Check the other excellent resources at the Let Go and Lead website.

It is always hard to define a starting point for massive change, but, as will be explained, I will go with 1962. Here’s John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods explaining the basics of conscious capitalism.

Self-serving capitalism

Self-serving capitalism is based on greed. Altruistic motives are also there, but they are subjugated by the profit motive. Some underlying assumptions, revealed in business discourse, frame its mode of operation:

• “business is business” – tells us that business operates by its own rules. It somehow decouples from universal moral values and creates its own world-view and playing arena. Another telling discursive phrase is “its nothing personal, its just business”.
• “the bottom line” is code for, among other things, profit is the dominant consideration.

U.S. company Enron has come to personify the worst of self-serving capitalism. If you are unfamiliar with the Enron story here is a link to the documentary trailer.

Before determining the origins of conscious capitalism consider that the father of capitalism, Adam Smith, wrote two books about economic philosophy, The Wealth of Nations, but also A Theory of Moral Sentiments. The latter argued that sympathy, a proper regard for others, is the basis of a civilised society. Conscious capitalism was still-born as business focused more on the “invisible hand” of the marketplace.

The dawn of conscious capitalism

Dr Paul Ray has identified an emerging sub-culture – the cultural creative. He defines them in this video.

In the U.S. cultural creative are fast becoming a dominant segment of society. In his extensive research quantifying this demographic, Dr Paul Ray noted that they are to found in many other countries, but they often under-estimate the size of the demographic, as they are mostly invisible in the media.

The growth of the cultural creative demographic in the U.S. [1]

Dr Ray identifies 1962 as the dawn of the demographic. Rachel Carson published Silent Spring and Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique – the former signaling the start of environmentalism and the latter reframing women’s role in society.

In Megatrends 2010, Patricia Aburdene identifies cultural creative a the demographic that drives conscious capitalism.

The engagement connection

A significant milestone along the road towards conscious capitalism was Edward Freeman’s articulation of stakeholder theory in Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach.

From self-interested capitalism to conscious capitalism

 The concept of the stakeholder displaced the singular focus on returning profits to a businesses financiers, to the more balanced and sustainable stakeholder approach.

This video, from the Regeneration Roadmap website, features an impressive array of sustainability champions, including David Suzuki, Gro Harlem Brundtland and Rajendra Pachauri advocating for change.

Mobilizing the Response | The Regeneration Roadmap.

Note that Erin recognises a high level of trust as the enabler for businesses to use social media effectively.

Social media and crisis communication

Ethical Corporation’s July 2012 report researches how companies respond to consumers and activists in a crisis. While the full report, with a price tag of £695 targets corporate customers, the Ethical Corporation provides some great information along with this excellent infographic.

Mobilizing the Response from The Regeneration Roadmap on Vimeo.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, a past Norwegian Prime Minister and Director General of the World Health Organisation. She is currently a Special Envoy on Climate Change for the United Nations. She places engagement at the heart of change.

Personal engagement, personal commitment and building confidence with other people and other nations is the only way to move forward.

The video reinforces the need to generate positive discourse around sustainability, articulate a vision of a sustainable planet and create a culture to embed sustainability as a way of life.

For more videos by these gifted thinkers go to the Regeneration Roadmap website.

Improvements in staff engagement in the Police can partially be attributed to technology innovations. The New Zealand Police have introduced technology that enables police to report incidents remotely. That information is then processed by administrative staff enabling the police to focus on their front-line work.

This is an example of how job design can improve engagement. Based on Hackman and Oldham’s job enrichment model we can ask questions such as:

• How can we create more skill variety?
• How strongly do our people identify with their work?
• What makes work meaningful for our most engaged?
• Do our people have the autonomy they need to do a good job?
• Do they get appropriate feedback about their performance?

Job enrichment model (Hackman & Oldham

Working at the boundaries

Stephen Covey wasn’t just a business writer. His books crossed over into the realm of personal development. He bridged these two spaces in a manner rivalled by few. One of his other stand out books Principled Centered Leadership offered guidance relevant to both worlds.

A member of the Latter Day Saints church, Stephen Covey was a deeply religious man. For me, his integration of business and religious thinking has been inspirational. No one has done it better with that level of success. His model of intelligence exemplifies this integration. In the 7 Habits, well before emotional intelligence was popularised, he identified four dimensions of the self, the intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual.

Later, in The 8^th Habit, Stephen Covey applied this model to the business world. He advocates a “whole person in a whole job” where each of the four dimensions of the self are expressed:

• use me creatively (mind)
• pay me fairly (body)
• treat me kindly (heart)
• in serving human needs in principled ways (spirit).

The big picture

With his skills of integration Stephen Covey masterfully sketches out the big picture. His “five economic eras”, from The 8^th Habit encapsulates human economy from the hunter/gatherer age, beyond the current information age, to his envisioned “age of wisdom”. He draws on Peter Drucker’s thinking on the massive leaps in productivity from age to age.

The great value in this concept is in understanding the limitations of legacy industrial age management processes when they are applied to information age contexts.    

“Its no longer a world of controlling people, it’s a world of unleashing people”.

 

The engagement connection

Stephen Covey’s clear articulation of the requisite leadership capabilities of the knowledge age focus heavily on communication. He offers lots of great communication tools and concepts such as the “emotional bank account”, but his greatest contribution in the communication realm is “voice”. When I first encountered The 8^th Habit, I was a little cynical, thinking “how many other habits will be generated for future books?” But my cynicism evaporated with his masterful articulation of voice – the 8^th habit is “find your voice and inspire others to find theirs”. This is an emancipating concept beautifully aligned with the needs of the age. For me, enabling voice, is central to the engagement process. Ideally, the loudest, or most powerful, or best resourced voice is not the only one heard.

Because he painted conceptually with such a broad brush, Stephen Covey’s work will remain relevant and will inspire for years to come. The concepts he articulates work at the level of principle and character and are therefore of universal application. May he continue to inspire!

Only an individual who feels genuinely invigorated by the growth, development, and success of others can become an effective leader of an enterprise.

When reading this article you will find a strong correlation between effective leadership and engagement.

Narcissism: The Difference Between High Achievers and Leaders – Justin Menkes – Harvard Business Review.

His post celebrated the life of the late Václav Havel, the Czech playright, who spoke out against the communist regime. His determination to speak out against the suppression of human rights by the communist government saw him imprisoned on multiple occasions. On the collapse of the communist regime, the new Federal Assembly unanimously voted him President of Czechoslovakia.

What is the connection with engagement? Among Václav Havel’s writings is the essay The Power of the Powerless where he decries those societies who force their citizens to “live within a lie”. He was a strong advocate for people having a voice. Moral leadership is about seeking the best interests of the community rather than pursuing a personal agenda. Being imprisoned for speaking out for others is strong evidence of moral leadership.

Corporations have the potential to be as oppressive as a corrupt state if they choose to pursue only their self-interest – and there is plenty of evidence of this (for example, the Enron story). Fortunately, there is a change of consciousness happening as corporates are wising up to the reality of a hot, flat and crowded world and the folly of a myopic short-term focus on profit. Whatever the motive, be it a crucible-forged awakening, altruism or enlightened self-interest, forward thinking corporates are manifesting moral leadership.

Sustainability is inextricably linked to concern for a broad range of stakeholders. To identify and honour stakeholder aspirations requires engagement and a willingness to hear their diverse voices. According to Jeffrey Sachs:

Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery. [2]

So thank you Václav Havel and thank you Jeffry Sachs for being two more voices pointing to a better way to work and live together on planet earth.

There is mounting evidence that this type of change doesn’t work very well and may actually deplete rather than add value. For some organisations, the frequency of this type of change results in a series of self-inflicted, debilitating injuries.

A recent Bain & Company study of 57 major reorganizations found that fewer than one third produced any meaningful improvement in performance. Some actually destroyed value.

Mandated change, bold strokes and long marches

Twenty years ago, in her book The Challenge of Organizational Change, Rosabeth Moss Kanter and her co-authors identified two types of change, bold strokes and long marches. Bold strokes are big strategic moves, such as buying another company, generating a large capital investment, or developing a new product. Bold strokes are usually mandated by the actions of “one or a few people”.

(Tom Peters’ take on mergers)

Long marches are more operational initiatives such as merging departments, transforming quality or customer relationships. According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “they require the support of many people and cannot be mandated in practice”

Of course we will continue to need a degree of mandated change, and other stakeholders such as government will mandate external change. We just need to hope that the skill and ability to design and manage change will improve.

Too frequent use of restructuring will come to be seen as the  corporate equivalent of the old medical practice of blood-letting and a sure symptom of dysfunction.

According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, long march change will have more dependable long term results and is more likely to change culture and habits. She then elaborates on the enduring foundation of sustainable organisational change – decision making.

Every large and complex organisation has many thousands of people who have each day the opportunity, or are literally required, to take action on something. We think of these as “choice points.” For an organisation to succeed in any long-run sense, these millions of choices must be more or less appropriate and constructive day in and day out. But this is an immensely difficult problem, because it requires the ultimate in decentralisation – literally to the individual level – along with centralisation in the sense that those individual choices must be coordinated and coherent.[1]

This same theme is echoed two decades later by Marcia Blenko in the Harvard Business Review:

In reality, a company’s structure results in better performance only if it improves the organisation’s ability to make and execute decisions better and faster than its competitors.[2]

Her she is elaborating on the centrality of decision effectiveness in sustaining effective change.

The engagement connection

Marcia Blenko’s establishes a link between decision effectiveness and employee engagement. Rosabeth Moss Kanter emphasised the importance of “choice points” throughout the organisation. And while the focus is on big business, even small businesses manifest thousands of choice points if we consider all employees and stakeholders.

Embedding a stakeholder ethos (including employee engagement) throughout the organisation will build resilience and adaptive capacity. Over time, it is more likely that those highly engaged staff will be making decisions and choices aligned with the best interests of the company. And over time there will be less need for mandated change.