Capitalism may not be so “Capital”

Finally. Someone notable has ventured an opinion on capitalism. And it is not all positive. Now that is leadership!


In an interview you can see on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrsjLA2NGTU), Michael Porter, the Harvard professor who has 18 books on competition and strategy under his belt, talked about capitalism in terms we need to hear. He said, “Increasingly, companies are being perceived as creating profits at the expense of the community…” He is challenging businesses to move to a model in which businesses create “shared value” for both business and society by creating products and services that are good for the consumer, the environment, and for society.


Building on Porter’s thinking, let’s examine the very essence of the existence of business. Commerce was established early in human history as a means of survival. People traded in order to obtain what they needed to live. When individuals left agrarian occupations to work in a “trade”, it was to make a living.


The Total Quality Movement of the 1990s gave us the image of a “three legged stool” to remind us that business exists for three equal reasons: to serve the customer with products or services, to provide livelihood and a quality of life for the employee, and to generate a profit on the investment of the shareholder. TQM went on to advocate that if a company treats its employees properly, empowering them with clear vision, mission, values, priorities, training, and tools, those employees will ensure that clients are delighted and loyal which will generate significant shareholder profit. Conversely, when a disproportionate emphasis is put on any single leg of that stool for too long, the imbalance brings about calamity.


It seems to me that, in the pursuit of profit, many of us have forgotten at least one leg of that stool. The quality of our service or product may have been compromised in order to garner more profit. And millions of dedicated people, parents of families, have been severed from their jobs despite solid performance records … and find themselves without opportunities for a new job for extended periods of time. As a result, we are facing a severe economic downturn.


This is quite a calamity.


Perhaps it is time to focus on all three legs of that stool equally, again. Perhaps, as leaders, we need to ensure that the products and services we offer are healthy, green, and good for society. Perhaps, as leaders, we need to consider the employment of our people to be one of the primary reasons for our existence and resort to workforce reductions only after every other possible measure has been tried and the future of our organization, not just satisfactory profit levels, are at stake.


Questions to ponder: Are there areas of my life where I am compromising on quality unnecessarily? What am I doing to create jobs and opportunity for others? What can I do to bring more balance to all three legs of the piece of the world I occupy?

How do I focus on what is best for me and my family over what is best for us as well as the larger community?

Living Life to the Fullest

Yesterday I attended the memorial service of an inspiring woman, a very close family friend of Rosemarie. In listening to the stories, it was clear that Ann lived her life to the fullest in every aspect. Since our blog focuses on changing how/who we are in our worlds - individually, at the team level, and at the organizational level - I wanted to say a few things about "living" in these environments.

First of all, life takes courage. Courage is required to overcome our fears at a personal and professional level to obtain our unique goals and successes. Courage is required at the team level - whether in the family or the workplace - to stand for what is right and provide valuable input to potentially contentious conversations. Lastly, courage is an absolute must at the organizational level. In business, all employees are stakeholders and need to call on courage to be ethical and right in their everyday work.

Second, life takes reflection. We learn from our successes and correct based on our failures. Without courage, we often don't take chances to learn from our experiences. Reflection enriches our lives and the lives of those around us. We can reflect on not only our lives but on the lives of those we admire.

Lastly, life takes perseverance. If we don't have courage to do the things we deem important and reflect on our results - we may be apt to give up. Imagine if Edison gave up on the light bulb - our lives would clearly not be the same without that. Edison tried to get the light bulb to work around 1,000 times before succeeding. That is perseverance.

If we have courage, reflect on events around us, and persevere through it all - life will be full and meaningful - for ourselves and for all those around us. People will be inspired by our actions as Ann inspired all around her. Thank you Ann - an amazing woman, mother, friend and professional - Rest in peace and enjoy the dancing in heaven!

Questions to Ponder:
Are there areas in my life, workplace, or organization where I am afraid to take a stand and do the right thing? What result would happen if I had the courage? What would I learn from that?
When things fail, do I give up or try again? What "light bulb" opportunities am I trying to ignite in my life that have been put on the back burner?

Forged by Fire

The other day, my daughter and I were talking about a friend of hers who is going through difficult times. She was distraught over the pain and sorrow he was experiencing … it reminded her of her own grief when her father died just as she began her first year of college.

This led to a discussion of how the sorrow of her dad’s death has served her – how it has shaped her into a stronger, more sensitive, and more compassionate person. She is now much more aware of other people’s pain and she has a strong sense of how to handle difficult situations, how to be of comfort to others without being a burden.

My own childhood was a difficult one filled with disappoints and challenges. Those set-backs molded me into a strong person who perceives challenges as opportunities to try new approaches and to test new skills.

In both cases, my daughter and I had a choice: we could become victims to our situations or we could face them, as painful as they were, and learn from them – grow from them. My daughter could have taken a semester off from college and come home to the comfort and assurance of me and our home. But, instead, she bravely continued going to classes and faced the discomfort and unease of her classmates who didn’t know how to handle her and often ignored her because of this. In my case, I could have given up when the first challenge presented itself, rather than persevering and finding ways to overcome it.

Because of the choices we made – to confront pain instead of run from it – both of us have been shaped by our difficulties … as I put it when we talked, we have been forged by fire.

No one would wish difficult situations upon ourselves; but, when they do arise, we have the opportunity to both demonstrate and develop our characters, to shape ourselves into better people.

Questions to ponder: What difficulties are we facing today? How do we “run away” from them? And how can we, instead, confront those difficulties, use our character to deal with them, and allow these “fires” to “forge” us into becoming even better?