Why you should care: Hard-nosed business teaches us that we can insulate ourselves from others. Hard-nosed science disagrees.
In my recent letter, I wrote: Now is the time to care because we are not so much isolating as taking care of each other. It is the biggest act of solidarity we have known: for the vulnerable and the venerable, the clinicians and the carers, the shelf stackers and the delivery drivers.
Take care of yourself, those you love and those who love you. But also become aware of the people you never meet but whose lives are shaped by the actions you take. Care about them too! We are being taught the uncompromising lesson that we are all connected.
If we understand this interconnection, the next chapter will be kinder to everyone.
You will increasingly hear the mantra that “everything is connected”. And rightly so. It is a fundamental tenet of systems thinking — a relatively new discipline that has emerged since the mid-20th century. It also provides an explanation of why caring for others — even those you don’t know — is critically important. Despite its increasing popularity, few understand the true implications of this mantra or why systems thinking leads you to it.
Healthy systems ensure, amongst other things, that resources are circulated to all parts of the system. In your body, for example, every single one of your 37 trillion cells has its own individual blood supply (blood carries many of the resources cells need). Where a cell is cut off from this supply, necrosis (the unexpected and unmanaged death of cells) occurs and can spread to healthy cells through gangrene. Your body goes to great lengths to ensure that it circulates resources everywhere, all the time; and if it doesn’t, cells die and can kill infect healthy cells around them as well.
I’m sure we can all think of parts of systems that we live in that do not benefit from a healthy flow of resources; towns or regions that lack investment, workers that are not paid a living wage, local authorities starved by funding cuts. What many people don’t realise is that these “social necroses” spread far beyond the immediately affected areas. Excessive inequality, for example, corrodes everyone’s wellbeing, not just the wellbeing of the poor.
This inter-dependence between all parts of a system is exposed in times of stress. The global financial crisis, for example, showed up the link between US house repossessions and the ensuing increase in UK income inequality via the global banking system. Our current pandemic crisis links ITU bed numbers to the survival of thousands of organisations and millions of jobs via isolation measures — not a link we would spotted a short time ago!
The good news is that the systems we are part of do not conform to the rules of a zero-sum game (as traditional economics and management practices would have us believe). This is the flip side of inter-dependence: not only can we drag each other down; we can also help each other up! In healthy systems, relationships are more likely to be positive for both sides and so the value of participating in the system is positive for all involved. (Business) relationships are in fact not based primarily on competition but rather on mutuality; in healthy systems, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
It turns out that concepts such as solidarity, mutuality and cooperation — often derided as naïve — are grounded in cutting-edge systems thinking. Luckily, thousands of organisations courageously live by such values already:
One of our On Purpose Fellows, Ruth Harding, is the Director of Operations of a different kind of chocolate brand: Divine Chocolate’s majority shareholder is Kuapa Kokoo Farmers’ Union, a cooperate of 100,000 farmers in Ghana. By turning the normally relatively powerless producers into owners, Divine Chocolate ensures that they participate in the success of the whole value chain. It sees the inter-connection between all parts of the value chain and recognises the need to circulate resources through the whole system. It no doubt also strengthens the quality and resilience of supply of Divine’s most critical raw ingredient.
Another international social enterprise, Emmaus, is an On Purpose placement host in Paris. Emmaus was sparked by a meeting between Abbé Pierre, a catholic priest and French MP, and Georges, who had just attempted suicide after becoming homeless following his release from prison. Abbé Pierre asked Georges for help, building houses for homeless mothers. In doing so he provided, in Georges’ words, not just the means with which to live but also something to live for. Emmaus went on to found 400 communities in 44 countries that house and employ homeless people. Care for their fellow human being drove Abbé Pierre and still drives Emmaus. The “Uprising of Kindness” in 1954, sparked by the freezing to death of the baby of a homeless couple on the streets of Paris is still a pivotal event in the social enterprise’s history. Abbé Pierre’s open letter to the press and impassioned radio appeal launched a flood of support for the homeless from the French public.
Divine Chocolate and Emmaus have seen the circles that connect all the parts of their systems, they are helping to circulate resources to everyone, they have realised that the wellbeing of all of us depends on the wellbeing of the least of us. And they act according to these realities.
Everything is connected. Hard-nosed business used to teach us that we can insulate our success from the failure of others. Hard-nosed science disagrees. Rather than being a weakness that we can afford to indulge from time to time, caring for others is a necessary part of growing a healthy and resilient economy that will survive the future crises we have not yet even imagined.
This is the first of four follow up blogs to my letter: A Moment of Purpose. Stay tuned for the next article in the series!
