Doing Community Work

I have shared this thought with the team this week and thought I might as well air it on here.  The Panama Papers fall-out has simply been immense, it is giving the establishment a right old shaking, and its ironic because it is the establishment that created conditions for the mindset that drives this behaviour. Over the last 50 years or so our Western world has been progressively moved, by successive governments, from communities toward society, and whilst society is good for the economy I would suggest it isn't good for the people.                           What I am trying to say is that in a community, people look out for each other.  In a community people feel responsible for each other, look after each other and support each other.  Communities are about working together.  Therefore paying tax,  and contributing to the general wellbeing is what you do.                               In stark contrast society is all about how I am doing.  As long as I am alright then everything is ok, and if some tragedy tugs on my heartstrings every now and then, well I'll give a little because that makes me a good person.   You see society is about looking after myself, society is about individualism.  Society is about getting ahead.  Which means it is about avoiding tax and not playing your part in the game.  What I am suggesting is that these Panama Papers, the endless tax avoidance and evasion schemes are the direct end products of our move from community to society.                                                                                      Now, it is perfectly fair to ask what that has to do with business in general and ours in particular?  Why are you thinking about this when you are gearing up to co-create next year's AOP?  Here's my reason.                                                          We have a choice to make.  Do we want to work as a community or a society?  If we choose a society then we have to accept that we are all going to be in this for ourselves, whether that be I want the best salary; oh I feel a bit off today lets go sick; why should I help that other team we've done our work.  Worse still, we won't challenge each other on performance, because we're doing alright, look at those tools struggling.                                                                                                     However, if we choose to work as a community then I believe we will all work to get the best result for our business.  I believe we will work together to execute our plan really well.  I believe we will look out for one another and challenge one another because we want to be a great team together. I believe that we will make decisions that benefit the team rather than a single individual.                              In summary I am not really too bothered as to who is being exposed through these Panama Papers.  I am however, bothered about  choices being made to recover some of that lost community ground as a result of this exposure.  Similarly within our business I am hugely passionate about wanting to see us choosing to make community work for us in a way that benefits the team.