Illustration by Phil Couzens
There is a widely held view that corporate responsibility, environmentally friendly products and socially ethical business practices are expensive, time-consuming and detract from the fundamental role of businesses in society, i.e., to make money for their shareholders.
Well, allow me to borrow a phrase from Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface Inc., from his book “Confessions of a Radical Industrialist”: “As you read this [article], you will see that the choices—the trade-offs—we are told we must make between financial success and environmental success, between doing well and doing good, are just plain false.”
When most business people think of success, honestly speaking, they are thinking of financial gain. This is one of modern society’s deepest failings because there are much better ways to be “successful” than accumulating piles of paper and metal called money. (Although in this day and age, wealth is more likely to be a few intangible bytes on a secure server than anything physical.)
Creating something lasting, whether it be a physical object like a sculpture, or something intangible like a business, building a home, connecting with people, making a difference—these are all things that will still hold true meaning long after you have stopped caring about how many extra digits are showing in your savings account.
The thousands of small businesses across Japan that scrape by on tiny sums of money that barely support the owners is testimony to this different definition of success. Before you scoff and dismiss them as simpletons who simply don’t have the Ivy League business school training to run a “real” business, think about this: For many of these people, while they wouldn’t hate being rich, their primary goal in life is to run a business that produces a product they can be proud of or provides a service that is useful to their community. If they can achieve that goal with a 100 percent “success” rate, are they not “successful”?
Of course, this kind of thinking does not sit well with many people. For starters, they believe that, essentially, money can solve all problems. But people who define “success” as financial wealth over and above what others around them possess also often subscribe to a fatally flawed view of evolution. They believe that evolution proscribes that the biggest, fastest and strongest inevitably “win,” and the smallest, weakest and slowest “lose.”
They think of the “winners” as lions, eagles and sharks. Extrapolating from this viewpoint, these “win-olutionists” come to believe that “successful” companies must continually grow bigger, better, faster and leaner by cutting costs, slashing staff, viciously competing and cutting down their competitors at every opportunity, and those that do not will be wiped out. However, they have forgotten a critical lesson of evolution.
By the evolutionary standards of longevity, diversity, volume and numbers, by far the most “successful” organisms on Earth are the humble bacteria. However, these are not the only evolutionary über-success stories to be found on Earth. Many other nominally “insignificant” organisms are highly successful by evolutionary standards. In fact, if you removed all other material from the planet, you would still be able to see the outlines of geographical features defined by biomass from each of them.
All of these organisms have certain things in common. They don’t require many resources or much space and they evolve quickly because of their short reproduction times. This helps them to become very diverse, so they can occupy many niches. And, like the bacteria in your body, most successful species have fostered symbiotic relationships with other species in the community where they perform key functions in nutrient cycles.
What’s the point, you ask?
“Symbiosis is all well and good for bacteria, but we are running a business in a cut-throat world.” And that is exactly the point. Corporate responsibility is epitomized by sustainability. The ultimate in corporate irresponsibility is to manage a company unsustainably, i.e., drive it into the ground. A successful business is one that continues to be successful, not just in the short-term but over the long-term. And, it is an undisputable fact that 3.5 billion years of evolution cannot be wrong when it comes to long-term sustainability.
So, however you define “success,” take a look at nature’s finest examples and learn from their practice of creating symbiotic relationships, evolving to meet changing conditions and adapting to perform core functions in their communities. Apply those lessons to your own organization and not only will you be more successful, you may just get rich while you’re at it.
Luke Poliszcuk is the CEO of eQualC Sustainability Communications.
