Good trouble (and why stakeholder capitalism risks being dead on arrival)

BY NATALIE MAROUN, THE PERFORMANCE AGENCY

Do the best you can, until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better. – Maya Angelou

Capitalism has failed our people. If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that’s a blatant failure. What else could you describe it as? – Lucinda Ardern

Maya Angelou and Lucinda Ardern.

Two fierce, phenomenal women, bristling with the urgency of change; each an icon in her own right, both shining an impassionate spotlight, within their spheres, on social, racial and economic injustice.

Bold, unapologetic, uncowering – ready to rail against the status quo, and to raise what civil rights leader John Lewis called “good trouble”.

Angelou – the brash, daring performer – a showgirl, in the best possible sense of the word, who wielded her many talents like lightsabres: writer, actress, dancer, civil rights activist, poet. The tall, Amazonian wordsmith, who belted out steamy Calypso torch songs while her pen bled searing, bone-rattling prose that stirred a generation of young women – and men - into angry protest and revolution, demanding a world that was not only more just, but kinder, gentler, better.

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Good trouble.

On the other side of the globe, the other side of the social spectrum, a similar tide is swelling. Ardern – a young, idealistic politician, stridently socialist – who became the youngest female head of state when she was elected prime minister of New Zealand at just 37.

Though a rising star within her own party, Ardern has been an unexpected changemaker, scrabbling into the Prime Minister’s office by forming an unlikely minority coalition government after her party won 10 seats fewer than their main political opposition. And yet, her short tenure – October 26 marks only her third anniversary in office – has had a seismic impact, both domestically and on the world stage.

At home, she has won praise and admiration for pushing a sweeping social agenda that focuses on solving New Zealand’s housing crisis and tackling child poverty and social inequality. Internationally, she has demonstrated a proclivity for punching way above her weight: In January 2019, less than 18 months into office, she was sharing a World Economic Forum stage with Al Gore and Sir Richard Attenborough, telling world leaders at Davos to "get on the right side of history, and embrace guardianship of the earth".

New Zealand, she said – to a flutter of bemusement from less idealistic leaders – would lead the charge by introducing a “well-being budget” – a political and economic blueprint that wasn’t just about growth for growth sake, but which would prioritise kindness, empathy and the social and mental well-being of its citizens.

Good trouble.

Born at opposite ends of the world, into different generations, different social structures and different racial constructs, Maya Angelou and Lucinda Ardern could not be more dissimilar. And yet, at the tail end of a cataclysmic year, with uncertainty and upheaval our new normal, their fierce refusal to accept the unacceptable is the message for our moment.

Because what we need right now, is a good deal of good trouble.

COVID-19 has ushered in so many “new normals”, so many forced adjustments and re-alignments, that the concept of normal – any kind of normal – seems increasingly archaic. If normal changes from payday to payday, or from one quarterly forecast to the next, is normal still a valid concept? Does it serve any purpose at all?

Yes.

As mindfulness guru Amy Rubin argues: Just because it’s the norm, doesn’t mean it’s normal. Conversely, normal isn’t always the norm. Hunger, homelessness, disappearing icebergs and receding rain forests have become the norms for our planet. But it is not normal. And as much as we have become accustomed to it, or skilled in turning a blind eye, the systemic problems eroding our societies, our workplaces and our families, are not acceptable. They are not normal.

For all its devastation, COVID-19 bears some gifts. One of these has been a renewed sense of who we really are. In the first few days and weeks after national lockdown, South Africans – stunned into unimaginable stasis – marvelled as the smog clouds lifted over Gauteng, congestion disappeared and we all suddenly had the time to sit down for family meals.

The world seemed truly changed.

The 2020 World Economic Forum – where Lucinda Ardern had elicited eye-rolling a year earlier with her “well-being budget” – was convened under theme “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World”, with world leaders being urged to plot new pathways to “shareholder capitalism”.

Though not new, stakeholder capitalism had, until recently, been somewhat of a fringe philosophy – an idealistic vision of the world in which corporate leaders assumed responsibility not only for their shareholders – but for the totality of the spheres in which they operated. In this philosophy – the inspiration behind Ardern’s kinder, gentler government – leaders were supposed to be architects of long-term wellbeing, responsible for the social, mental and economic welfare of all their stakeholders – staff, customers, clients, their communities at large – rather than pursuing the quarter-by-quarter financial interests a handful of shareholders.

As we huddled together in the early days of COVID-19, it seemed that this kinder, gentler world had indeed arrived. Shaken by global catastrophe, the world around us shrunk to what seemed, perhaps for the first time, a global village. We mourned collectively for the deaths in Italy, and railed against the missteps in the US and the UK.

But crisis did not change us. It revealed us.

Stakeholder capitalism – a kinder, gentler form of leadership – was soon revealed to be the mirage critics and cynics had predicted it would be. Our marvel at disappearing smog clouds turned to disbelief, then rage, at the instinctive, immediate profiteering, bilking and fraud that almost immediately ensued.

In many instances, the culprits were opportunistic, unscrupulous individuals. But all too often, it was opportunistic, unscrupulous organisations – businesses headed by the very leaders whom stakeholder capitalism promised us would be the architects of this new normal of societal well-being. If ever we needed gentler stewardship, it was during a global pandemic. But COVID-19 revealed some of our largest, most admired corporations to be every inch as shareholder- and dividend-driven as ever.

As a transformative business philosophy that ushers in a new era of better, stakeholder capitalist risks being dead on arrival because we, the stakeholders, have proven unwilling or unable to stir the sort of good trouble Maya Angelou and Jacinda Ardern have called us to.

Kinder, gentler corporations are failing to materialise because we expect a kinder, gentler mindset to ignite organically in our boardrooms, and for the benefits of this new “us” paradigm to spontaneously trickle down from our C-suites to the areas where societal and economic change is needed most.

This will not happen. It cannot. Stakeholder capitalism – and the trust and sustainable shared value it promises – can only succeed if you and I – the stakeholders of Earth Inc. – drive it, claim it, and agitate for it. If we start causing the good trouble of demanding more and refusing to settle for less. If we hold corporate and political leaders’ feet to the fire. And where there are not enough fires, if we start lighting a few of our own.

As Maya Angelou famously said: “Life likes to be taken by the lapel and told, I'm with you kid. Let's go!”

Our planet, our country and our communities are calling out for responsible stewardship. Our stewards are proving unequal to the task. It’s time to light some fires and grab some lapels.

? The Performance Agency