Conscious-Business.org.uk

A home for the Conscious Business community in the UK

Category Archives: Business


by 1 Comment

Selling, new style

A new year and a new president. Change is in the air. And as lots of people are saying, now is also the time for a new type of business.

A new type of business needs a new type of purpose. Sustainability is one.

A new type of purpose also needs a new type of marketing. Maybe not exactly a new type. But at least a return to a truer, more authentic type of marketing. Marketing that is about figuring out what people really want and giving it to them.

There’s been a lot written and said about more authentic marketing in the last few years. And in my opinion, social media is one of the opportunities to make that goal of authenticity much more real. What better way, for example, to find out what people really want?

But as well as marketing, every business needs to sell something. So what does a new type of selling, one that’s suitable for a new type of business, look like?

Again perhaps it’s not exactly new. But it’s definitely a change from the used-car salesman type of selling we have come to associate with all sorts of products from financial services to …, well, used-cars.

According to Huthwaite, for example,  the new type of selling is consultative. I’m a fan of their approach. Maybe I take it further than they intend but for me most selling techniques they and others suggest can be practiced authentically and honestly.

Asking questions to find out what a customer’s problems are? Don’t invent problems. And don’t project your own or others problems on to them. Instead really listen. Yes, really, really listen. Find out what those real, deep-down problems are, and you’ll find gold.

Asking questions to find  out the impact of these problems? Don’t manufacture fear. Don’t scare the customer into buying your solution. Instead, work with them to uncover what the real risks are. Write them down, agree them, quantify them if you can.

There’s absolutely no point in manufacturing fear. As soon as the customer cools off, if they’re half-sane, they’ll go back to a more balanced point of view. And forget any dangers that seemed real during your oh-so-clever sales call. You’ll lose the sale and waste everyones’ time.

Another well known sales technique is to answer a question with a question. In the trade this is called the “porcupine”. A trivial and annoying gimmick, a way to buy the salesperson time? Or a way to better uncover a need?

When people ask questions, sometimes it doesn’t really come from curiosity. Sometimes they have a point to make. So “how quickly does your product degrade?” may really mean “I am concerned about damaging the environment”. Use the porcupine to further understand this concern, in all its depth, and how it relates to the broader set of needs the customer has.

“Always be closing” – the salesperson’s mantra. Isn’t this just another way we recognise pushy sales technique? Another abhorrent bit of behaviour that means that sales people are so low in status that we have to artificially compensate them (with loads of money) for their otherwise valueless job?

Not for me. Good sales people learn to love the word “no”, offered in response to any close. “No” is simply a sign that you haven’t fully understood the needs and the drivers and the circumstances. It means you haven’t  found a way yet to give that customer or client what they really, truly and deeply need. You’re probably not even conscious of that need.

But it also means you’re on the way. Keep going, keep working with the “No”s, keep a true heart and you will find the way.


by 1 Comment

Relocalisation

At this time of year I guess we are all thinking about hearth and home. But a conversation with one of the founders of Gossypium, a great little business that started here in Lewes in 2001, got me thinking about the reality of building a sustainable business locally.

Gossypium sells organic and Fairtrade certified cotton, sourced directly from independent farmers in India. This is worthy in itself. But I think one of the things  the company has done really well is embed itself in the community.

This isn’t done in a forced way, but simply and authentically. For example, the company supports local initiatives. It’s open to suggestions by local people for local campaigns that matter. It contributes to these campaigns and joins in – both the owners and the team. Generally, and wherever it can, it does the “right thing”.

I think this, and the fact that the business started here, has led to a growing belief that Gossypium “belongs” to Lewes. Gossypium is a business that people who live here seem almost proud of.

I know my wife and I have chosen to shop there this year, and lots of other local people do. It’s probably not the cheapest place in the world. But there’s something special about buying things from a place you know is involved in and supportive of your community.

And the owner told me that this support has really benefited the company, financially as well as in other ways, and she believes it will continue to do so.

Perhaps this is the kind of thing the writers of the Cluetrain Manifesto had in mind. The Manifesto is 10 years old this year. As you may know, the Manifesto sees markets as conversations. And it stresses the importance of talking with a human voice. Principles 34 through 40 are:

  • To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
  • But first, they must belong to a community.
  • Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
  • If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.
  • Human communities are based on discourse — on human speech about human concerns.
  • The community of discourse is the market.
  • Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.

It’s easy to critique the Cluetrain idea. But, for me, the point about community is essentially true.

Happy New Year.


by 1 Comment

What IS a sustainable business?

So what is a sustainable business exactly? Surely we must know by now.

  • Is it a green business?
  • Is it a business that is good at environmental management? That follows an ISO standard?
  • Is it a business that’s good at CSR? At accountability? With a good human rights record?

I have a more simple definition. A sustainable business is one that lasts for ever.

OK, you’ll jump on me now and say that simply lasting for ever isn’t the right definition. Some of the companies on the list of the oldest companies in the world aren’t really green and they may not be specifically concerned about their impact on human rights.

And they almost certainly don’t conform to ISO 14001.

But I believe that lasting for ever is an excellent aspiration for a business. No business (and no human) will ever achieve it. But it’s a really good goal.

It’s a good goal because to achieve it a business has to become really good at a number of things:

  • Being a learning organisation. Fancy words that mean that a company develops and grows – not necessarily in size, but like a person, becoming wiser with age. Stronger perhaps, but stronger with compassion, not violence.
  • Caring for the environment. If a business doesn’t care for the environment, then eventually the environment will hit back. Whether it’s fuel prices or raw materials – any business that is ultimately dependent on depleting these resources will eventually run out of them – or find itself  uncompetitive.
  • Caring for the people it employs. Businesses are people. Businesses can’t learn but people can. And if people aren’t cared for then ultimately they will walk or give less than they can.
  • Caring for human rights more generally. If a business breaks this rule, sooner or later people including customers and investors will figure it out. Ignoring human rights is a violation so huge that most people will eventually, when faced by the facts, turn away. Without customers and investors no business can survive.
  • Really understanding and fitting into the market. The market is all these things: customers, investors, people, resources. It’s more than that too – it’s the complex interactions between these things, the system that makes up the world we all live in.  It’s the connections, the inter-dependencies, the limits, and the whole.

Understanding the market means understanding our world and our place in it.  Understanding that if our goal is human sustainability then we need to address all the complex issues of poverty, war, greed, species destruction, resource depletion, climate change and so on. And find a way to really fit in.

Unless a business gets really good at these things it simply won’t last.

And neither will we.


by Leave a comment

Getting better all the time

Someone asked me last week what good management is. We were talking about people management. And  the exact question was “how will we know when we are good managers?”.

Perhaps rather glibly I said that I thought that good was a label and it was perhaps better to consider ourselves all in the process of learning to be better managers. I said that in my opinion management was very hard, and that while it was possible to get better, it was unlikely that anyone would get truly “good” at it, given the uniqueness, and the unique difficulties, of individuals and of human kind in general.

Reflecting on the question again later, I came up with three simple ways that I think I would use to measure good people management, in the context of a sustainable business, that is, one that is trying to last.

The first is retaining our self-respect as managers. “Managing people”, in my view, is a label for a particular type of relationship between two or more people. Relationships can be very hard if boundaries are not clear. Sometimes managers can be bullied, or at the very least rattled, by the results of the emotional turbulence or needs that the other person in the relationship has.

This is not good, for the manager, for the business, or for the person being “managed”. If the relationship becomes badly skewed, probably all parties will lose out.

Secondly, helping the business achieve its goals. I always try to remember that a business is not a therapy room. It may seem naive but, for me, a business is simply a group of people who have thrown their lot in together to achieve a common set of goals. Finding a compromise between using the business to help an individual to develop and grow personally, while focussing also on the good of the greater number seems to me to be essential. If sometimes the individual’s needs have to be sacrificed for the greater good, well, for me, that’s the right way to go.

Thirdly, retaining our imagination. Or at least enough imagination to believe that there is a better way, and that we just have to find it.

For me, a huge part of people management is about helping individuals in the company to learn, and to grow. Businesses are people. They are one and the same thing.

I love work and I love business. Mainly because it is grist to my personal development mill. It gives me something to work on, to worry over, to chew on. (I’d probably go quietly mad if left completely to my own devices.) And if I fail to truly engage with the relationships I have, perhaps by distancing myself emotionally from the people I work with, or by  falling back on management techniques I have used again and again, it’s just another way of quitting, of giving up on my own and the other person’s development (assuming they want it).

Having faith in people is essential to good management. Faith that working together we will find a way through. This is essential if we are to build businesses that are truly sustainable. For me, growing that faith, despite the inevitable setbacks and let downs that come from working with other people, is therefore perhaps the best success measure of all.


by 3 Comments

Little things count

My son has recently learnt to read. What a wonder and a joy. A whole new world of ideas magically available to him – the wisdom of the ages, and access to dreams of the future.

I went into Habitat to buy him a reading light. I saw a nice little light. I noticed it had a small, low energy bulb. I took a boxed one to the counter. Bought it and took it home.

How frustrating – when I opened the box there was no bulb.

For the first next couple of days I ranted and railed at anyone who would listen about the salesman’s failure to up-sell me. As I have said before anything to do with selling seems to have a bad name but it’s poor selling I don’t like, not selling itself.

Why is up-selling important?

Increasing the size of a transaction is directly related to the company’s profitability. Here was an opportunity for the salesman to increase the sale value by 10%. At very low additional cost to the company. They offer low-energy bulbs. All he had to do was ask if I wanted one.

More importantly, imagine how angry I was when I got home and discovered there was no bulb in the box.  What use is a light without a lightbulb? That salesman and his company upset my feelings and those of my disappointed child. Upset my feelings and I will not only be angry next time I go near the store, but I will tell as many people as I can what a bad experience I had. Not great for the company’s profitability.

Is profit king? For me, yes. Profitability is a direct measure of the value the company gives to its customers. Profit is used to develop and grow the company, invest in people, training and capabilities – and ultimately in giving a better service to customers. People complain about profit but what they are usually complaining about is what is done with profit (excessive executive pay, greedy shareholders etc) not profit itself.

Lack of profit is not good from the employee’s and the economy’s point of view either.

And what about the environmental angle? Maybe I shouldn’t have bought this light at all. My view is less extreme – we all need to live, and while I will do my best to reduce my carbon footprint and help others do the same where I can, life without some of its basic joys seems grim indeed.

If I am going to buy the light, then I am the kind of consumer who’ll pay extra for a low-energy bulb not an old-fashioned one. I’ll happily pay extra for anything that assuages my conscience in this area. I hope Habitat’s record on sweat shops and human rights is OK. I hope they have a “Plan A”.

So what happened from an environmental point of view? The failure to up-sell caused a wasted trip to replace the bulb, with all it’s environmental consequences. Of course I can time it so that I am in town anyway, but you get the point. Failure to up-sell can be environmentally inefficient too.

When I went back to the store a few days later, I was still fuming a little.  Maybe that’s why I wasn’t thinking well. I told the guy I needed a bulb for the light. I nearly started talking to him about up-selling but bit my lip. As I said, I was still a little angry. He sold me a bulb. I popped it in my bag and took it home.

The end? Not quite. When I opened the box, I discovered an old-fashioned bulb not a low-energy one. The display lamp had a low-energy bulb. I’d assumed that’s what I’d get. The new sales guy got me something else.

If I had any hair, I’d tear it out. Good selling to me is about understanding needs. I had a need. A need for a light bulb, yes. But also a need to feel good about myself. To do something better for the environment. To confirm my self-image as a good citizen.

This poor sales guy failed. He mis-sold me. He’s damaged the reputation of the company. He’s reduced its turnover. He’s reduced its margin (I swear there’s more profit on a low-energy bulb than an old-fashioned one). He’s made me very unhappy.

And maybe he’s contributed to damage to the environment – maybe I’ll use the old-fashioned bulb? Or should I make a third trip?

OK, I wasn’t clear enough about my needs. That’s clearly my responsibility. But the company also contributed to the problem, because the salesman didn’t ask me what I needed.  Because the company didn’t teach him how to sell well. Such a little thing.


by Leave a comment

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.


by Leave a comment

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.


by 2 Comments

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.


by 4 Comments

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.


by 2 Comments

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.