How much evil am I willing to tolerate in business?
People would describe me as an optimist. I see good and beauty far more than evil.
But evil abounds.
When we consider oceans, rivers, forests and plains as free to rape and exploit as we wish. When we think they are free and stop for not one minute to consider the long-term consequences of our actions.
When we reduce people to numbers, cogs, statistics, and machines, failing to ask them what matters most, and how they manage to feed their kids on that minimum wage.
When we place profit and the dollar on the high altar, at the price of everything or anything else.
When the model for business becomes the ONLY model on which we measure anything. “But will it make money?” In so doing, we shoot great art, music, dance, design and creativity in the heart.
When we demean the value of a nurse or teacher and place the value of someone who can make money birth money the most valuable and worthy of recognition.
When citizenship becomes empty and meaningless. Replaced with consumers.
When we sell all public spaces and places to private interests. When there is no longer a commons.
When we say it is OK to lie and cheat as the pathway to success. This includes lying and cheating to the tax man, the people, within our companies, as well as the government lying and cheating to us.
When big business can buy government in any form.
When we remove care, love, community, responsibility and truly great work from our workplaces.
Where the end game is the next reporting cycle, and the long game is never considered.
When we exploit labour in other markets, buying child slaves, or people who work in inhuman conditions.
At some point, we have to stop and ask how much evil am I willing to tolerate? At what point do I have to speak up and act? To say no?
When our prevailing system is designed to do exactly what is now happening in the world, it will take a bold and courageous conversation to get any level of change.
Very few organisations have that conversation. It involves levels of risk and threat to the almighty bottom line that most companies are simply unwilling to have.
Yet it is also the conversation that offers the most opportunity for innovation, big cultural change, deep human engagement, and leaders who fall back in love with what they are doing.
How about getting started with this conversation today? If you need some help…shoot me an email.
