Business For Good

Change Agents

In a volatile world, rife with "exogenous shocks", governments have to respond quickly. As large, "command and control" bureaucracies are inevitably sluggish, internal change is vital. This interesting study, The Government's New Breed of Change Agents, published by Sapient, (Download here ), profiles a new breed og government change agents tackling the so called War on Terror.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

According to the IUCN, one in four primates are now at risk of extinction - see article. When's it our turn, I wonder? I am reminded of Pastor Niemoller's poem written in prison in Germany in 1945. (The Nazis shot him and his good friend Dietrich Bonheffer in 1945 just days before the allied troops arrived)

First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out- because I was not a communist.

They they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me - and by then, there was no one left to speak for me.

Change is up to us - that's why, as Gandhi said, "we have to be the change we seek" and why I hope to attend the conference of the same name being held in London in concert with the World Business Academy on May 5-7th. Our blob and the web site - Business For Good - are based on the premise that we can make a difference while making a living.

What the Bleep Do We Know?

Anyone who is still awake enough to be asking such intriguing questions as who are we? why are we here? what is reality? will be delighted to have the opportunity to watch "What the Bleep Do We Know" that will be released in London later this month.

I've been struggling as a non-scientist for many years to understand the impact of recent discoveries in science (quantum physics especially) on the way we understand the world and our role in it. This movie really helps!

It's the most informative, stimulating, entertaining, funny and technically brilliant film I've seen in a while. Without any real marketing, its popularity has spread like wildfire throughout coastal USA (I doubt that it will be popular in the middle of the country), where it was produced and made. There's even a 60 page  study guide - produced by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which will help viewers think more deeply.

What impressed me most was the motive of the producers, who wanted to make a meaningful movie that made a difference to people's lives... in other words, a flilm for good that already grossed over $10 million for its makers.

Once you wrap your head around the notion that our consciousness is creating our reality and that we are more in control than perhaps we thought we are, then your life shouldn't be the same again....

Here's a review:

“To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.” - Stephen W. Hawking

Who would have predicted that a documentary about quantum physics, featuring an ensemble of PHD scientists; made for only $5 million USD, and initially released in just one cinema, would go onto become the US word-of-mouth phenomenon of 2004? Still showing in at least 60 US cinemas after its release last February, this award winning hybrid documentary is still on the top 50 film list. A true sleeper hit, What the Bleep!? has thus far grossed $10.7 million USD at the US box office, and is even poised to take the 3rd ‘highest grossing documentaries of all time’ spot from Supersize Me.

What the Bleep!? has amazed US critics and distributors by winning over a vast and largely untapped audience that defies demographic pigeonholing. Part documentary, part narrative, What the Bleep? blends elaborate visual effects and animation with interviews on themes as diverse as quantum physics, biochemistry, psychology and spirituality. The film asks the audience to consider the most fundamental of questions: What am I doing here? What are thoughts made of? What is reality?

Best Actress Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God, The West Wing) plays depressed wedding photographer, Amanda, who has a modern day Alice in Wonderland experience when a chance encounter throws her mundane daily life into chaos revealing the uncertain quantum world behind her everyday normality.

Releasing here in the UK during the centennial year of Einstein’s discoveries, What the Bleep!? has been considered one of the most thought provoking films of recent years, and promises to offer cinema goers considerably more mental stimulation than the average big screen release.

The Cost of Not Caring

I heard two inspiring women speak at the Inspired Leaders Network the other day. The first, Anita Roddick, talked about the need for companies to care about the communities they worked in and described the frustrations of being a public company at the mercy of the “financial fascists” whose obsession is exclusively on profit. The second speaker, Camilla Batmanghelidhj, founder of The Kids Company was compelling. The Kids Company is a London-based organisation that provides care (housing advice, education, food, social, emotional and practical interventions) for hundreds of deprived children surviving in the inner city. 

Camilla, who has been working with these children for over eight years, described the process whereby children become cold, unfeeling perpetrators of violent crime. A complete lack of emotional support during the tender, vulnerable years of early childhood initially produces a form of emotional numbness that worsens into a coldness and total inability to identify with others. When these children are strong enough to express their rage, their self hatred at their own powerlessness gets acted out on their victims. We (society) then label them at best as dysfunctional or, worse, evil, and, having failed to adequately fund programs of prevention, invest thousands of pounds on incarceration and punishment. Camilla argued passionately for redeploying society’s scarce resources to prevention rather than punishment if we wanted to have a hope of walking the streets of London with any degree of safety.

Don Peppers of One To One marketing fame opened up the meeting by recounting what Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, recently told analysts: there are four things that will keep GE on top (don’t you love the male language here?) : 1. execution; 2. growth; 3. great people and 4.virtue. Yes, virtue, because if you are not “virtuous”, you will not keep your people. The drop in CitiGroup’s market value was attributed to the inability of the company to tell the difference between right and wrong.  We are all aware of the complete lack of disregard for shareholders and employees shown by Enron’s senior executives. “The corporation, according to Joel Bakan, is the monster that can swallow civilisation – greedy, exploitive and unstoppable. We are all its potential victims” wrote a Harvard Business Professor. In his book, The Corporation, Bakan contends that a corporation’s pathological pursuit of profit and power causes it to function much like a psychopath.

An imaginary scenario…..

It’s late at night. A weary financial officer of an anonymous company in the City makes his way to his car having completed a hostile takeover of a family run enterprise that would be broken up to maximise return to shareholders. He was annoyed that he had been forced to spend the last hour defending to a left wing journalist what he knew to be good business.  Years ago, he had taught himself to focus on the numbers and not think of consequences in human terms for that was the path to insanity and hesitancy. Let someone else worry about that – those guys were lucky to have a job to loose. As our corporate hero (Gekko, his name) lays his expensive laptop behind the driver’s seat he senses a presence. He reels around in time to stare into the black, empty but crazed eyes of his hooded assassin. Only the foul language and rough movements betrayed the rage concealed beneath the headgear wound around the young man’s face. Furious at this interruption to his day, the executive makes a fruitless attempt to prevent the flashing blade from coming closer. Youthfulness wins over middle age. The older psychopath pleads for mercy from the other and offers money. The younger psychopath laughs in manic recognition of the power he has –albeit temporarily– over this icon of power and twists the knife to prolong the pain. Both men “victims” of an emotionally vacuous environment where tenderness, empathy and morality were absent.

So who is responsible and what’s to be done? We get the politicians, the journalists, the executives and the street gangs we deserve. Why do we deserve them? Because we have all learned how to turn a blind eye when it suits us; to look for another to blame and to fail to ask the deeper questions: what drives a company to cut costs at any cost; what drives a politician to promise more punishment over prevention; how is it that we live in one of the world’s wealthiest countries yet one in three children in the UK grow up in poverty? How come we have more speed but less time; more prisons but less security, more entertainment but less culture, more schools and universities but less real education; more affluence but less real health and well-being (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual)?

It’s time to start caring – truly, deeply, passionately; to re-introduce caring to capitalism.

If you type “capitalism” into Google, you’ll find 5.7 million entries on the web; add the verb “caring” and the entries are reduced to a mere 160,000. We get the capitalism we deserve.

Isn’t it time to ask for something better? A capitalism that creates well-being for all and not just money for a few?

Ironically, the so-called “new”, knowledge economy is utterly dependent on healthy, balanced, integrated, curious, inventive, confident human beings to create and deliver the value we human “consumers” desire. Yet the current version of capitalism places no value on care giving; on supporting and nourishing the most vulnerable in our communities (the very young as well as the old, where well springs of creative potential and experience reside).

We female members of British society have a responsible and duty to care – we’re privileged (if you keep your food in a fridge and your clothes in a closet, you’re already richer than 75% of the world); we’re intelligent and connected; we’re skilled at caring – that’s what we do naturally when we’re not competing, striving, advocating, earning….

If you’re interested in Caring Capitalism – simply exchanging ideas for bringing compassion and soul back into the workplace, visit www.businessforgood.biz