BOLD BUSINESS
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” –John W. Gardner
What does it take to transform ourselves and our businesses? As we look around the world today, it can feel overwhelming to witness the erosion of ecosystems, islands of plastic floating in our oceans, the increasing frequency of climate disasters, the rise of volatile political regimes, and the growing number of wars and refugees, resulting in 110 million people being displaced around the world–more than any other time in human history. Both our inner and outer landscapes are under immense stress.
Carol Sanford emphasizes, “Disruption, in the context of business, refers to the introduction of a new product or way of working that has the effect of overturning existing patterns in an industry. Disruptive innovations arise when a company looks beyond what currently exists to what wants to exist. Such a company learns to see what others can’t see – emergent patterns and tendencies of an evolving world.” Not surprisingly, all of the business examples mentioned in this chapter are disruptive by design.
As humans and business leaders seek the inner resources and disruptive innovations to navigate an increasingly complex and uncertain future, we must remember human ingenuity is the most powerful organized force. Human creativity knows no bounds, and oftentimes breakthrough innovations arise suddenly out of the least obvious places. Building capacity for disruptive thinking means asking open questions that draw on human creativity and curiosity.
There is no doubt the road forward will require a deep examination of how we arrived here, and what individual and collective actions we are willing to undertake to shift the current trajectory.
We find ourselves colliding with the formidable planetary boundaries: climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and social inequality. What’s tragic in this current scenario is that business leaders focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability metrics that cannot deliver the necessary shift in foundational thinking and urgent actions required to address these compounding issues. The profound implications of surpassing these planetary limits means that companies cannot just do "less bad," we must restore the broken life systems. The breakthrough needed will require the highest level of human development, skill and imagination from both individuals and organizations.
When Paul Polman, the CEO of Unilever, unveiled an exceptionally ambitious sustainability blueprint - the Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) - his words carried a clear directive for investors seeking quick profits from the company's stocks: he told them to invest elsewhere. Unilever is the world’s second largest consumer goods conglomerate responsible for well-known brands like Persil, Flora, and Dove.. Polman knew that USLP required a radical new way of thinking, not only from Unilever’s 165,000 employees, but also by the 5 million people in its supply chain; and eventually by the 2 billion people worldwide who used its products. In order to protect the company’s vision from hostile takeover bids or short-term investors, Polman advocated for a higher percentage of employees owning shares, and a more long-term, long-horizon investment mix to make sure they are supportive of what they are trying to do.
Paul Polman is among a group of visionary business leaders who are pioneering 21st-century business models that embed sustainability, social responsibility, and long-term impact not only within their four walls but also extend to their suppliers, customers, and competitors.
Corporations and businesses have played a role in the social and technological advances that have propelled humanity into an age of abundance; however, most businessesby design, have contributed to the unchecked consumption of resources that is driving our planet towards an ecological point of no return. Furthermore, the way most modern large-scale organizations—governments, religions, corporations— manage their workforces is ‘bad for business.’ As business educator, Carol Sanford, puts it, “The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.” Most managers think humans need to be stimulated with rewards and incentives to stay motivated, but there’s growing evidence from neuroscience and psychology fields that prove there is a direct connection between human agency and personal and collective motivation and altruism.
We need to realize the value and role of employees, colleagues, neighbors for contributing to a sustainable society before we outsource our human connection and feeling capacity to machines.With the rising global phenomenon of replacing humans with machines, automation and A.I. are expected to displace 50% of blue-collar jobs and possibly 20% of white-collar, higher-paid jobs in the U.S. by the end of this decade. Meanwhile, there is a global shortage of workers with critical thinking skills, technical agility, intrinsic motivation, and autonomy. During a presentation at the 2017 Davos World Economic Forum, Elon Musk highlighted the urgent need for rapid development of these qualities within the workplace, emphasizing that it is in the best interest of each business to foster such human development and growth. What is becoming more and more evident is the need for an approach that equips workers to thrive in the twenty-first century.
Acknowledging this, certain organizations like Unilever now operate under a new set of principles and values that deviate from hierarchical structures based on power and accomplishment.
In his work Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux examines different organizational models throughout history and proposes a new and more evolved way of structuring and running organization. He traces the evolution of organizational structures to demonstrate that each advancement in how we construct our social institutions relates to a corresponding shift in our self-perception and worldview. Similarly, philosopher Bayo Akomolafe shares that through each experience we become multi-hyphenated beings, deepening our abilities of perception through the appreciation and reflection on lived experience.
Laloux investigated fifty organizations that had been operating for at least five years, with a minimum of one hundred employees, working across different sectors and geographies. In his study of forty-five fundamental organizational structures and practices, he asked questions, such as:
How does this organization make decisions?
How does information flow?
How are people evaluated?
How do they go about budgeting?
What about targets?
While examining companies that were successfully pioneering novel approaches to work and management, Laloux identified an emerging, overarching pattern that prioritizes workers’ intrinsic motivations and harnesses their full human potential more effectively. He observes that humans can cultivate greater self-awareness, expand their vision, and foster qualities such as open-mindedness, curiosity, compassion, and inclusiveness . These developments are likely to yield enhanced outcomes for global ecosystems, collective prosperity, health, and peace.
Interestingly, he also discovered that companies focusing on helping their employees grow in critical thinking, personal mastery, and business acumen resulted in opening up new opportunities for growth and profit, many of which were linked to sustainability. This virtuous spiral demonstrates how the growth of a company can strengthen its impact even further. In addition to financial investments, we must recognize that each employee is investing his or her own time and energy every day. For all of our decision-making, how we spend our days and what we are working towards might be the most important decisions we make.
Perhaps the greatest task of our time is for each of us to ask ourselves how we want to show up in our relationships at work and at home. How do we relate to the surrounding world and engage with the wider web of life unfolding around us? Are you willing to transform yourself to become a leader? Can I move beyond focusing only on specific priorities and perspectives, and instead, see the bigger picture and explore solutions that address the entire system?
Similarly, Paul Polman asks business leaders the uncomfortable yet quintessential sustainability questions: How can a company profit from solving the world’s problems, not from creating them? Is the world better off because your business is in it, or not? Sitting with these questions requires a deep sense of humility and willingness to consider multiple contradictory viewpoints.
Whether you are a board member, executive, manager, or intrapreneur, Bold Business is designed to provoke thought, action, and interaction in you, the reader. It is healthy to question our foundational assumptions when the tenets of neoclassical economics run deep in our current economic, social and political systems.
In the pages ahead we share with you inspiring examples of business models that embed a new paradigm.
Let’s consider the following questions:
How does your business contribute to the well-being of communities and the environment?
What ethical principles guide decision-making within your organization?
By the end of this chapter, we hope that you feel informed, inspired, and motivated to build successful businesses and healthy communities fit for the twenty-first century.
Last updated
Was this helpful?