Conscious Capitalism. John Mackey

too has a clear inherent higher purpose: to provide people with attractive alternatives for saving and growing their money by investing that money in ways that are maximally beneficial to society. Each type of financing alternative has its own role and purpose: venture capital to fund risky early-stage businesses, debt capital to meet working capital needs and to prevent ownership dilution, equity capital to provide long-term financing for growth and expansion, and so on. But in recent years, the financial sector has become increasingly profit obsessed and short-term oriented. Compensation levels have soared to ridiculous heights as financial incentives have fueled the fire toward immediate, profit-only management, diminishing real value creation. Many banks started to trade on their own accounts in order to generate greater profits. This has led them into many well-documented risky ventures, while also compromising their integrity as financial advisers. No wonder the industry’s reputation is in tatters.

      By embracing the idea that their primary, even sole purpose is to make money, businesses sacrifice the great power that comes from having a higher purpose. Worthy, transcendent goals elicit greater levels of creativity, collaboration, diligence, loyalty, and passion from all stakeholders.

      Happiness Cannot Be Pursued …

      The great Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl gave us a priceless gift of wisdom over sixty years ago, and it remains highly relevant today. As a psychiatrist in pre–World War II Vienna, he spent nearly two decades treating thousands of people who were depressed and prone to suicide. His quest was to go beyond helping people not be depressed and enable them to be truly happy. Eventually, he developed a comprehensive theory of human happiness firmly grounded in his own clinical work. In his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning (cited by the Library of Congress as one of ten most significant books ever written), he wrote that happiness cannot be pursued; it ensues as the result of living a life of meaning and purpose.¹⁰ The more directly you pursue happiness, the less likely you are to achieve it. Pursuing happiness directly may result in short-term hedonistic pleasure, but it does not lead to authentic, soul-satisfying happiness; that only comes from living a life of meaning and purpose.

      Frankl taught that people can discover meaning and purpose in their lives in three ways: by doing work that matters, by loving others unconditionally, and by finding meaning in their suffering.

      The last one may be Frankl’s most profound teaching. All of us are guaranteed to experience loss and grief in our lives. But we can choose how to respond to that suffering. As Frankl put it, the last of the freedoms left to us under the most trying of circumstances is the freedom to choose how to respond.¹¹

      A simple equation captures this:

      Despair = Suffering — Meaning

      If we cannot derive any meaning from our suffering, if we think it’s a random event or just our own rotten luck, we experience great despair. At the extreme, this can cause people to take their own lives. But if we can find some meaning, the level of despair goes down; if we can find a great deal of meaning, despair can disappear completely.¹²

      Interned by the Nazis in 1942, Frankl was forced to test his theory (called logotherapy, after logos, Greek for “meaning”) in the crucible of the Holocaust. He spent about three years in Auschwitz and various other concentration camps.¹³ Over 95 percent of those who were sent to those camps died there. Frankl survived the ordeal and helped many others do so, because he believed that his own life had a purpose, which was to help others discover their purpose and thus find happiness. Though the only manuscript of his first book had been burned by his captors as soon as he was first arrested, he went on to write thirty-nine books and receive twenty-nine honorary doctorates before dying in 1997 at the age of ninety-two.¹⁴ His work has transformed the lives of millions of people around the world.

      … Nor Can Profits

      Profits are an essential and desirable outcome for business. Indeed, it is socially irresponsible to run a business that does not consistently generate profits. Profitable companies can grow and continue to fulfill their higher purposes, and their profits fuel the growth and progress of our society. Through taxes, business profits help fund governments and the many public services people rely on.

      Just as happiness is best experienced by not aiming for it directly, profits are best achieved by not making them the primary goal of the business. They are the outcome when companies do business with a sense of higher purpose, build their businesses on love and caring instead of fear and stress, and grow from adversity—Frankl’s principles reinterpreted for business. The paradox of profits is that, like happiness, they are best achieved by not aiming directly for them.

      If a business seeks only to maximize profits to ensure shareholder value and does not attend to the health of the entire system, short-term profits may indeed result, perhaps lasting many years, depending upon how well its competitor companies are managed. However, neglecting or abusing the other constituencies in the interdependent system will eventually create negative feedback loops that will end up harming the long-term interests of the investors and shareholders, resulting in sub-optimization of the entire system. Without consistent customer satisfaction, team member happiness and commitment, and community support, the short-term profits will prove to be unsustainable over the long term.

      The most common objection to the above argument is that many businesses are highly profitable and are not actively managed to optimize the value for all stakeholders. Instead, they put the interests of their investors first. Doesn’t this disprove our argument? Not at all. Most businesses are simply competing against other similar businesses that are organized and managed with the same overall values and goals—maximizing profits. The real question is, how does a traditional profit-centered business fare when it competes against a stakeholder-centered business? As we detail in appendix A, there is compelling evidence that conscious businesses significantly outperform traditional businesses over the long run.

      If business leaders become more aware that their business is not a machine but part of a complex, interdependent, and evolving system with multiple constituencies, they will see that profit is one of the important purposes of the business, but not the sole purpose. They will also begin to see that the best way to maximize long-term profits is to create value for the entire interdependent business system. Once enough business leaders come to understand and accept this new business paradigm, Conscious Capitalism will reach a take-off point and the hostility toward business will start to dissipate.

      Work and Purpose

      Everyone craves meaning and purpose in life, but few people find such fulfillment at work. The oral historian Studs Terkel wrote movingly about American workers struggling to earn a living and to create a life and legacy: “It is about the search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as for cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”¹⁵

      George Bernard Shaw wrote of the joy of meaningful work in this famous passage: “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”¹⁶

      Unfortunately, the level of personal and emotional engagement people have with paid work today is abysmally low. The absence of purpose results in work that is devoid of meaning and that therefore does not tap into our higher human capacities. Team members feel disconnected and become indifferent toward their work. Gallup conducts team member engagement surveys every year and has found the level of engagement with paid work has been shockingly low for the past ten years. In 2010, only 28 percent of team members were found to be engaged in (or emotionally connected to) their work. About 53 percent were indifferent, and 19 percent were actually hostile.¹⁷ This reflects an appalling, almost tragic waste of human potential. The difference in business impact and personal happiness between a team member who is inspired, passionate, and committed and one who merely shows up for a paycheck is enormous. The blame for this does not lie with “lazy and unmotivated” workers, but with companies that fail to create purposeful workplaces in which