Do you want to deliver even more effective results against the climate emergency? Or any of the 17 sustainable development goals? Are you working towards a circular, regenerative or blue economy? Are you about to found, or are you already in a startup? Are you in an existing business, whether small, medium or multinational? Make this one change to unlock high impact results otherwise inaccessible to you.
“We the Peoples” begins the UN Charter. It recognises that only through the power of all of the peoples, and hence all of the people of the world, can we be protected. …
I awoke this morning to this headline from the Guardian: “‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s support staff face uncertain future as company collapses”
Update for Covid-19 times: many companies have begun laying of staff without any discussion with the staff, nor with the customers and suppliers; and without them having any say in the matter. This is dumb for the businesses and investors, because the staff are best positioned to identify what can be done to keep the business healthy for the benefit of all stakeholders.
How do you feel reading that WeWork headline? Do you think that that could…
In some aspects of your life you have freedom, but in other aspects you are subject to constraints.
You’re subject to four layers of constraint, if you’re part of our modern economy. Little is fully in your circles of control or influence; most is outside your circle of influence.
- Your personal maps of meaning. You are subject to those of your inner maps that you are not fully aware of. The maps that you use to to understand yourself, others, and the world you live in. The maps that tell you what another’s actions mean, and define your response. For…
Everything you say or do comes out of your meaning-making stories. All of your behaviours. These meaning-making stories are how you answer the questions “What does this mean, and therefore who should I do what for?”
If people’s behaviour; your own, your colleagues, or a nation’s collective behaviour; is not delivering helpful outcomes, it’s the meaning-making stories that need to be changed. New rules, new regulations, or new values framed and hung on the wall are only going to increase the problems.
The stories writing your behaviour have two sides to them: your aspirations, and your vulnerabilities. Buried deep in…
Have you invested money for your retirement? Are you lucky enough to have a defined benefit pension plan? Or any kind of pension plan?
Have you chosen investments that are working to destroy your retirement?
If you are to have any chance of a comfortable retirement, you need to choose investments that both:
- retain, even better increase, in real purchasing power;
- retain, even better increase, your world’s power to support your life.
How much of your money is invested in industries that cannot reliably deliver on both of those between now and the final end of your retirement? …
Do you want to be part of the solution to the climate crisis, and 17 sustainable development goals? Are you working in a startup, or about to start up? Chances are you will make the same choice almost everyone else has made, and unwittingly be trapped in a spider’s web you see too late. Becoming part of the problem.
Even if your purpose is to combat the climate crisis, plastic waste, or modern-day slavery.
How you choose to incorporate sets the stage.
Most startups today still choose a standard incorporation, such as a Delaware C-corp in the USA, the private…
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Marmalade coloured cats, never hippos win my animal beauty pageant. But that hippo’s mum thinks baby hippo is the most beautiful being ever. Nature disagrees with both of us; nature sees cats and hippos as integral parts of life on the planet. They are independent of any concepts of beauty and ugly.
Success and failure are also in the eye of the beholder. There are those who see me as a failure, because twelve years ago I stepped away from a high-paying career ladder with Procter and Gamble to focus on using…
Most of my life I’ve tried to change myself. For example, to fix my problems with depression. Eliminate the times when I was depressed.
I’ve realised it’s so much better to focus on transformation, rather than change.
The difference: change, or fixing problems, is limited to becoming what I can see and understand now. Transformation is about what I cannot see or understand yet. No caterpillar is able to think butterfly. The caterpillar might want to change into a stronger caterpillar, unable to begin to conceive of the butterfly it could transform into.
Transformation comes from surrendering to the unknown…
Four steps for business to work for all: from wealth generation through human fulfilment to the climate crisis and all SDG — Lessons from ending apartheid
Summary:
The choices companies make are less determined by the organisation design and their leader’s individual values, and more by the way the company is incorporated.
To address today’s global injustices, such as climate change and the SDG, we must incorporate in inclusive ways that deliver equitably on the needs of all stakeholders, including investors, staff, customers and the broader community. In a FairShares Commons company staff, suppliers, customers, any relevant stakeholder group, even…
Graham Boyd
Addressing climate change & SDG by reinventing businesses, incubating startups to use incorporated commons + self-governing + P2P developmental interaction.
