The Post Crisis Consumer

Business Will Change the World, chapter 4: If you won't buy it...

Business is the most powerful force shaping our lives, so this chapter asks: How do we guide business to do more good and less harm?

I believe that this question is one of the great callings of our moment in history. If we can aim the unprecedented power of global business in the direction of progress, and I believe we can, then we might not only avert a number of potential crises, we will also make enormous improvements in the lives of billions of people.

So, how do we do it? First the general principle, then the strategy:

If we don't buy it, they won't make it. And if we do buy it, everyone will try to make it. Business is that simple.

When you purchase a product you fund the entire supply chain that got that product to you, from mining, drilling and logging, through design and manufacturing, to transport, wholesale and retail. You give the CEO his allowance.

And so that very same CEO and his counterparts in companies all over the world spend billions of dollars trying to figure out what you and your friends want, hoping to make the types of things you will buy. So if we come together and send a clear message that we will only buy products that uphold our values, companies will fall over themselves to make them! And the clearest message you can send to a company starts with a dollar sign.

Telling a company that we don't like their labor practices but continuing to buy their shoes sends a clear message: "We want your shoes regardless; don't worry about it." And likewise, telling a company that we love their commitment to the environment while not buying their dish soap does nothing to pay salaries and keep the lights on; it tells them that we don't care. Money is the language that business listens for in the market, and it's the language that we must use in order to be effective in guiding business.

So the lesson is simple. Continually shift your purchases towards the more ethically and environmentally sound companies and products, reinforcing their good practices and drawing their competitors into that space.

Of course, if only you and I do this it won't make a difference. We need masses. This is where the principle must be breathed into a powerful strategy for success. I believe that any effective strategy here is going to have three components: stories, leaders, and tools.

Stories: If you're reading this you likely understand the importance of guiding business to do better, but many people don't. They don't feel a connection with or responsibility for the history of the products they buy - the people and environments that are affected both positively and negatively. We need great storytellers to capture and relate the fascinating, emotional, human stories behind our products, in all their immeasurable buoyancy and desperate tragedy. Films must be made, books written, songs sung, until millions realize the huge opportunity and responsibility that we have to improve our world.

Leaders: This is going to be a big, controversial, chaotic movement, and I believe it will grow exponentially over the next 5 years. We need passionate, self-assured, single-minded leaders to stand up and guide this growing community towards effective action. The great principle of their leadership will be partnership with business, finding and supporting the great businesses and encouraging the others to catch up. This focus on progress will give hope and energy to the movement, and financial incentive for businesses to listen.

Tools: Right now it costs people a lot of time and effort to find businesses and products that uphold their values. But it doesn't have to. The technology exists to make this as easy as pulling out your cellphone and scanning a barcode. I've been working on a project called WikiChoice to do just that, and there are different projects around the globe with similar aims. We need the best minds, the most talented programmers, the most visionary technologists to devote their focus to these tools. The right tool is going to change the world. Can you build it?

Right now, and while you sleep tonight, and tomorrow and every day and night thereafter, businesses all over the world are going to be building the future of this planet. You have power in that process. We all do. And now is the moment in history when our influence on business is most critical. Business is changing the world more boldly than ever before, and it needs our values to guide it towards progress. If we rise to that challenge we will turn the most powerful force in the world to the work of our common values: fairness, compassion, and respect for the earth. Let's do it together.

[I'm working on one of the starting points for this movement. Check back soon for more info.]

There Are Only Magicians

Harry Houdini. I could almost stop there. The man remains the greatest legend of illusion our society has known. It's said that there was never a jail that could hold him. His ability to transcend locks, baffle restraints and trick death was, simply, magical.

Magic is what you call it when someone does the impossible. Of course he can't find your card, or conjure a dove from the air, or escape from an upside-down water-filled cage. It's impossible. But then he does it, and it's magical.

Time and again Houdini defied the expectations, the near certainties of the crowd that this time he had risked too much, this time it really was impossible, this time he might die trying. But each time Houdini made possible what everyone thought was impossible.

His magic? Training. Houdini was a physical specimen. At a young age he was both a trapeze artist and a champion cross country runner. As his magic career flourished he began training his coordination until he was almost equally dexterous with both hands. While conversing with friends he would often do sleight of hand tricks almost subconsciously and without looking, or tie and untie knots with his feet. He would submerge himself in his bathtub for minutes at a time and he learned to dislocate his shoulders to aid in escape acts.

Houdini never tapped into a magical ether. He had no sixth sense, no connection to a parallel universe. Houdini simply worked harder and smarter than anyone around him. He did not have magic. He made magic.

The same is true for the kind of magic that I find most fascinating - the ability that some people have to create a product or business or piece of art or organization or movement -- from nothing. Looking in from the outside it looks like conjuring, some powerful spell that gives mass and voice to an idea. But from the inside it is mostly training and preparation. It is complete commitment to the hard work of creation, coupled with a reckless disregard for what is and isn't possible.

In the end there is no magic. There are only magicians.

Business Will Change the World, chapter 3: The Crescendo

So this is where we find ourselves.  Business is the most powerful force shaping our world, and likely the most powerful force influencing our individual lives.  And even more sobering, there are good arguments to be made that our business decisions - where we work, what we buy, and how we use it - impact the world more than any other part of our lives.

Now for the crescendo.  We are the beating hearts of the business juggernaut, and our purchases are its lifeblood.  A political analogy is apt here.  Every time we buy something, we vote for that product and the company that makes it, funding their role in changing our world.  These commercial votes are the crucial deciding factor in determining which companies get to shape our world and how they get to do it.  We hold the controls to the whole system!

But there's an enormous problem: We don't apply the same values to our purchases that we do to other parts of our lives.  In most things, including our politics, fairness, compassion, and respect for the natural world are paramount, even if we interpret them differently.  But not in our purchases.  Instead we ask only that a product does what we need it to do, and that it is cheaper than the one next to it.

We have divorced our values from the most powerful force in the world.

And so business has learned how to make amazing amounts of good, cheap products.  And we have funded them.  But at what cost?  Stories of exploitative labor and environmental havoc have filtered back across the globe, coming from the same places as the products on your local store's shelves.  And we all sit anxiously as our planet's temperature rises, wondering what the world will look like in a decade.  Cheap comes at a price.

This is not to say that business is bad.  Far from it!  Business has lifted people out of ruinous poverty by the billions.  Business has given us new ways connect with one another and to enjoy the beautiful planet we find ourselves on. 

Business is not bad, and is not good.  Business will do exactly what we tell it to do, so long as we speak with our wallets.

Business will change the world.  It will do so faster and more drastically than ever.  And we hold the controls.  If we begin to base our business decisions on our values business will transform to accommodate us, and will take the shape of the values that we hold in common - fairness, compassion, and respect for the earth.

So now the question is, how do we that?