A better world supported by better business
If you care at all about disability in NZ – or in fact if you care about people, please read Aaron Ure’s post on LinkedIn (and my response)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-cost-community-involvement-aaron-ure/
Will you click the like button – or will you actually do something?
Vision statements have been in and out of vogue for as long as I can remember. I think most people recognize the value they can potentially bring but also know that so many are just empty ‘feel good’ words.
Sometimes though, you come across a vision statement that is simply profound – like this one from B Lab.
B Lab’s vision is that one day all companies will compete to be the best for the world
B Lab have basically changed one word and turned common thinking into a powerful statement.
No longer should we be the best in the world, we should be the best for the world. That’s so clever!
I’m forever being reminded about that simple statement…
Your actions speak louder than your words
We talk a lot about sustainable communities but we all tend to think that we know what it means, without ever describing it.
I believe that sustainably communities are those who have achieved balance across these three factors:
A book about how business can change the world, including:
After many months (many many months), the first rough draft has been finished.
Now for the editing…
Seth Godin isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I think this blog from him is worth sharing:
Short-term profits are a lousy way to build a sustainable community.
There’s always a shortcut, a rule to be bent, a way to make some more money now at the expense of the people around us.
The counterbalance to selfish Ayn-Randian greed is cultural belonging.
“No,” the community says, “we’re not proud of what you did, and you’re not welcome here.”
People like us do things like this.
It’s the community’s role to establish what “things like this” are. If you want to hang out with people like us, that’s the price you have to pay. To avoid the short-term and to invest in us instead.
The community might be wrong. The path of the person making change happen is often lonely, because change is frightening. But too often, the act of taking a shortcut or finding a short-term profit is confused with the actual long-term hard work of making things better.
Fortunately, the community often knows better.
Seth Godin 26/4/19
“As business leaders, we should not choose between profit or good; rather, we must choose to profit from good. And that requires connecting what we do with a purpose beyond profit – a reason to exist that meets our shared sense of ‘doing good’”
Punit Renjen
