What’s wrong with the world?

If we ask the big question, What’s wrong with the World? We may come up with answers like – Greed, Power, Corruption or, looking at it from the other end of the spectrum, Poverty, Ignorance, Crime. The World is a difficult place. Wherever we are we have a duty to try to make the World better, but where do we start faced with these huge problems and vested self interests?

For me I start with what I know something about. What’s wrong with management? If management could be improved what effect would that have? Actually, since most people spend some 30-50% of their lives working and managing and being managed, presumably then a big difference.

 Three is a magic number, so it would be wrong not to pose one more question: What is the purpose of a business? Here we all know the answer, don’t we? Think about it whilst I digress. Because whenever things are tough, and times when everything goes wrong, one key principle to remember is to return to first principles. Why do we do this? So many of our activities are the results of habits whose original purpose and usefulness has long been superseded.

 What is the purpose of a business? If your answer is to make a profit, or to make money, which is the answer of 99% of people, then I am sorry to inform you, but you are mistaken. Turning a profit is a by-product, an indirect and necessary consequence if you will, of the real purpose of a business. The purpose of a business is to acquire and retain customers; if we do that successfully we make a profit. If on the other hand we only aim to make a profit we guarantee our business is short-lived.

The essence of acquiring and retaining a customer is of course that old fashioned word, Service. Arthur Andersen began this way. Its motto was Think Straight, Talk Straight, and when it strayed from these principles it foundered. Aiming to add value to someone’s life, as opposed to making money from them, is the essence of longevity in business, as well as in personal relationships: we all like the friend who is true and supportive, and eventually shun the one who is self-centred and manipulative.

 With this in mind, therefore, we can begin to change the World. I reckon that sixty years ago, 95% of management was command and control, and 5% was enlightened and engaging. Now that statistic is probably more like 80% command and control, and 20% engagement. Lots has happened in the interim, from the emancipation of women, to leadership research, and even in 2007 the Macleod Report on Employee engagement. A movement, in short, that demands a more bottom-up approach to management.

 But we still haven’t reached the Tipping Point – the point at which the change becomes embedded and irreversible. We need more people to buy into the idea that helping others is the ultimate source of value and that when we do it, paradoxically and counter-intuitively, we help ourselves. Let’s, then, have as a business objective: to change the world and make it better!