| Business in Society - Part One |
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| Christopher Nevill | |||
| Wednesday, 11 October 2006 | |||
Business can, quite reasonably, be regarded as the greatest of all the activities that have ever occupied the human race. Even greater than that other remarkable activity that we seem to indulge more or less continually – War. Volumes have been written about Business. Mostly these have been concerned with how to make business more efficient and therefore more profitable. Let us begin by having a look at where Business is in our society. It is part of our mythology that you must not take your personal life to the office or your office life in to the home! The office is some strange sort of place where it is not only expected but also demanded that you behave quite differently to how you would normally. You are even required to dress differently! We adopt quite extraordinary uniforms. Who in their right mind wears a tie? As it is constituted Business does not form part of our normal lives despite the fact that it occupies the greater part of our time. There are different rituals and customs. We have created the myth that the sole purpose of Business is to make profits for shareholders who lurk as shadowy beings in the back ground somewhere. Must this be done? Of course - and there is more! How many of you out there even know what your partner REALLY does from the time they leave in the morning and the time that they get home in the evening? Ask the average child what Daddy or Mummy really does in those hours away from home and see what answer you get. By and large business operates in a closed world of its own, quite apart from society as a whole. The whole manager class which has our finest education and is talented and who are the ‘movers and shakers’, the people who make things happen, are simply not available to making Society a better and more profitable place. Locked up (sic) in the world of business is a huge reservoir of talent. Arguably most, if not all, of our greatest talents are held in thrall by Business in the pursuit of Profit and Growth. Business in the pursuit of Profit and Growth. It is a harsh but real fact that Business makes little or no contribution to society to as a whole except by way of taxation. True some organisations make a contribution to sport, conservation, education or some other project. These contributions must not be idly dismissed. There can be little doubt however that when Business decides where to spend whatever sum of money it decides to make available for sport or whatever, it does not ask what will contribute real value and meaning to society. The criteria applied are what will yield the highest advertising mileage or product sales and to what extent tax liability can be reduced. The real underlying motivation remains the twin gods of profit and growth. Business has become so introverted into its own world that people are beginning to ask why do I have to go to work? At a simplistic level - which is the best day of the week, Monday or Friday. We have created a “weekend” culture. We work towards annual holidays and retirement. The days in between, the days we go to work, are for the great bulk of the population both a burden and an irritation that get in the way of “real life”. It is an extraordinary situation. Business appears to contribute little to the individual beyond the pay cheque. Business demands that the individual give unstintingly of itself and get little in return except the pay cheque. Now the pay cheque IS important so let us not minimise that in any way at all. However it seems a tautology to say that that is not nearly enough. If it were enough then surely people would not see themselves as they presently do and society would not be beset with the range of ills that currently plague it? Viktor Frankl, the famed Auschwitz survivor, says in his book “Man’s search for meaning” that without meaning, existence becomes a pointless and futile exercise. He says that the reason for Mans existence is the search for meaning. Ask yourself does your workplace contribute to the search for meaning in your life? Sadly, I have an idea that too few of us can answer that question in the affirmative. In its own interests Business needs to get busy with changing the situation. Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong with either profit or growth. Human Beings operate with precisely the same drives. We also want to grow and we also want to do the best we can. We know however that certainly at the personal level if we do that without regard for those around us or without putting something back in to our world we will neither grow nor achieve very much at all. It is time for Business to also examine carefully how it goes about achieving its own goals of profit and growth. Just like us Business will not achieve real growth or real profits until it too starts to show regard for those both its people and its environment. A recent survey conducted by a FMCG organisation showed that 90% of people brought no more than 10% of their talents, for which they were employed in the first place, to the office, within six weeks of them taking up their position! This is a terrifying statistic. The big question that must be answered is why is it like this. Is it perhaps that, at bottom line, people do not really want to work because as Victor Frankl speculates, they do not see business as contributing much meaning to their lives. It would seem to be long overdue for Business IN ITS OWN INTERESTS to take a long hard look at what it is doing to bring real meaning to the lives of the people it employs. The picture right now is a gloomy one. The very planet that is our home is under threat from Business. The list is endless. The ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, our forests, our oceans, our natural resources, is all being systematically ravaged. The fabric of society itself is fraying at the edges. Our children are in trouble, the education system is failing, violence is becoming the norm. The rich get richer and the poor are getting steadily poorer. So what has this got to do with business? Not much I suppose. It is after all nothing the can be reflected on the balance sheet! It is not unreasonable for business to shrug it shoulders and say “Not our problem. This is the realm of government and society. We are accountable only to the shareholders”. Quite reasonable. Also remarkably stupid and shortsighted! Business does not and can no longer afford to pretend that it can exist outside society. If society is not well then how on earth can Business expect to do good business? Business has to do something about making the work environment sufficiently meaningful for its people come to work and bring all the talents that they were employed for to bear on the job. Business must start to release back into society a percentage of the talents that it is currently holding to itself. Can you imagine the profits that Business might make if its people WERE bringing all the talents they were employed for to bear? It is up to Business to create the atmosphere where those talents can be brought. People will not do this without there being a purpose in their working lives - beyond the cheque. Can you imagine the profits that might be generated by doing business with people who see real meaning in what they do and live in a healthy flourishing society? All this sounds wonderful and it might appear that all I am doing is demanding that the only one that has to do something here is Business. I say this to you. While acknowledging that Business should perhaps do more - it has by far the greater proportion of available talents and resources - this does not let the individual off the hook. We all have serious questions to ask ourselves. What are you doing to increase Awareness in the workplace so that it can become a fun place and not simply a place you go to 5 days a week? What are you doing about expanding your horizons and putting something back into the society in which you live? What are you doing about your own Growth and Profitability? This process will require considerable effort and willingness to change from all of us. GET BUSY! Next time we will look as some practical things that both Business and the Individual can get busy with.
Disclaimer: Harmonious Living is written for and read by a community of individuals with strong and independent opinions. While the publishers of Harmonious Living are dedicated to providing a forum in which views can be openly expressed, those views do not necessarily reflect those of the publishers.
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