Following on from Intention Not Reinvention it's time to talk about how making impact is the default setting for all companies.
Every company makes impact. Positive and negative. The question isn't whether you're making impact, you already are. The question is: What impact are you making, and are you making it on purpose?
Most small business owners don't even consider themselves as social enterprises. Ask one how many employees they have and they'll say 27, 50 or 213. People who have a job/roof/fulfilment/food thanks to them. How is that not a social enterprise? Why don’t they see it this way?
Your company is already doing plenty of good things. You’re also doing things that are not-so-good. The opportunity you have is to do more of the first and less of the second. Every day. A little bit better. Over time, the impact will compound massively.
By the way, doing less bad and doing more good are usually not the same thing. They can usually be worked on at the same time, increasing the overall impact but not necessarily the effort needed.
Sometimes doing less bad means stopping something entirely. If a process or product is just too horrific for people/planet and there is no way to make it better, the most impactful thing might be to just stop making it.
But even this doesn’t have to happen overnight. Nobody expects you to go bankrupt. You can take your time. “Gradually then suddenly” doesn’t only have to apply to things going catastrophically wrong. Find a better alternative, then start to stop the old stuff.
There are users, consumers and customers out there waiting for a better, more sustainable product. Some even have more money available to spend on it. You just need to find them and give them the option to choose better. Even government tenders are starting to look for this.
Nike and Adidas probably won’t be beaten by someone creating a huge ethical sneaker company appearing from nowhere. But ten thousand small companies creating their own loyal fans would put immense pressure on them.
If enough companies can do better, the ones who don't will eventually self-implode. They will become irrelevant. Their super thin margins rely on extreme volumes. If they lose the volume, the business model collapses.
The world is getting better by almost every meaningful measure. Longer lives. More education. More access to resources. And yet most people think it's getting worse. Business can get better too. That gap between reality and public perception is where your story can live.
Meliorism: the belief that the world can be made better by human effort. Look around. *Everything* around you was put there by someone who said "I think we can". Not by someone who said they can't.
You can choose to be that company.
You can just choose to be that person.
Note: This post started as a Twitter/X Thread and is also available on LinkedIn
Every company makes impact. Positive and negative. The question isn't whether you're making impact, you already are. The question is: What impact are you making, and are you making it on purpose?
Most small business owners don't even consider themselves as social enterprises. Ask one how many employees they have and they'll say 27, 50 or 213. People who have a job/roof/fulfilment/food thanks to them. How is that not a social enterprise? Why don’t they see it this way?
Your company is already doing plenty of good things. You’re also doing things that are not-so-good. The opportunity you have is to do more of the first and less of the second. Every day. A little bit better. Over time, the impact will compound massively.
By the way, doing less bad and doing more good are usually not the same thing. They can usually be worked on at the same time, increasing the overall impact but not necessarily the effort needed.
Sometimes doing less bad means stopping something entirely. If a process or product is just too horrific for people/planet and there is no way to make it better, the most impactful thing might be to just stop making it.
But even this doesn’t have to happen overnight. Nobody expects you to go bankrupt. You can take your time. “Gradually then suddenly” doesn’t only have to apply to things going catastrophically wrong. Find a better alternative, then start to stop the old stuff.
There are users, consumers and customers out there waiting for a better, more sustainable product. Some even have more money available to spend on it. You just need to find them and give them the option to choose better. Even government tenders are starting to look for this.
Nike and Adidas probably won’t be beaten by someone creating a huge ethical sneaker company appearing from nowhere. But ten thousand small companies creating their own loyal fans would put immense pressure on them.
If enough companies can do better, the ones who don't will eventually self-implode. They will become irrelevant. Their super thin margins rely on extreme volumes. If they lose the volume, the business model collapses.
The world is getting better by almost every meaningful measure. Longer lives. More education. More access to resources. And yet most people think it's getting worse. Business can get better too. That gap between reality and public perception is where your story can live.
Meliorism: the belief that the world can be made better by human effort. Look around. *Everything* around you was put there by someone who said "I think we can". Not by someone who said they can't.
You can choose to be that company.
You can just choose to be that person.
Note: This post started as a Twitter/X Thread and is also available on LinkedIn