businesses search for significance

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“Even the sorts of things that haven’t changed are different. All sorts of tonalities – emotional, moral, personal – have somehow altered.”

Clifford Geertz

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“Think about it this way: We’re all sensitive to social hierarchies and to a desire for approval and esteem. So, we often fold to the social pressures of our environment. That’s not necessarily evil. I come into my job as a professor and I want to do well, I want the respect of my peers. There’s nothing wrong about that. But our desire to do well socially can have an ugly side. If you can earn respect by helping people, that’s great. If you can earn respect by physically dominating people with aggression and violence, that’s destructive. So, a lot depends on our social environment and whether it incentivizes good or bad behavior.”

Paul Bloom

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This is about the future of business (not the future of work). Significance. Significance may seem like an odd word to choose with regard to business. Significance is akin to meaning in its wider sense. The word mingles meaning and importance referring to the underlying ideas or implications that give to words, deeds, symbols, actions, or events of a special relevance. Significance may also be used in the specific sense suggesting a need to determine which of several possibilities is most relevant. (Hayakawa: Choose the Right Word).

I would also note that ‘significant’ also has multiple dimensions: consequential, grave, important, momentous, serious, and vital (Hayakawa).  So, I purposefully chose significance to stress that this is something meaningful, something that shouldn’t be overlooked, and actually has considerable impact on succeeding events and actions. The truth is that business is not simply about the business of capitalism or markets or even free trade, in other words, business is not an exclusively economic and its impact is not exclusively economic. Business’s relationship with the world, and society, is a bit deeper and more complex wherein its behaviors and attitudes impact culture and the way we think about things. The reality is that businesses have as much, if not more, power than most governments to not only to create value, but also to channel value signals, principled behavior signals and ‘what is fairness’ signals into society. And therein lies the discussion about significance.

Which leads me to say in the present many, far too many, business people will suggest the purpose of business is to generate a profit and they are beholden to stakeholders. Their significance is framed in that fashion. Don’t be fooled that there is a lot of talk about “purpose,” ESG and a responsibility beyond simple profit, because push comes to shove, they will shove back on the greater responsibilities and argue that the small responsibility (profit) is actually the biggest. Okay. To be fair. They have a number of numbers they will argue is representative of their significance: share price, size of company, monthly reports, #’s of customers and, well, choose your biggest number. Sadly, the public, and society, goes along with this and celebrates the big numbers as things of significance. To those people I say “Otto Neurath.” Yeah. He’s the first person who rejected the belief that any single metric could guide all decisions. And while it’s easy to focus on profit, we should be equally appalled by the pursuit of any other single universal metric applied in today’s business world.

The business world seems to be caught in a tug of war between Drummond and Keynes. Henry Drummond suggested “the pursuit of wealth is to the mass of mankind the great source of moral improvement” and John Maynard Keynes suggested “we should not overestimate the importance of economics, or sacrifice to its supposed necessities other matters of greater and more permanent significance.” Whether business wants to explore this tug of war or not is irrelevant because the tides of time are demanding business reflect upon its significance – to society, to its employees, to the future.

Which leads me to dismantling the present.

I purposefully use dismantle which will chafe on the business people who have had productive and profitable businesses. But in order to build a new future of business, the present needs to explore some first principle thinking, i.e., what are some of the fundamental aspects of the mindset that has created the business world as it exists today and why it thinks its significance is driven by significant numbers.

Look.

• Better business needs a structural change. Period.
• Better business needs a vision, not transactional changes. Period.
• Better business needs an attitudinal adjustment (toward organizational structure, toward how people skills can be maximized, toward how productivity is viewed, toward what businesses role in community/society is, toward what is significance). Period.

Now. Yeah. But. How could we begin to dismantle greed and zero-sum competitiveness? Well. Not to oversimplify, but this seems attainable by simply being much less greedy and less competitive. What I mean is that in pursuit of true significance business resists the temptation of letting profits today become the needs of tomorrow. Maybe perhaps by scrutinizing what are significant needs, versus just wants, and scrutinizing what progress really looks like; not just by some simplified ‘growth mentality.’ Maybe, just, perhaps If business does not find any of that appealing, or have the strength to do any of this, perhaps business could just stop applauding the type of economic progress we seem to idolize today. To that point it was EF Schumacher who said “it is the sin of greed that has delivered us over into the power of the machine.” If greed, or an unhealthy pursuit of ‘more,’ were not the master of business, it seems like the ruthless pursuit of profits and unhealthy ‘more’ would possibly subside. Or maybe business reflects a bit and sees significance is buried somewhere in the idea that economic success is not solely economic advantage and growth & progress does not demand ruthlessness. This attitude shift, maybe a mindset shift, is important because as long as there is a clear belief in the significance (desired impact) of an organization, leadership always finds a sensible way to pursue it; that’s what leadership does. But if the belief is only in efficiency and profit then I would argue the business loses its ability to function any other way – kind of ‘anti-agile’ as well as antifragile. If business identifies some “number” as to what should be significant, process replaces vision and moral value is demoted to technical tools of efficiency and speed. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this results in a hollowness in society and an increasing functionality of process. This last point can actually get worse. This ‘hollowness’ replaces true significance-seeking and meaning and, in William Stringfellow’s terms, builds a business where process and the pursuit of what it has deemed significant is actually “moral vindication” for behavior (and attitudes I imagine). That is bad, but it gets a bit worse. The worker, and by extension the family dependent upon that worker’s compensation, actually surrenders their lives to the company and its pursuit of their objectives. To be clear. This doesn’t mean that workers are engaged or even dedicated to the particular company, just that their morals, attitudes and behaviors become subservient to the business targets. And, yes, I am suggesting people can be manipulated that way. If a business frames what it deems as significant well, and it is tied to a specific number (which feeds into how the larger company is viewed as significant in the market place) it becomes a warped version of purpose, meaning and impact. well. it becomes a hollow version; all beget by the business. I know that all sounds horrible but claims of business for morally unique status are for the most just words and some posturing. I feel relatively confident saying that because those words and postures are fairly consistently contradicted by empirically observed injustices and behavior. So, I circle back to the beginning of this section – business dismantle the present. The business world promises a warped version of ‘salvation’ (kind of a bastardized version of the Gospel) through a bastardized version of ‘significance’ in that they presume to announce a form of salvation to people, and consequently the world, even though they don’t always word it that way.

Which leads me to business’s trickery with significance.

Today’s philanthropic efforts from the extremely wealthy simply seem to be a consequence of a hope that the business pursuit of goodness and virtue, and meaningful significance, can be postponed until we have attained massive prosperity. This gets supported by the fact the business world constantly suggesting that the single-minded pursuit of wealth/growth, without bothering over moral questions and ethics, is the only realistic path to rewarding society with the most prosperity. As if morality, ethics and what is environmentally good actually encumbers that pursuit. They may not overtly say so, but there is a suggestion that incorporating the good stuff and still being able to optimize “their significant numbers” is irrational and unrealistic. But don’t worry, business softens this up a bit.  They suggest its temporary and the exclusion of morality and ethics from economic growth is something society and the world can get away with “for a little while” as long as economic growth is successful enough to reward enough people. This is a Faustian bargain. But worse? Few have truly reaped the benefits, the many have been exploited, the world has been extracted, and, well, the hollowness has shown a bit of a spotlight on the moral and ethical problems.

Which leads me to business’s second trickery.

“Gradually, of course, this mechanistic ethic of extreme individualism has been transmuted so that initiative now covers and allegedly justifies not only authentic ingenuity, audacity and hard work, but inheritance, luck and, on occasion, a little bit of larceny.”

When business refuses to participate in societal issues, societal health, and public values, it is actually being consistent with the existing standard business operating attitude. And this stance is consistent maybe not for the reason you think. While a portion is, of course, as noted earlier a belief it could hinder profit maximization, I believe a larger reason is that business prospers when it sets the rules within which it plays. I say that because there are no rules in being involved with society because the relations are both too complicated and too complex. In addition, there is an underlying fear that their value creation is susceptible to being challenged by a small percentage of the population. So, what business does is to triple down on analytics and “reason” as a force for good. In other words, they treat reason as an administrative tool for ‘good’ and, as a consequence, business become a reason-based, but morally-directionless machine, run by process-minded, scientific management (measure-based) mindset management; bereft of greater good. Yes. I am suggesting business hides behind a “mechanistic ethic” where, at its core, it is just a structured methodology of mathematical measurement. It’s a warped vision of even the warped Taylorism that got us to where we are today. It is almost like much of business is being led by a societally-illiterate group of people. I purposefully use illiterate to suggest they are just incapable of understanding the relationship between their power and societal values/morality AND societal progress. If I were particularly harsh, I would suggest they are willing to sacrifice the unmeasurable for hollowed out, but profitable, progress in business. All of this leads me to say we should stop being surprised by the ineptness of existing leadership with regard to true ‘business significance’ in that they don’t really know where they are going, other than measured short term goals, and they cannot even really envision how process/practice-driven knowledge is actually hampering the actions necessary to create and sustain a substantive healthy society. That last sentence is my warning that the search for significance actually begins by recognizing what significance is. And I worry about that.

Speaking of worries. As business encourages everyone to think that “ethical AI” (or any version of conducting business ethically through technology) is the path to progress, well, technology provides no moral guidance, nor values, by which to resolve human conflicts and the tragedies of that conflict. I say that because business will not find significance through any technology or AI, but, they could let technology and AI diminish their significance; the choice is theirs.

Technology has come to signify progress and, yet, it is clear technology can be harmful to, and for, social configurations. Langdon Winner said ‘we do not use technologies as much as we live them.’ If business is to search for true significance it will have to navigate this conflict. Business needs to not only understand, but accept, that technological progress is independent of social constraints, ethics, morality and what is good for humans – unless it is purposefully designed to be beneficial to humans. Theey need to accept business significance will not be found in technology, but humans. I will expound on this point a bit later but let me say this is important because business authority only remains in power of the existing system if, collectively, the people bestow it decision making and direction. It is a relational connection. If, collectively, people decide that relationship is unhealthy, or that the objective of significance is not desirable, or the decisions of authority are unhealthy, they can negotiate or design a new relationship/relational connection. In other words, business’s search for significance is inextricably tied to the collective needs, wants and good of people, i.e., society.

Which leads me to the search for significance.

Business should always be conscious in the effort to balance the interests of all stakeholders including investors, employees, customers and partners/suppliers. Losing the interest of any of these segments will diminish the overall value creation or, at minimum, limit its potential. To support this point, it was German businessman Heinrich Henzler who suggested that business should be seen as serving all the people not just shareholders or even employees. Henzler called it a social balancing act arguing that business should always accept that homelessness, illiteracy, and other social ills are not just only morally unacceptable, but also economically harmful. Drucker said something similar when he spoke of in and of society and it is not possible to have a healthy business in a sick society. Stewart Brand offered the idea “in the long run saving yourself requires saving the world.”  The truth is business can bear a considerable social involvemnet AND achieve its business financial objectives because of its long-term benefits to the business and economy itself, i.e., save the world and you are saved.

• Yes. There is certainly a price for embedding social cohesion into your business acumen and being a part of the social configuration, but paying this price on a continuous basis means continuity is built into the system and the business itself. That continuity, let’s call it the replication aspect of a business, permits it to not only absorb emergent issues but also the agility to explore possibilities.
• Yes. I am suggesting that a business can exist for the good of society and the world (or at least the parts it actively engages with) without sacrificing good for itself. I suggest this knowing that in doing so it also propagates the idea that business will simultaneously do good for a long period of time AND this enables thrivability to the business itself.
• Yes. I am suggesting business is not simply a self-propagating institution, but rather part of a social construct – the fabric of givers & takers as well as makers & users.
• Yes. This suggests a business can control its own fate not by focusing solely on its own self-interest, but rather by becoming invested in the collective interest.
• Yes. I am suggesting that a company will be ‘allowed’ to survive as long as it is doing something useful at a cost that people can afford and that generates enough money/profits for its continued growth and development.
• Yes. I am suggesting (I believe Charles Handy in Age of Paradox gave me this thought) that ‘employees, customers, suppliers, investors, even the community, would prefer that a business continue — as long as it is good.’

All of this to suggest business success does not always mean growth and being bigger. Sometimes the purpose should be to grow better and not bigger. If a business gets better at its value creation which is seamlessly interwoven into the creation of a society that its participants value, and if people contribute, feel like they are contributing and the business, itself, contributes to the greater world, the highest level of value (contribution) has been achieved.  I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that value creation, as offered and as received, is the key to all the ‘significant’ numbers business adores.

Lastly, I would argue in doing so the business itself will also attain its highest level of effective productivity, solid efficient productivity, and consistent profitability. I am not sure what else a business could desire. I am also not sure how that isn’t better business for a better world. I am also sure that is achieving significance.

In the end this feels like just a beginning. I read BlackRock’s shareholder letters and feel like I am reading a man discussing and searching for the significance of business. I watch the ‘anti-woke business’ shitshow and feel like I am watching hastily built dams against a rising tide of businesses exploring what their significance should be. That said. I will end with a thought I tucked in early in this piece where I suggested that business, more than any government, most likely has more power to affect values, principled behavior, and fairness in society. What business decides to do with that power is not only significant, but will ultimately define its significance. Ponder.