Unlock Weekly Insights for Lasting Impact - Subscribe to Karl's Newsletter.

It Is Your Choice. You Can Choose.

Hello friends

There’s a lot to say today, so let’s get to it…

/ STRATEGY

The seeds were planted as I read London Business School Professor Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini’s Humanocracy.

They note that 34% of US employees work in companies with more than 5,000 employees. Indeed, “today the number of people working in businesses with more than ten thousand employees exceeds the number who work in businesses with fifty or fewer employees”.

Even more staggeringly, “at present, the average CEO compensation in America’s 350 largest companies is $17.2 million a year, or 278 times the pay of a typical frontline worker”.

In effect it is a world of growing inequality in which we have increasingly fewer options for employment.

Add this to the are the results ADP Research Institute’s nineteen-country 2018 study of engagement at work. This showed that only 15.9% of us are arriving fully engaged at work. The rest of us, 84.1%, ‘come to work’.

In other words, for most of us where we spend the majority of our lives is a bit meh.

For anyone whose had the experience of navigating arcane bureaucracy, complying to yet another request for information to be provided in yet another format, or being compelled to take decisions that seem fundamentally, well, unfair this number would come as no surprise. I was a little surprised. I didn’t expect it to be that high, but I am generally an optimistic bunny.

Those seeds flowered when last Saturday, I opened my door to receive my fish delivery (line caught yellowfin tuna, in case you’re wondering).

There stood Julie Carter.

Julie is the amazing founder of Ocean Jewels, a purveyor of sustainably caught fish and supporter of small-scale fishermen. I order from them regularly, but ordinarily it is one of Julie’s wonderful employees.

As I unpacked the week’s order, I reflected on how what could be a dispassionate transaction – buying the food for Sunday’s lunch – had turned into a source of such joy. The joy of knowing my spend was supporting a range of producers, the joy that Julie’s business had grown from a market stand to a small business intimately connected to its customers, the joy of knowing that a world of vibrancy was possible.

My fridge packing musings took me back to Rotman School of Management Professor, Roger Martin’s When More is Not Better, in which he argues that one way we can all impact on the world we live in is by choosing to ‘spread our spend’.

When two pre-eminent professors at leading business schools on either side of the Atlantic are posing questions, you must know that we probably need to start shifting how we run our economies.

Let’s bring it out of abstract numbers into lived reality…

Danny Caine owns Kansas bookstore The Raven, and his thinking is highlighted in this New Yorker article.

The New Yorker explains that Caine’s argument is “that cheap goods have higher costs than we realize, and that paying more is a better investment than we think.”

Sarah Young, who has worked there for 18 years, described my feeling when I opened the door and saw Julie, “It’s like there’s this big, giant secret everybody’s in on, the people who shop at the Raven. They feel special, not in a self-aggrandizing way but in a way that means we’re all connected to each other.”

It’s exactly right. I felt special and connected. You can too. You can choose.

Caine reflects that he doesn’t see The Raven as a bookstore, but as a “community engine”. This is also true for many other types of businesses – like Julie’s.

Changing the world described by Hamel, Zanini and Martin may seem beyond reach. To be sure a lot of what needs to be done rests in the space of public policy, global co-ordination around taxation and yet each of us has power.

We have power in our individual purchasing decisions.

Use some of that spend to support the local businesses that add vibrancy to your community. Take it one step further and support those who in turn support other local suppliers. Your purchase then is literally knitting together a different kind of society.

Many of us sit in places of power.

We make purchasing decisions of millions. Being mindful of how those decisions contribute directly to the kind of world we won’t, or don’t want, and acting accordingly can be powerful. You may not win the argument each time but express your view. Injecting diverse views into the decision-making process creates possibility.

In a simple example, we all are affected by corruption. Corruption is best countered by transparency that ensures it is revealed and effective enforcement and prosecution. How much of your organisation’s marketing spend goes to local media that build transparency and accountability? How much goes to other businesses?

A decision in one domain has consequences in another.

We have the power to determine how we see each other.

/ SELF

This line of thought took me back to Thabo Mbeki’s I Am An African speech. It is one of the finest speeches ever written.

It is worth reading to understand that to be human is to be connected, to be human is complex, to be human is to recognise pain, injustice and their consequences, and to be fully human is to integrate it all, to strive for a better world not just for oneself but for all who live in it.

He says:

“My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.
I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind’s eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.
I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns.
I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.
Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that – I am an African.”

He ends the speech saying, “Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say – nothing can stop us now!”

/ SOUL

As you contemplate the world that you want to create visit the memory of your victories, they will give you strength; look to your vision, it will give you inspiration; take pragmatic, principled action in the current moment, it will give you learning and create space for the next moment.

South Africa’s democracy emerged from infinite numbers of actions large and small by millions of people. The same is true for each time the world has become a better place.

Be conscious. Your actions can count. And, if you’re not intentional about the world you want, you allow another to emerge. It is your choice. You can choose.

Yours

Karl

PS: If you are interested in working with me, I will have some openings in my diary from early July to take on new clients. Send me an email and we can find time for an introductory conversation.

PPS: My commitment to my clients is that I spend 600 hours a year researching a myriad of topics to ensure that I continually enrich the knowledge and skill-set that I bring to our work. It means that I read a lot, so if you’re ever looking for a recommendation drop me a message about what you’re wanting to explore and I’ll help.

(This letter was first published on 30 May 2021)

Strategy, Soul and Self

Register to receive reflections on leadership and life