no paradigm is “true” …It is to “get” at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms, and to see that itself is a paradigm and regard that whole realisation as devastatingly funny. It is to let go of not-knowing…[this is the basis for] radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose. If you have no idea where to get your purpose, you can listen to the universe”.

Which is a nice transition to purpose. Which is what this post is really about.?

Proper Purpose. With a capital PUH.

Because the universe is sending some pretty powerful messages about where we need to be investing our energy. It feels like impending ecological collapse and societal meltdown, personified, have come together to wield giant foam fingers to point dramatically at where businesses can focus their purpose strategies.

Not marketing-led purpose. But true purpose. Purpose driven by imaginative visions for the future where the world is better and people are happier. Where the role of business is truly solving something for people now. And where revenue and profit become assumed hygiene factors. Permission to exist. Enablers. ‘How you stay in the game’ says Donella Meadows of profit. Where the operating model and the financial ‘how’ is embedded in the business ecosystem in service to purpose, not the growth-driven tail wagging the entire dog which is, if we’re being really honest with ourselves, where things are now. Because it’s the growth imperative that chips away at the integrity of businesses trying to do good things, that calls for bigger margins, smaller wages, cheaper materials, the easy acceptance of waste, a blind-eye to something better but perhaps less profitable in the short term.

And we’re kind of not allowed to talk about it. Even those in vehement agreement to the flaws in the system, seem reluctant to entertain what a system change goal might mean for their own corporate system even they recognise that less pressure to drive growth might equate to a bit more breathing space to get things right.

Hold that thought for a couple of breakaway stories.?

Let’s go back to the Airbnb example.

In that long interview from Chapter 3 this series , Brian Chesky talks openly about how chasing growth (and new and exciting things) took the business away from their founding vision and ethos of sharing;?

?“The original? tagline of Airbnb [..] was “travel like a human,” and it was kind of funny that the human part kind of always meant something to people. The human part was kind of more important than the travel part… it was about a community. And you were meeting people and you saw people on the website… And over the years, I just kind of felt like we just really needed to get back to the roots of the company, back to our original founding ethos of sharing”.

Let’s hop over to Veja. Grateful to Tiffanie Darke who this week published an article on Veja and the power of purpose over on substack -? heaven sent it felt, as I was writing this piece.

Veja , intrinsically purpose-led and well past the doing-less-harm end of sustainability, and well into regenerative business practice, seem to have mastered what Kate Raworth says is one of the “seven ways to think like a 21st Century economist”. And that is, to be “agnostic to growth”.

For VEJA , profit margins and growth are secondary to fairness to workers and ecology, best exemplified by the price they pay for cotton . It’s completely ‘decorrelated’ from what the market is prepared to pay and instead aligned with what the producers need to be paid to guarantee agroecological practices and a secure supply.

“We're not pushed by anybody to grow. We don’t make advertising, so our growth is organic. If the clients want, we grow, if they don't want, we won’t grow - as simple as that. We are not super aggressive in terms of development…The growth we follow is natural, human. Veja could be ten times bigger if we had investors or we made advertising. But it's okay like this. Now we are 600 in the company. And it's so difficult, but everybody has a good place with a good salary, with a good wage, with a good mission. If you grow too fast it’s impossible. Then you start to be not a very human corporation.” Sébastian Kopp, Veja co-founder. Read the full piece by Tiffanie Darke here .

For Airbnb, Chesky says the growth-agenda made them a less human brand and prompted the return to the rooms proposition.

For Veja, the lack of a growth-agenda allowed them to maintain their humanity as a corporation incidentally grew.

These are just two stories where of course there are countless more where the pursuit of growth compromised purpose. Where, at some stage in the game, it became a choice and growth won out.?Inevitably at this point, we hit the “it do both” argument around purpose and growth. “We need good companies to grow at the expense of bad ones!”.?

And it's at this point in writing I am grateful to Mark Ritson’s piece on purpose from back?in September 2022 in the context of Yvon Chouinard placing his three billion dollar company, Patagonia, in trust to serve the environment. It saves me a job here. Ritson weaves the historical tale of purpose through the piece, where it triumphed, where it wavered, to show how straddling the growth and purpose agenda becomes deeply conflicted. Ritson calls for an end to brands trying to leverage purpose as the ‘path to greater profits and better growth’ because to do so is to miss the point entirely -? “the purpose of purpose is purpose” he concludes. “You do it because you believe it”

And, with the sensitivity of systems in mind, we are reminded that systems will, in theory, do what we ask them to do. But it’s very easy to take them off track.

“Systems, like the three wishes of a traditional fairytale, have a terrible tendency to produce exactly and only what you ask them to produce. Be careful what you ask them to produce” Donella Meadows, Thinking In Systems, ? A Primer, 2008.

If we are liberated by the failing system to park the fantasy of unending growth, especially at a time when it’s flatlining, if we make profit an essential player but subservient to purpose, we are, I believe, far more likely to achieve purposeful things.?

It’s Not That Radical. But choosing is.

I am not underestimating the mindset shift required here. In fact, more’s the point perhaps. Recommended reading at this point is Doughnut Economics: Seen Ways To Think Like a 21st Century Economist to really get under the skin of things such as ideas like the embedded economy and the implications for finance. It might not change your mindset, but I’ve no doubt it will provide much needed perspective.

The basics are a lot less radical and you think.?

Online marketers, data analysts and tech engineers understand the power of goal setting?intrinsically.?

Brand-literate business leaders understand the power of goal setting intrinsically.

Finance departments understand the power of goal setting intrinsically.

Sustainability leads understand the power of goal setting intrinsically.

This is where the lexicon and how-to of driving change exists within the current paradigm. We know how to do this.

What is radical, and deeply uncomfortable frankly, is the idea of making a choice. Of taking the truths we can't unlearn about the current paradigm, turning our faces inward to re-shape our own goals whilst the wheels of the current paradigm are still in motion. And being able to stand back and laugh at how bloody terrifying it is and doing it anyway.

Whilst all sorts of amazing businesses exist for reasons other than profit and growth - of course they do - what the next paradigm demands is that we re-think the engine that drives it. And currently, it we look under the bonnet (and strip away layers of purpose-wash), it's still growth. Even as we all stand around nodding vigorously and earnestly at each other, jowls wobbling in agreement, that it can't go on.

I can’t help but feel that this crisis we’re deep in now finally gives brands and businesses a powerful, purposeful, life-changing, life-giving job to do - to reclaim purpose from the purpose-washers and change the system from the inside out, one business at a time, to help unf*ck it all. To put the regeneration of natural ecosystems on which they depend, and the well-being of people who power their business engines, at the centre of their business goal. As THE business goal.

If that’s the goal - if we all collectively did that, imagine what the results could be?

Which is a neat plug to the next chapter in the series- Chapter 5 : Change What You Measure

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