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Tag Archives: Social Responsibility

Tragedy, humanity & the power of together.

16 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Belonging, certainty, Climate Change, Cocaine, Collective Action, Decency, faith, Frodo, Grenfell Tower, Hubris, Humanity, Humility, Industrial lager, Instagram, Kardashian, London Bridge, Manchester, Mortgages, Paris, Personal Debt, Politicians, smart phones, Social Responsibility, Together, Tolkien

27-storey-grenfell-tower-engulfed-fire-west-london.jpg

One could wonder sometimes where the nobility and civilisation went – given half an eye on our glorious species (though many question whether it was ever there).

Far from the heroic ideal of small people saving the world – of Tolkien’s Hobbiton and Frodo’s sacrifice – we’re all a little disappointing down the small people end of the telescope.

We’re all lascivious, low and feral and we’re all off to whichever hell is trending currently.

Left to our own devices all we do is sprawl, brawl, rut, piss, shit, heave and fuck like the beasties we are, on the streets, station concourses, on buses, on planes, alleys: in doorways and up against walls, wrapped up in cheap-as-chips slave wear bought in multipacks of 5. Nascent young Motherhood lies collapsed like a sack of charity shop clothing on a pavement, steeped in their own sick. Nascent young fatherhood stamps on heads till they pop on an empty shopping precinct floor, sweating industrial lager and cheap cocaine.

We use £500 state of the art smart phones to film everything from our genitals and instagrammed inanities to humiliations, threats, gang rapes, beatings and murder.

We use state of the art, government-toppling social networks to circulate a ‘shag on a plane’ film to anyone bored enough to care or the next cat film to those who don’t.

We live lives way beyond our means. We inhabit houses and drive cars we can’t afford. We bullshit ourselves into believing that the debt we carry is a right of entitlement – part of the glory of being human, here and alive.

We convince ourselves that communities don’t really need our help, there is no society other than our own; that ‘doing a Kardashian’ is desirable, that knife crime and landfill will miraculously resolve themselves, that climate is an inconvenience, and of course, the real biggie, that we need 5 holidays per annum. Which is why we need 5 credit cards.

Bu But BUT

Look at us when the sky comes down and the thunder rolls. Look at us as we respond to the percussive blows and crises that envelop us.

Look at how we have responded. In Manchester. In London. And now to the Grenfell tower disaster. And not just to our own. Paris. Another coming together. Another standing side by side. Across generations, cultures, tribes, classes, regions, borders.

Suddenly, it is as if we see each other again. Beyond gender, race, religion or persuasion.

See each other and remember – we are just people amongst people like us. We remember who we are, what we are capable of. What our co-existence demands of us all. And rise to it.

And we remember that deserving is not about cars and phones and watches and holidays. It’s about people deserving a sense of belonging, to not be left behind or marginalised: a decent quality of life, affordable and accessible care, social support. And that as people we deserve politicians and the public and private sector to be responsible to us not the spreadsheet or the Poll – responsible for our social well being, not our financial success.

We remember that life is OK. And could be far, far worse.

And that there by whichever god, mantra, metric or quantum equation go us.

We realise that the precious things are the living breathing things connected to us by genes, community, friendship, accident or serendipity. And everything else is just tat and jewellery. And party small talk.

We realise that the most precious things are the living things like us. And that we should wish for them what we wish for ourselves. A safe, secure and supported life, everyone looking out for each other. A sense of belonging the right of every human being.

Suddenly we see that people are looking to each other. Helping others. Keeping an eye out.

Perhaps, for just a moment, we prove yet again that when push comes to shove we can rise up out of the self-obsessed pit we all live in.

For a moment we remember that, in the middle of all of this uncertainty, the only thing we can be certain of is ourselves – our actions, our beliefs and our values. What we give a shit about and what we’ll do and what we’ll put on the line to hold up those values and beliefs. When collective humanity and humility transcend individual identity and hubris.

Perhaps it does take the madness for us to remember what we seemed once far more  certain of – our best selves both individually and collectively – and when to apply them in the world we live in.

Here’s to that.

Profit, Purpose, Evil & the realm of journalistic Uh Duh!

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Adam Lowry, Alinsky, Be Evil, Big Kahuna Burger, Corporation Tax, Cultural, Duh!, Economic, Environmental, Firms of Endearment, Inc magazine, Infectious Feelgood, Kevin O"Leary, Natural Capital, Passion, purpose, Resilience Strategies, Rules For Radicals, Social, Social Responsibility, Tax Evasion

 

scrooge-mcduck-swimming-in-money.jpg

Headline:  Go ahead. Be Evil.

Sub head: Do you need a social mission? Hell, no. Profit is the mission

How weird. If Inc’s leader piece in its March issue is anything to go by one might think that the jury is still out in business-land about whether profit is the only fundamental Purpose or Mission you need.

I’m thinking that perhaps they were just looking for a headline. And for that you need the polarities. A publisher’s master-class in the application of Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals perhaps. Remove the grey. Black or White. or nothing. Set Kevin O’Leary’s profit purpose against Adam Lowry’s social purpose; light blue touch-paper and see what happens. O’Leary’s blue collar good fella folksy says it the way it is ‘honesty’ versus Lowry’s campus cool, organic jaw-lined post-grad Karmic intensity.

Celebrity Purpose Smack-down. Hoo-haa.

Sadly, post reading, it all felt a little disappointing. I was expecting something incendiary. Perhaps I missed the point. To be fair I thought we’d got beyond this a while back.

Purpose is about founding and rooting a business in something beyond the balance sheet and the share price – creating a north star for it that reaches beyond the pure objective of profit. Its not about Profit OR Purpose. Double Duh! Its simply about developing a healthy and respectful relationship between the two.

Purpose is about developing resilience in a business both in social, cultural and environmental terms as well as economic ones.

Purpose is about passion, determination and belief at work in a company for good – the infectious feel-good of making shit happen both individually and collectively – and the nurturing of a centre of gravity that enables a company to absorb turbulence and short term impacts.

Purpose (social or otherwise) can have a simple premise – for example – to want to build a thriving profitable and resilient business able to relentlessly reinvest in stimulating and securing increasing and sustainable growth to create wealth, jobs and ever-improving communities is an admirable purpose.

The lever word in this is resilient. And resilience comes from not overdrawing or pillaging the sources of capital a business needs and demands to be profitable.

A company’s Social, Cultural and Environmental Capital accounts need to be as healthy as the Economic ones.

A balanced book should show the positive impact column of the business in credit even after you’ve accounted for everything in the negatives impacts column . And Purposeful businesses seem to be far better in achieving this balance.

This is nothing to do with setting up a charitable book on the business. If water depletion or obesity are negative externalities of your chosen business then you need to account for and invest in mitigating them – reductions, off sets, replenishment and prevention programmes become critical and central to your profitability accounting processes. To ignore them is to foster vulnerabilities and turbulence in the fabric of the company and in its ability to thrive.

Any ‘shareholder’ who compels or lobbies a company to ignore the business case for Purpose and the behaviours and actions pursuing it demands is in effect trying to short the company. Between lengthening a business’s odds through the relentless and passionate application of Purpose or shortening them by sustaining a myopic obsession with Pure profit, I know which one I find more ‘evil’.

Why Mr. O’Leary thinks that purposeful companies are missing the point of a business – to be profitable – I am not certain.

A quick rummage in Firms Of Endearment’s most recent stats show that companies driven by purpose and passion outperform the S&P 500 by 14 times over 15 years.

To be clear, I think we’re getting there but still have a way to go. I am certainly not advocating that every company featured on Firms of Endearment’s list of big purpose Kahuna Burgers is some scion of the Gods of Good.

A number of multi-nationals who like to be seen a Purpose driven with a clear sense of the power of Stakeholder over Shareholder modelling still seem to find a way of rationalizing very shifty profit accounting to evade stonking levels of Tax. A number of them sit on Firm’s of Endearments list of the great and the good.

How do they reconcile Endearment with almost criminal levels of tax evasion I am unsure.

Perhaps they’re a little tied up with other things at the moment.

Perhaps they just don’t agree with the simple theory that if your business’s performance, competitive advantage and increasing profitability is rooted in the quality and wellbeing of the indigenous workforce you employ, you should invest in the fiscal infrastructure of the society that creates that workforce – keeps them healthy, safe, secure and living in a stable thriving society. It’s called Corporation Tax.

Or perhaps it’s just that they are too busy passionately pursuing the intelligent, enlightened and relentless re-direction of profits for the purpose of executive redistribution.

or perhaps they’re just Evil!

(cue high fives, whoop de dooping and general chest bump, you d’Man-ing.)

 

 

 

 

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