Part two. Ethics as a commercial strategy
How to achieve commercial growth through ethics in this way?
The first thing is to agree on this course of action and fully commit to it. The second thing is to agree what ‘Ethical’ is. This is vital to create a consolidated understanding of purpose. Therefore we establish the definition of Ethical as ‘Life Enhancing.’ Two words, applicable to every department and every situation. It now becomes easy to apply an ethical perspective to any situation with simple questioning.
‘How is this life enhancing?
How can we make this more life enhancing?’
Involve everyone in the organisation. Everyone. Equally. Give everyone the role of looking at their department activities, processes, systems, and culture, with the core determining question at the forefront of their thinking. How can this be made more life enhancing? For me, and for others.
Involve everyone. This engages the entire company in asking the same question. It might be the part time cleaner struggles with low quality mops and chemicals. Give them the best, and suddenly the whole office is better for everyone. Nothing is too small to make a transformative impact. It might be the extra 15 minutes for lunch gives people time for a walk in the park and noticeably increases afternoon productivity. Make all the changes, and the results will prove the system. It will enhance the organisation and the working lives of everyone in it.
The process of doing this within a company will immediately bring everyone onto the same exciting page, creating a cohesive intention.
A true team. The actionable result will be the identification of dozens of changes, perhaps hundreds, some small, some large, that will have a life enhancing impact. Make these changes. The fact of them all being made from the same perspective will have the further advantage of causing the alignment of systems and activities and removing frictions, including those between departments and individuals. A cohesive organisation is formed. The aim and purpose of the organisation is now clear. Life enhancement. And once that has been fully understood and established, all other considerations will be subject to it. It’s the prioritisation of ethics, of life enhancement, over everything. The aim is to create an enterprise for whom long term success is a result of its life enhancing impact.
The ethical intent, delivered fully and correctly will create a new kind of inspirational business, one that will commercially outcompete others for clients, for talent, for value, for every meaningful metric.
Once the ethical core is expanded into external activities of the business, the sales, the market, the suppliers, the advertising and promotions, the customers, it will facilitate and drive organic business growth. The organisation will find itself to be operating within a sphere of influence of its own creation and be an embodiment of life enhancement and outstanding in its field.
The success of the company will be a direct result of the expanded ethics embedded within it, commercial success not compromised by the life enhancing core, but driven outwards and upwards by it.
The ethical core is the engine. And the fuel that drives it is a common, and higher, purpose. Life Enhancement. The first companies to do this will thrive. The ones who follow will have to be more imaginative, more compelling and creative in how life enhancing they can be.
And the overlapping Ethical Cores of a multitude of organisations will create a transformed society.
One where the game is to make things, everything, as life enhancing as possible. The ones who do it best at scale make millions, billions. And with that you can enhance life at an even greater scale. Life Enhancement through expansion of Ethical Cores. Scale that, the World is totally transformed.
For better and for Good.