For something like a hundred years now, we've been trained by corporations to think a certain way. This is to be expected because corporations, and the financial and human capital that only they can bring together, have created our modern world. And make no mistake, I'm glad we have them. Hospitals, highways, medical advances, computers and the Internet that potentially connects us all... We would find it extraordinarily difficult to live back in, say, a time frame between the 1830's and the 1880's, that is sure. (I selected that time frame because the telegraph, the 'Victorian Internet,' came along in the 1830's, and toilet paper as we know it today was devised in the 1880's. Milestones!)
Corporations have a flaw and come with a terrible cost, however. A corporation is a legal instrument that is specifically designed to maximize profits for its shareholders. Any action taken by its leadership that would run counter to that goal, for example an oil company CEO who abstains from drilling in Alaska on environmental grounds, will result in the immediate removal of that leadership and its replacement by someone else who will return to the business of maximizing profits.
Corporations are like sharks. They have just one purpose. Everything else is secondary.
Including people, who, as we've seen in recent years, they are willing to terminate by the tens of thousands as they merge and downsize and outsource their way to ever greater next-quarter earnings statements. That's where we have gotten the most tired out by the whole thing in recent years. As consumers, we've (unfortunately) (and shame on us) gotten used to being treated as interchangeable, anonymous and disposable. When enough Americans get treated that way as employees, though- that's where it really hurts.
And then there are the small businesses, which some say make up the real fabric of America. Small businesses may also exist, in the end, to make profits, but they are much more free than is a corporation to have other purposes.
Seth Godin, pointing out in his book Linchpin how tired people are of being 'corporatized and anonymyzed and dehumanized' by a big business world that is laser-focused on 'making more and more average stuff for average people,' suggests that these are the highest goals of a business, and where success really comes from:
(1) Delight people.
(2) Solve their (interesting) problems.
I put the word 'interesting' in parenthesis. The more interesting a patient or customer's problem is to them, the better.
In my field, a favorite example is this:
Each X-ray has a dark area around the root of a tooth which indicates an infection in the root canal. The upper one was incredibly painful. The lower one- no symptoms at all. None.
Even though the medical diagnosis is the same, the one patient is much more interested in their problem than the other!!
I believe with unshakeable conviction that Seth Godin is right. Our best path to success is to delight people, especially in a realm where they don't expect it, and to solve their problems. Knowing that it's easier to solve an interesting problem than an uninteresting one; yet of course both deserve solving. (That's where our communication skills come into play.)
And yet.
So many small businesses have been trained to think like a corporation. Customers are treated interchangeably. Customers are faced with arbitrary rules and layers of un-approachableness when it comes to talking to decision makers. Why? Probably because corporate-think is all around us, influencing us day in and day out. But big corporate behavior, as necessary as it may be when oil is being managed from the well to the tanks in our cars, does not serve the small business and it does not serve their customers.
Industrialists seek to squeeze every penny out of every market, every transaction, and, what’s worst, every human being they come into contact with.
Corporations strive to drive their costs down as close to zero as they can get, and the main place they do this is not with more efficient machinery, upgraded systems or a smarter long-range plan. No, they cut costs by cutting people—cutting them until they bleed.
Corporations attempt to change the law by their lobbying efforts. When they cannot change the law, they often break it, counting on lax enforcement. And when they get caught, they pay the fine and move on. Rinse and repeat.
Industrialists don't mind if they lay waste to our environment without consequence, and strive to eliminate as many employee protections as they can get away with.
This is all to game the stock price next quarter- or, these days, next minute. This is the thinking that goes on in the realm of the commodity. It's a 'race to the bottom.' It's a race to be the cheapest, the fastest, and, more than anything else, the biggest. So often along the way, the most brutal too.
The problem with a race to the bottom, though, is that we might win.
We need our corporations. We need, specifically, our toilet paper. Still...
If you happen to own a small business, or play an integral part in running one, consider the race to the top instead. The race that is concerned with the dignity of team and customer. The race that is focused on design and a remarkable product or service.
That magnificent race that delights in delighting people, and solving their interesting problems.
*****
For more, check out Seth Godin's Linchpin. Your worldview will never be the same. In a good way.
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