Doing good business

Author and professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Good Business, lists three callings that motivate businesses to operate as good businesses. The first is simply to do one’s best. It can be a desire to build the best housing and resort community outside of Mega Manila, the determination to manufacture the best shampoo or canned sardines in the country, or the drive to provide impeccable hotel service to both foreign and local guests.

Doing one’s best is doing the right thing. It is the spark that leads to creative excellence, the urge to go beyond the limits of the possible (which reminds me of Adidas’ line, "Impossible is nothing"), and the competitive edge of a company’s offerings in a market populated by people of differing attitudes and beliefs.

The second type of calling is anchored on helping people. This time the focus is on aiding our internal (employees) and external (customers, suppliers, communities) publics to lead a richer, more progressive existence, which in essence is not necessarily contrary to wanting to do one’s best. Both often come in tandem, although the priority lies on one or the other.

Relationship-building and relationship-nurturing are critical elements in our desire to help others. We must ensure that our actions are based on honesty and must prove beneficial to our constituents. The goal of being of service to our fellowmen is an inexhaustible source of inspiration. It yields an endlessly satisfying objective, whether we are doing it for the love of God, or because of a fundamental belief that all human beings deserve to be treated right.

The third calling is to build a better world. It is developing and implementing a corporate sense of responsibility, reaching out our hands to those who are in darkness, to pull them into the light. It is dedicating our psychic, physical, social and financial energy to the least of our brethren, which when done exceptionally well can even become a strategic tool, and perhaps allow us to acquire our organizational soul.

When each of these three types of calling — passion for excellence, concern for people, and taking responsibility for our community and country — is put into collective motion, business is transformed from being merely a tool to make money into a creative, humane experiment for improving people’s lives.

A good reputation, born out of a good corporate soul, creates wealth. When competently developed and consistently managed, it can generate hidden assets that give our companies a distinct advantage — our products and stock offerings bring in more customers and investors, our job openings attract more quality applicants and our operations generate more productivity from our employees, loyalty from our customers and clout with suppliers is expanded, and there are fewer crisis risks. And when a crisis does occur, we survive with less financial loss.

But to a public that has raised the bar and its expectations of a company’s responsibility to society, being good just isn’t good enough. More than public relations posturing or kowtowing to political correctness, social responsibility in business is proving itself essential to long-term success. Our businesses must now contend with a public that is increasingly aware of their obligations to society and expects a level of fairness, accountability and transparency that a lot of companies cannot meet. Good business must go beyond merely being good. We must have integrity — which covers the concept of honesty, uprightness, being ethical, and quality integration with society — and a corresponding strategy aligned with it.

But why do good businesses go bad? Looking at our environment, it is partially because the world is getting more complicated, and that none of us can control every feature of our milieu, and as a result, accidents (natural and man-made) happen. Good businesses turn bad because we fail to create a culture that tolerates dissent or one in which planning processes are encouraged to take non-financial risks seriously. Add to that the way we — wittingly or unwittingly — discourage our employees from thinking about their work as total human beings, and putting their moral, social, and business intelligence to good use. Most of the time, we also let our commitment to a particular program or product overwhelm all other considerations — financial, ethical, or social. There ought to be a balance of all the elements we work with to guarantee success.

Good business springs from an environment of trust and respect. Organizational men and women, working toward a common goal, are held together by a combination of motives: self-interest and common interest. As Csikszentmihaly writes, "The former can be bought by external incentives (pay, promotion, prestige). The latter can be earned through a demonstration of respect for the value of team members. Employees will not place themselves at the service of a business organization unless they feel that the rules of the company are fairly applied, that their contribution is recognized and that their integrity is respected."

The core principles of good business are learned early — in our family, church, school, or community. To truly absorb these principles, we must be exposed to people who live and breathe them, for they are most effectively passed on through example and interaction. And as we wear these principles with passion, compassion and dignity, we allow our roads to be less bumpy and our time more competently spent. Indeed, the way we do business defines what our lives are like.

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E-mail bongo@vasia.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.