It’s clear now that the most competitive businesses in the future will be the ones that serve a variety of stakeholders AND generate a profit. Through our other project – www.2le.ad, we’ve been speaking with senior leaders and young professionals about sustainability and the future of business. This has led us to some interesting material and individuals.
We’re most impressed by Carol Sanford’s work which is described in her book The Responsible Business. Rather than carrying the sustainability flag around the world, Carol has been doing the work for more than three decades without talking about it so much, until recently. Here’s a video clip of a presentation she did at MIT a while back:
There are three parts to this video, YouTube should present you with the next parts as you finish each one.
Sanford gives a wonderful explanation of the difference between working from a problem solving perspective versus an evolutionary perspective. The problem solving mind is focused on arresting disorder; stopping the bleeding. The evolutionary perspective focuses on higher order potential – on regeneration, seeing essence and then setting the stage for that essence to be supported.
If this sounds a little abstract, a simpler way to think of it is “working on solving the problem versus working to on the positives”.
The problem solving mind focuses on fixing the parts. That there is a mechanism that is broken and that this can be solved by identifying the faulty part, the missing fluid or the incompetent operator. You’ll probably recognize this as the normal way with which we approach work on a daily basis.
The evolutionary mind is what we should aspire to and it’s a combination of protecting or taking care of one another because we’re all interconnected and regenerating – taking the places and people around us to the next level.
Imagine the impact business could have with a slight adjustment in thinking along these lines.
