Conscious-Business.org.uk

A home for the Conscious Business community in the UK


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.