Posts tagged ‘spiritual business’

After decades where we increasingly bought in to the idea that “what’s good for Wall Street is good for America,” the financial crisis is causing many people to question the nature of business. Is greed and corruption merely “business as usual?” Or can business be a force for good?

In the bubble, a lot of people got rich gambling with other people’s money. And when those bets turned sour, the losses were paid for, not by the people who made the bets, but by taxpayers and by millions who lost their jobs. When combined with the cases where big businesses have contributed to ecological devastation, Enron-style fraud, and childhood obesity, there’s a lot of anger about the way business is being done.

But here’s the thing. Capitalism is far and away the most powerful system ever developed for creating wealth and raising our standard of living. Over the last 190 years, the real per person income level in the US has increased from $1,200 to $31,000. Our level of wealth has increased so much that we now drive to our protests.

Capitalism creates wealth – enormous wealth – and this wealth pays for our homes, education, health care, social services, and the many non-profits we donate to.

The problem isn’t that business is bad. In its own way, business is already a tremendous force for good.

The problem is that most of this good is being done unconsciously. It’s being done almost by accident, rather than as part of a consciously defined purpose. Relentless, ruthless competition creates profits – lots of profits – but these profits come with a price.

As its most commonly practiced, traditional business has three core problems.

It’s short on purpose.

It’s long on fear.

And it’s unsustainable.

Purpose. A colleague of mine does a lot of work with boards of directors. These men (and yes, they’re almost all older, white men) have lots of grey hair. They’ve risen to the top of their competitive ladders. And yet their biggest question is usually, “is this all there is?” They’ve often sacrificed everything to their careers, only to find a sense of emptiness and a lack of fulfillment.

The reason for this is that traditionally, we’ve compartmentalized money and meaning. For-profits are supposed to make money. Non-profits are supposed to make a difference. And that has left many people in business feeling successful put unfulfilled.

Fear. At its core, traditional business is fueled by scarcity and stress – two polite names for fear. Why do people get corrupt and greedy? Because they’re afraid there’s not enough to go around. In daily life, we don’t get greedy for air. We don’t try to hoard it, or store it away, because we trust that there’s enough for everyone. But capitalism is based on relentless, ruthless competition over scarce goods and services – and that creates fear. Feeling stressed about work isn’t something special. It’s an automatic consequence of being part of this system.

Sustainability. Capitalism’s greatest strength is its unparalleled capacity for economic expansion. And capitalism’s greatest challenge is its addiction to that expansion. Our entire financial system is predicated on the assumption that GDP will always keep increasing. Stock markets, debt and retirement funds all depend on this. So does our monetary supply. But continuous exponential expansion is unsustainable, and we’re rapidly reaching its limits.

Capitalism is a system with tremendous strengths – and with equally tremendous challenges.

So the real question is not “can business be a force for good?” The real question is “how can business be more of a force for good?” How can it provide more purpose, less fear, and more sustainability? And how can it do this more consciously, rather than as something we try to just fit in the cracks?

Now, that’s a question worth investing in.

Last week, we explored the core strength and challenge of capitalism. We looked at the coming collision between the “unstoppable force” of exponential economic expansion, and the “immovable object” of sustainability demanded by the planet’s finite resources.

And we asked a question.

What will Capitalism 2.0 look like?

(If you missed it, last week’s nugget is available at http://ecoaching.corecoaching.org/?p=48)

This question fascinates me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Here are a few of mine.

I’m guessing Capitalism 2.0 will embrace the following.

Money and Meaning. Gen Y regularly gets accused of being lazy. But my sense is that the deeper issue is an unwillingness to devote their lives just to making money for the sake of money. They want their jobs to have both money and meaning – a key feature of Capitalism 2.0. When we only focus on survival and success, desire will sooner or later turn in to addiction. Sustainable capitalism requires explicitly supporting people, companies and marketplaces in making the shift from focusing just on their physical needs (i.e. money, desire, success and survival) to also embracing their spiritual needs (i.e. meaning, growth and giving).

An Increased Shift to Services. Value creates money – not the other way around. And there are two ways we can expand the economy – by producing/consuming more products or by producing/consuming more services. Buying more couches isn’t sustainable. Investing in personal growth services is. If you’re building a practice offering life-enhancing services, but you’re afraid to charge a lot for them, ask yourself the question, “what else would my clients spend the money on?” If you don’t charge as much as you can for your services, and your client buys couches with that money instead, look at how much your choice just cost the planet!

Long Term Focus. Greed happens when desire turns into addiction. By definition, addiction means making what’s important today a higher priority than what’s important tomorrow. It means over-prioritizing our immediate desires. And a key component of capitalism’s current addiction has been Wall Street’s obsessive focus on quarterly earnings and annual bonuses. Capitalism works much better when decisions and compensation are based on 5, 10 or even 20 year windows.

Valuing Consciousness. A related question is “what is conscious capitalism?” And a simple way I’ve found of answering it is by rating an organization on two dimensions.
1) What is the purpose of the organization? Non-profits traditionally embrace meaning at the expense of money. For-profits traditionally embrace money at the expense of meaning. CSR and social enterprises are initial examples of organizations seeking to embrace both.
2) How conscious are the people in the organization? This is a complicated but vital question, because what we do is often less important than how we are as we do it. However we measure it, consciousness rates the beingness we have as we do business.
Conscious businesses can be at least as profitable as unconscious ones. And they’re much more sustainable.

Evolving Notions of Ownership. As we currently view it, companies are owned by their shareholders, and their primary purpose is to increase the wealth of those shareholders. This notion goes to the heart of what has made capitalism such a powerful force for economic expansion. And it goes to the heart of what is turning this strength into an unsustainable addiction. It’s what has allowed Wall Street to hold Main Street hostage with insatiable demands for increased quarterly earnings. In contrast, I would guess that Capitalism 2.0 will involve an evolved notion of ownership. Think for a second. Who owns the US government? Who owns the Catholic Church? Who owns the planet?

Reinvention of Production. There’s nothing wrong with consumption of products – as long as we can find ways of making this process sustainable. How can we rebuild our system so that the true global costs of each product are factored in, and each company is responsible not just for the cost of production, but also for the cost of renewing the source and waste of that production?

Interesting…

Love and light,
Brian

P.S. To learn more about how to bring together money and meaning in your business, please feel free to visit www.sixfigurepractice.net/introcds.html.

With all that’s going on with the economy, I’ve been thinking a lot about money and capitalism. What is money – really? Where does it come from? And what are capitalism’s strengths and challenges?

Here are a few interesting thoughts I’ve found…

The greatest strength of capitalism is its unparalleled capacity for economic expansion.

If you want to see something fascinating, look at this graph.

It shows capitalism’s remarkable ability to increase our standard of living. For example, for almost 200 years, the amount of real income each person in the US makes has increased by an average of 1.7% – year upon year upon year. Or look at China. Income was flat until Mao took over, then it plummeted and recovered. But in 1976 they embraced their own version of capitalism, and since then per person income has been increasing by 6.3% per year.

Over time, the power of compounded growth is AMAZING. In the US, it’s the difference (in 1990 $) between $1,200 / person in 1820 and $32,000 / person in 2006. In China, it’s the difference between $130 / person in 1960 and $7,100 / person in 2008.

It’s why in the US, people now DRIVE to their protests.

At the same time, every great strength comes with an equal challenge.

And the current crisis is exposing capitalism’s root challenge…

The greatest challenge of capitalism is its addiction to economic expansion.

Many people have been asking about the Wall Street blowup, “how could they have been so greedy?” And, “how could they have been so dumb?”

But what is greed? It’s not our desire for more money. It’s an addiction to our desire for more money. It’s desire that’s gotten out of control. And what always comes with addiction? Denial and self-deception. Greed is stupid – literally – because it’s an addiction that causes us to lie to ourselves. Above all else, this crisis was created by an almost ubiquitous level of denial. It was created by the most expensive words in finance, “this time it’s different.”

This addiction isn’t just a problem with the people on Wall Street. Or the people who took out a mortgage they couldn’t afford. Or the people who got up to their eyeballs in credit card debt.

It’s the core challenge of the system itself.

Our entire financial system is based on the root assumption that the economy will continue expanding – that there will be more money tomorrow than there is today. How are we funding our retirements? Through the assumption that money we invest in the stock market will grow, because there will be more money tomorrow than today. How do banks make money? By selling interest bearing loans. And what allows us to take out a loan? Our assumption that we’ll have more money tomorrow than we do today. Why is our government able to create trillions of dollars in new debt?

Because of the assumption that there will be more money tomorrow than there is today.

Notice how much fear there is of the “R word.” Why is a recession so scary? I mean, it’s just the difference of a few percentage points, right? No. It’s the difference between satisfying our addiction to economic expansion, and going in to expansion-addiction-withdrawal.

It’s the difference between the system working and the system failing.

But here’s the thing. Exponential expansion isn’t sustainable over the long term. It can’t be. Our planet has limited resources. Resources that are beginning to be maxed out.

And so this century may be defined in large part by the collision of an unstoppable force – capitalism – with an immovable object – the need for sustainability.

Most of the suggestions I’ve seen for how to work with this dilemma have involved regression to earlier times and ways of being. But I believe this crisis is another example of our race being called to evolve to the next level of consciousness. It’s an opportunity to step forward, not fall back. It’s an opportunity to redefine the way we do business. And it’s an opportunity to redefine the way we do life.

Which leaves me with a question.

What will Capitalism 2.0 look like?

Love and light,
Brian

P.S. Stay tuned for next week, when I’ll be sharing some initial thoughts on this question…

P.P.S. Can you think of anyone in your life who would receive value from these nuggets? If so, feel free to visit http://www.sixfigurepractice.net/give-a-gift.php to give them as a free gift to someone you love.