Greed is good, right?

Did Gordon Gekko have it right? Is looking after No 1 the only thing that counts in business? Over the years I've met a few like him....

It’s been an interesting few weeks. You have to keep on pinching yourself these days - fiction seems more credible than real life.

On the global stage we’ve seen President Trump’s whirlwind (in more ways than one) tour of Europe, followed by his Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin and the subsequent “misspeaking” fallout in the US. Better than nuclear fallout, I guess. Real news is fake news, apparently, because it's insufficiently loyal and fawning to POTUS. Trump Twitter news trumps all news, even when it and his diehard supporters brazenly deny he said what he said in front of the world. It seems Trump's voters will forgive him anything and accept his self-contradictory pronouncements, because he's an outsider who's draining the hypocritical swamp, upending the liberal elite and Making America Great Again so they're all believers, including swathes of unreconstructed American business with whom Trump's unashamed self-promotion and self-interest resonates perfectly. Greed is indeed good for God's chosen people.

Then there’s Brexit. Former Trump denouncer Boris Johnson is now firmly cast in Trump's image and according to the latter is a great friend of his who would make an excellent Prime Minister. Great - what are we waiting for? Like POTUS it seems our own walking bad hair day can pontificate, lie and be exposed as an imposter by allies yet nothing sticks.

In view of how Brexit's going currently I think it should be renamed 'Your (the people's) UK Exit', or YUK-Exit. Some of us are biting our tongues and resisting the urge to say “I told you so” as the deadline for negotiating the exit from the European Union speeds towards us and the heat in the Brexit kitchen becomes stifling. Political carnage. Let’s hope that’s all it is - we certainly don’t need any economic carnage. 

Here in the Yorkshire Dales we have local interest in this far-fetched Westminster slow motion car crash – our MP, Julian Smith, whom I've met several times, is the Government’s Chief Whip. Opposition parties screamed for his resignation this week after a critical Brexit vote in which he apparently instructed a handful of Conservative MPs to break ‘pairing agreements’ with opposition MPs, in which two people who are going to vote differently agree not to vote since they already cancel each other out. Whilst some refused to do so on principle upon Smith’s alleged request the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Brandon Lewis, did vote and broke his pairing agreement with Liberal Democrat Party Deputy Leader Jo Swinson, who is on maternity leave. The Government squeaked home by 5 votes – one can see the pressure Smith was under to deliver the votes. Hmm…..

On a more uplifting note we’ve seen the international cave rescue of the Thai boys’ football team, and England has apparently fallen in love with its national football team again after an unusually young, relatively unknown group of players led by a quiet, dignified and humble manager, Gareth Southgate, reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in Russia. Both stories show what can be achieved when people come together, sacrifice their own egos and commit themselves to a greater purpose.

Meantime I’ve been in a parallel business world discovering all sorts of thankfully inspiring stuff. I continue to hear plenty of evidence of what I call BAUWAU – Business As Usual, Warped And Ugly but I’ve also been coming across encouraging business stories and initiatives which mirror the cave rescue and the England football ‘overachievement’ – grounds for encouragement amidst the chaos and depressing predictability of zero sum games, egotistical bickering and the immature irresponsibility of BAUWAU.

So, if you are a cynic who thinks business is just about making money whoever or whatever you damage in the process, or you think businesspeople are all greedy, grasping, egotistical sociopaths, don’t read on!

Nearly three weeks ago I took a client to listen to Timothy Henry, one of the authors of the Conscious Capitalism Field Guide. I regard myself as a business progressive, but I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of Conscious Capitalism. It’s still relatively new - it took off in 2013 with the launch of the book Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey, Co-CEO of Whole Foods Market and Raj Sisodia. Neither had I heard of the B Corporation movement, or the B Team formed by Richard Branson, Paul Polman, Ratan Tata, Ariana Huffington and other progressive business leaders, or the Inclusive Capitalism movement.

John Mackey, Co-CEO, Whole Foods Market (picture credit - jonathansandling.com)

If I still lived and worked in the United States I suspect I’d have come across this stuff by now. We’re not totally without such initiatives in the UK, but they tend to be a) lower key; and b) disregarded or dismissed. This country is a perplexing paradox – I think we have a claim to be the most creative, imaginative and entrepreneurial nation on Earth, which many outside the UK might not dismiss out of hand, but we are arguably also the most cynical, negative and nihilistic. It makes no sense. Like others, we are our own worst enemy. 

An argument advanced by the Brexiteers is that if only the UK started thinking big we could have a global (business) empire again, since 90% of global trade occurs outside the EU. I wholeheartedly agree that the UK’s negativity is self-defeating. However, the irony apparently lost on Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and their fellow zealots is this – it is precisely this doom-laden, cynical, it’ll never work attitude which will impede still further the massive practical challenge of competing globally in a substantially greater and better way than we do already. It is not the EU which is preventing this now – it’s British mindsets and business culture, including dire, self-absorbed, selfish leadership more intent on protecting personal positions than on taking entrepreneurial risks, creating inspiring visions or leading from the front, and bogged down with British bureaucratic red tape, caution and conservatism.

Before anyone blocks their ears and accuses me of being a Project Fear enemy of the people, I did vote Remain in the EU Referendum, seeing it as the lesser of two evils, but I am now, like Lord Digby Jones, former Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry and later UK Trade Minister, a reluctant marginal Leaver, in the seemingly unlikely event that the UK can get a sensible deal with the EU.

Back to Conscious Capitalism etc. Encouraged and energised by the belated discovery of these progressive business movements and their remarkable congruence with my own business philosophy and core purposes, I’ve had a series of recent meetings and experiences which have further reinforced them. You know the saying about the glass being half full or half empty? I’m seeing a case that it is at least half full at long last. I think many people are already working without recognition or fanfare towards a better world in which much more of business makes an overwhelmingly positive and admirable contribution to society. Behind the scenes I sense that pressure is rising to the point where having greater purposes alongside profit will become an accepted norm in business – not THE norm, but every bit as ‘mainstream’ as the feckless pursuit of shareholder and executive wealth above all other considerations and stakeholders.  

I think the time is coming when the clash of progressive versus regressive ideas and ethics in business will be as open, forceful and visceral as it currently is in politics. Not before time I say, as someone who has swum against the prevailing tide of business-as-usual for 30 years. I sense a shaking of the foundations - BAUWAU is under serious threat at last. Good business is starting to lock horns with bad business, and compete for territory and mindspace – BRING IT ON!

If you doubt what I’m saying, I can provide you with a list of 16 websites and 41 books/research studies which in different ways address what I call the quest for the purposes, values, attitudes and behaviours of the Top 1% most successfully consistent organisations and leaders. I keep adding to the list as I discover new sources, but it’s still the tip of the iceberg.

Here are some quick recent personal examples of healthy business practices:

• A good friend and former colleague is CFO of a prestigious UK manufacturing business which was acquired by an American company 6 years ago. Whilst making a hash of integrating the US side of my client’s business into their own operations the acquiring company had the good sense to let the UK company get on and run the rest of its business globally. The company has an excellent culture and has continued to deliver quarter-on-quarter sales and profit growth for several years. 
• Another friend and former colleague became CEO 2 years ago of an advanced engineering business employing over 250 people, formerly family-owned and now part of a publicly-listed international group. I visited him a week ago and his Operations Director gave me a detailed factory tour in which I chatted to the value stream (sub-business) leaders who have recently been appointed and are now being developed as future business leaders at higher level. Since he arrived, the CEO has led an impressive transformation, replacing poor performers on the management team in spite of resistance including a grievance claim by the dismissed CFO, overseeing the introduction of effective continuous improvement programmes, and fighting hard to try to stop his boss and the financial people at Group level from dumping central costs on his business and extracting non-sustainable cost and headcount reductions for the sake of a few tenths of a percent more short-term profit in what is already an extremely profitable company. He finds the games he has to play with Group wearing and frustrating. Nonetheless he is giving essential ‘air cover’ to enable his new team to gradually transform performance.
• On Wednesday I took a client to a half-day masterclass for business leaders given by David Smith, former Head of People (1994-2009) at Asda Supermarkets, the UK part of Wal-Mart. The subject was how to create a high-performance organisation. Smith described the 7 common sense principles which took Asda from almost bankrupt with 60% staff turnover to the No 1 company to work for in the UK with over 90% employee satisfaction. Each of these principles – Who You Hire, Communication, Listening, Leadership, Recognition, Performance Management and Instilling a Fun Culture at Work – had nothing to do with short-term profit maximisation. All of them were about shifting the culture in a way that would inspire people to bring their whole selves to work and to willingly go beyond their contractual obligations. What was so encouraging about this was that it DID yield short-term improvements - in morale, reduced staff turnover, and higher staff quality - which DID begin to translate fairly quickly into increased sales and profits. The point is this - focusing on people rather than cost produced much better, sustained profit improvements.

David Smith, former Head of People at Asda (picture credit - hrmagazine.co.uk)

• As a result of seeing a LinkedIn post from a mutual contact I have reconnected after 9 years with Clive Wilson, an international authority on purpose-driven businesses and author of two books – Designing the Purposeful World (just published) and Designing the Purposeful Organization. I’m looking forward to meeting him again over a coffee in a couple of weeks' time.

This week a business acquaintance took me out for a meal. He said it was to thank me for my LinkedIn blogs. Writing on LinkedIn may not pay many bills (though it has led indirectly to some business and the promise of more), running one’s own business remains challenging, but it is good to hear when people find what I write stimulating or encouraging.

I urge you to dig into some of the materials I’ve shared in this blog which you are not already familiar with and develop your understanding of how business can be, and is becoming, a force for good.

Why should business wish to be a force for good? To me the reason is obvious. We spend more of our time at work than anywhere else except sleeping perhaps. The majority of people are at their best when they are driven by greater purposes, the service of others, and a strong spirit of worthwhile collective endeavour. David Smith confirmed what I already knew - research shows that money is a demotivator, NOT a motivator, for the healthy majority. It's a hygiene factor - people want to be paid fairly and reasonably, but earning more and more money does not produce higher and higher performance, especially from those who crave and demand it. Try tracking the correlation between the astronomical growth in executive compensation and the improvement in corporate results - it doesn't exist.

The Gordon Gekkos of the world are DEAD WRONG. For what it's worth, they end up despised by most of us, whether or not they recognise it!