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A home for the Conscious Business community in the UK

Author Archives: Pete Burden


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Live more simply…

Thanks to my friend Oliver, I just finished reading Ervin Laszlo’s 2006 book The Chaos Point. Probably the best book I have read since  the last amazing book I read. They seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment.

We are always busy so my wife asked me to summarise it in 30 seconds. Here goes:

  • The world is in a terrible state, and getting worse.
  • Doom is not, however, inevitable.
  • Changing our own consciousness – personally and as a group – is the answer.

This goes a long way to answering one of the major riddles I struggle with. If you believe the world is a complex system (as I do), and that we can’t predict outcomes with any certainty (even though scientific, economic. and political dogma suggest we can), why isn’t it OK just to live and let live?

It will all work out for the best won’t it? The trickle-down will work. Technology will fix the climate. Crisis will be averted, yet again. Everyone will be happy.

Laszlo’s point is that we humans are both the problem and the solution. We are destroying the planet and in danger of destroying ourselves. But we have the power to change our thinking. And changing our thinking allows us to change the framework by which we all live. Our future is not predetermined. It depends on that framework.

Our ingrained liberalism suggests live and let live. But we can, for example, choose a better morality, summarised by Ghandi’s “Live more simply, so that others can simply live”.

How do we change our morality, change our consciousness? Another riddle: it’s not easy, and yet it is. One clear way forward is to work on oneself. To try to understand oneself better, mind, body and soul.

My wife liked that bit. She’s an example to me. Someone who takes personal development very seriously. And I must go and read another book.


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Social business

I’ve been reading Muhammud Yunus’ 2007 book “Creating a World Without Poverty“. Plenty of stuff on the Grameen bank, but the bit that really interested me was the section on social business.

According to Professor Yunus there are social enterprises, and social businesses. Social enterprises include not-for-profit organisations, publicly funded organisations and so on. Social businesses are a type of social enterprise that use the tools and techniques of business.

Social businesses differ from ordinary businesses in that rather than having the primary objective of making a return to shareholders, the primary objective of a social business is solving social or environmental problems.

These objectives can be very varied. A social business can serve a particular community and solve any social or environmental problem. Social businesses may employ people from a particular disadvantaged community; but even where that isn’t the case, ownership is spread widely and democratically.

In Yunus’ definition a social business must also serve a disadvantaged community. Robert Owen’s co-operative movement doesn’t fit this definition, according to Yunus, because it isn’t “inherently oriented towards helping the poor or producing any other specific social benefit”.

I think I understand this, and I’d be interested to know what the co-operative movement think of that exclusion.

But what I do like about Yunus’ definition is the idea that a social business, unlike a charity, doesn’t have to divert energy to raising funds. And unlike a not-for-profit, profit isn’t minimised. It’s just used differently, being reinvested into the same or a different venture.

This recycling of profit creates the ability to achieve “lift-off” velocity and start solving social and environmental problems in new and exciting ways. It means surplus profit, once initial investors are paid back, can be used to invest in new companies, with new aims.

And I’d like to humbly suggest one bit of reframing.

In one sense, we are all disadvantaged. We’re disadvantaged by a crazy financial system that rewards the few to the detriment of the many. We’re disadvantaged by a political system that seems to be largely ignoring  the risks of climate change and environmental destruction. We’re disadvantaged by an economic system that prioritises conspicuous consumption over personal health and well-being.

Surely that creates an amazing opportunity? For the creation of social businesses which address the needs of not just one community, not just one particular group. Instead their purpose is change the system and to serve all of us, the whole of humanity.

That, to me, seems worth doing.


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Roll up, roll up

What a great time to enrol people in the business of doing something about social and environmental issues.

Gordon Gecko was wrong, greed is not good. As some of the financial fat cats get their comeuppance surely we’ll see  an acceleration towards a world where more people use their working lives to do something worthwhile.

But what might stop this happening?

Firstly, I suppose, especially in an economic downturn, people might claim poverty. But as fellow JustMeans blogger Osbert Lancaster wrote in “Responsible business in a time of turmoil?” – one good strategy is to remember we in the West are rich. Wildly rich compared to many of the people in the developing world.

Selfishness isn’t a bad strategy in my view. If you don’t look after yourself, what chance do you have of looking after others? The trick is probably to try to sort oneself out, in every way, then start to see what you can do for others.

Secondly, many people seem to argue there’s no point. The world’s going to hell in a handcart anyway, so why bother. Well is it? It seems to me that our biggest hope is the very presence of sites like JustMeans, and all the thousands (millions?) of people signing up to similar initiatives. If together we create a critical mass, then surely there’s some hope?

Thirdly, some people seem to feel they aren’t able to do anything. Maybe we haven’t got  the skills. Or maybe we don’t have any choice.

That’s something that took me some years to fully understand. That really everything we do is our own choice. We may tell ourselves that we have no choice but it’s simply not true. No one cooerces us. Or very rarely anyway.

Anything else? People like me, preaching? Personally, I hate being told what to do. And I do worry that many of our social and environmental organisations are too exclusive, run by “professionals” and “experts”. People who “know” the answers. (Hopefully that’ll trigger a response!)

I like the message that came across from Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest video – that this movement is wide and deep, broad and inclusive. Everyone, literally everyone, has something to contribute.

So dive in.


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Pricing

Everyone’s complaining about the price of energy. In all the analysis I didn’t hear many people say price rises are a good thing. But surely it’s good for the environment if people drive less and burn less electricity at home. If we use less. Are we all so miserly that we won’t spend a little more on these basic necessities?

And how do prices get set anyway?

It’s about what the market agrees, right? Whatever competitors are doing, plus anything we can get away with?

Why then are we are prepared to pay £10 for a round bit of plastic called a DVD costing a few pence to make. £100 for a bottle of alcohol tainted with a few chemicals and a nice smell. A thousand pounds for dress with the right label. Several million pounds for a cow cut in half.

Doesn’t price have a lot to do with perception?

I think part of our challenge for the future is to change people’s perception of the products and services they buy. So that we all properly value the incredible complex machine that delivers heat and light into our houses at the flick of a switch.

Maybe the best thing would just be to turn it off for a few days. I bet  that would change perception fast – and allow a really significant price adjustment.

And what would your customers think if you did that to them?? It’s an interesting thought-experiment. Not sure I’d dare try it out in real life though.


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News from the front-line

I rarely watch TV news. Actually I hardly follow the news at all. Once every couple of months I might pick up a paper (usually the FT because I like their style). Sometimes at the station with time to kill, I look at the newspaper headlines.

This is all because news depresses me. The endless negativity. The partisan nature of the analysis. The time it wastes. The way even sensible people are depicted as idiots – under the pressure of lights, time and deadlines, I’m sure it’s really hard to get a coherent and sane message out, let alone start a useful or enjoyable conversation, which I much prefer.

I studied the news. In fact, I wrote a dissertation about online news at the BBC. Actually, I confess, I worked for BBC News.

And overall I like the news journalists I have met. As a bunch they are bright (sometimes terribly bright), articulate, caring and funny people. I say caring because despite the bluster or detachment which they probably need to do the job, many, many are really caring individuals. I’m sure they care far more than me about global issues, politics, big business and all the really IMPORTANT things.

Things I grew up thinking were important anyway. Like many middle-class kids I was encouraged to read a newspaper. Although I never got beyond the little snippets in the inside pages – “thieves steal 1000 left-footed shoes”.

The major headlines: war, famine, earthquake, disaster – all these fascinated me in a way, but never really engaged me to do anything. Is that a terrible thing to say?

But when I watched the TV news (Channel 4) the other day, just to do something different, I really enjoyed it.

I was struck again by the sheer entertainment value of it. The great music. The amazing graphics. The tension. The suspense. The build-up. The baring of teeth. The bloody combat amongst the protagonists – “no holds barred”. The skill of the referee – goading and urging them on. The silky warm conclusion and the seductive invite to “join them again”.

And overall the absolute art of the piece – drawing me in, and pulling me to the front of my chair, hooking me in.

Like Damien Hirst’s work it may just be a cow cut in half. But, you’ve got to admit, it’s very well done.


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Typecast

Why do we have it in for sales people? In my book, good sales people do a really useful job. They help me find out what I need. They arrange for me to get it. They make me feel good in the process.

So why do I, and others, sometimes get upset when thinking of sales people? Is it because we’re really thinking about pressure selling? About mis-selling? About used-car sales men?  But I bought a great used car from real gentleman.

The answer of course is that we are “labelling”. I said the word salesman the other day and a colleague immediately quipped “untrustworthy”. Word association football.

We’re labelling someone as a type, probably before we’ve even really experienced what’s going on. What there is to experience in their behaviour. What’s really happening. Sure there are people who sell badly. But equally there are people who sell well. Why on earth would we clump them all together? That’s faulty thinking.

Labelling’s just one of many “faulty” thinking types, identified by people like Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, the founders of cognitive therapy.

What brought this to mind? My holiday reading, a book by Sarah Edelman. I’ve read this kind of thing before. But this is really accessible and well written. I know it’s probably a bit sad to be reading stuff like this on holiday, but as Ellis said, “fighting irrationality and trying to be happy in a nutty world has great advantages in itself. It’s challenging. It’s interesting. It’s rewarding. It’s self helping… Your very determination to work at it can keep you reasonably happy.”

Can’t say fairer than that.


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Integration

I have just started blogging for JustMeans.com – a social network for businesses interested in social responsibility. JustMeans was founded by Martin Smith and Kevin Long. Martin was a founder of StartingBloc, an organisation aiming to educate, empower and connect leaders driving positive social change. Kevin is an Ashoka fellow – Ashoka is a global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs.

Inspiring people. It’s good to surround yourself by people who do good things.

Writing for JustMeans is another step for me in integrating the various parts of my life. For many years I lived several lives – home, work, projects – and often I played different roles in each. I behaved differently.

Lots of things seem to be coming together now – into one more integrated life. A coming together of real interests with real skills and experience. Sometimes it feels scary as the boundaries disolve. But generally, it feels like a good thing.

I’ll continue writing here (although I am enjoying the summer holiday!). And you can find my fortnightly JustMeans blogs at All Things Reconsidered.


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Vive la difference?

Someone sent me this paper the other day written by Jane Lorand who runs a Green MBA at a university in the USA. The arrival of many more Green and Sustainable MBAs will no doubt mean we get a lot more of this kind of thing. I am not sure I am looking forward to it.

Lorand argues that “For today’s businesses, there exist two distinct paradigms about what is real and important.” She separates these paradigms and describes the characteristics of each, including the beliefs on which she believes they are based.

For “Business-As-Usual” companies “1) Everything is Separate and 2) Materialism is the Only Reality”.

And for sustainable companies “1) Everything is Connected and 2) Spirit and Matter Co-exist to Form Reality.”

There are things I like about the paper. I enjoy breaking things down into categories. But I think we need to be careful not to be too hard on Business-As-Usual companies.

For one thing, Lorand says that “individuals who work in Business-As-Usual corporations find it very difficult to assert belief structures, identities or methods inconsistent with their corporation.”

She also suggests that Business-As-Usual has a singular goal: “maximizing financial profit for shareholders.”

I worked for a large US corporation during the 1980s and while profit was important as far as I could tell it was never the single goal of the company. The goals were much more diverse.

Wouldn’t it be great if life was that simple and it was possible to set a single goal and then attain it? In real life, we all do our best and and a number of different things result. Often results emerge that we weren’t expecting and didn’t intend.

Reading the paper I started to wonder if every big corporation has its own Stasi – controlling the workers. By contrast, the company I worked for contained such a very large number of “mavericks”, both people and groups, that it would seem absurd to suggest that people were unable to express their own beliefs.

In fact, that company, like all others I’d suggest, was a much more diverse and heterogenous mix of people and ways of doing things than management consultants who focus on ideas like “culture” would have us believe. (In some unkinder moods I’d suggest that if organisational culture didn’t exist, management consultants would have to invent it.) I am of the school of thought that believes that culture emerges fluidly and dynamically from the beliefs and activities of the people who work in a business. It’s not some intractable glue magically imposed top-down or somehow encoded in the papers of incorporation.

Why is this important? Because as we navigate the waters of sustainable business I think we need to be very careful to be inclusive. I think we need to welcome people of all backgrounds and cultures, including those that have worked in “big business”. We need to work with these people, not against them. In my experience, most people who work in large corporations have hearts just as big as those who work in sustainable business.

And we also mustn’t start to think that big business is somehow not open to change. That sounds much too much to me like the kind of thing I might say to my wife!

This approach itself creates barriers to change – it puts people’s backs up (just ask my wife), and it disempowers us – we stop believing in the possibility of change.

Big businesses, like any business, change fast once change starts. There are armies of “catalysts for change” at every level in every decent company – not just a few undercover agents.

The evidence for this is that few big companies would have survived in the turbulent years since I have been working without an incredible ability to develop and grow in response to change. Only the real dinosaurs suppress change – and these typically go the way of the dinosaurs.

I haven’t met Jane Lorand but I feel sure she’d concur.


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Business as war?

I just read this wonderful statement by Sam Keen about questions – “Your question is the quest you’re on. No questions — no journey. Timid questions — timid trips. Radical questions — an expedition to the root of your being. Bon voyage.”

That touches me deeply. Asking really good questions is very dear to me.

I looked Sam Keen up because I came across another quote from him “Business is just warfare in slow motion.” What an abomination. I was shocked to read this. But an abomination that I guess that many people, including myself, sign up to. Not always, and perhaps not consciously. But sometimes I do think in terms of “the competition”. How can we beat them? How can we outwit them?

Even if I am not the most outwardly agressive person, I admit I do sometimes think of business as war. Or at the very least, as a zero-sum game – where there must be a winner and a loser. I start to believe there isn’t enough to go around. I belittle and blame others for their own suffering – it must be their own fault they’re unable to find their way out of whatever problems they face. And, if I look inwardly, I am shocked to discover a core belief that others are somehow separate from me, disconnected, that we are not all part of a whole.

As Keen says elsewhere “we have to stop pretending that we can make a living at something that is trivial or destructive and still have sense of legitimate self-worth”. Destructive livings are bad for self-worth; they’re also bad for the world.

So what’s the alternative? There is a new world out there. It’s coming soon. A world where a different type of business exists. A world where co-operation and the win-win game are the only game in town. Where we all recognise that we are all connected, that we all share this one world.

How does business operate in that new world? For me, it’s beyond democracy. It’s even beyond caring. It’s about giving. And business is just a framework, a way of working, that gives real results to the people it serves. All of us.


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New ways to consume

Another solution to over-consumption is simply that we stop consuming so fast! Slowing down makes a lot of sense to me, especially when it leads to a better experience as in the Slow Food movement. Yum.

And another is to create a rental business.

One example that has been around a really long time is video rental. Why does everyone have to buy a video, causing one to be manufactured, when a perfectly good business model exists for renting them? As we have seen the model does work well – it’s stood the test of time and evolved from shops into postal rental services like DvdsOnTap which became Lovefilm and so on. Maybe it will be replaced by electronic downloads, but so far I am surprised by how resilient the model seems. Maybe there’s more to these services than just selling the same physical item over and over again?

Another more recent example are the car clubs popping up everywhere (Streetcar, WhizzGo, CityCarClub to name just a few). It’s the same business model – buy one car and let many people use it.

I wonder what other goods could be provided in this way?

If you do go down this route, of course, differentiating yourself becomes more interesting. It has little to do with the product itself – differentiation comes from the way the service is offered. It’s good therefore to see more and more consultancies emerging specialising in this area – I came across the Engine Group just today.