We need many more ideas that are prepared to question the status quo and rewrite the rules, says Neil Gaught. And at the forefront of this will be leaders who are brave and bold enough to take the leap and initiate change
Most businesses begin life as an exciting idea. The problem is that ideas are fragile, they need to be taken care of, fed and nurtured. All too often ideas are quickly lost as the initial idea and its benefits are overwhelmed by the day-to-day mechanics of running a business and the pursuit of short-term financial targets take precedence over every decision made and action taken. Eventually, the exciting idea first imagined becomes a distant memory, occasionally visited when the corporate calendar says it is ‘strategy day’.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. No matter the size of your business, with a sustainable idea embedded at the core, you can change your business, change the world and to change people’s lives.
Prepare for a total rethink
The reality is that the way traditional businesses are organised limits their commercial potential and ability to rise to the challenges set by climate change and the many other global challenges of our time that are captured in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To focus your business on helping achieve the goals that are going to make a difference to the world will in many cases, require a major rethinking of how your business is organised and operated. It involves making the old business ways of running a business obsolete and replacing it with a new one.
This doesn’t mean a renewed focus on superficial ‘bolt-on’ CSR initiatives or ‘purpose promises’ which fail to permeate even the outer layer of the business. It means putting sustainability at the very heart, so that everything your business does, every decision it makes and dilemma it seeks to resolve is guided by your core idea.
Knock the boss of their perch
In hierarchical businesses, people and functions tend to be organised around and directed by the wants and desires of the people at the top of the business and specifically the boss (CEO). With the average tenure of a CEO being five years and his (they are mainly men) wants and desires being invariably linked to short-term financial rewards, you can see why businesses with silos competing against each other to make the boss happy are a major barrier to any kind of long-term, coordinated progress.
Embedding a sustainable Single Organising Idea (SOI) at the core of the business replaces the CEO as its organising principle. It flattens the pyramid and redistributes power across the entire business and ecosystem that it supports. In doing so, an SOI liberates people, enabling them to pursue a sustainable objective that comes from the beating heart of the business and not the temps at the top of it.
Keep it simple
In the pursuit of sustainability, what many businesses fail to realise is that the strategy needs to be simple. In fact, the simpler the better. The second point, and this is important, is that if your business is to succeed in the future, it must concentrate and totally focus on one single strategy. That might sound crazy, but the fact is while some SMEs have no strategy whatsoever, many are trying in vain to achieve two often competing ones.
Fundamentally, the reason why many big businesses are not fit for the future is because they are either being led by a strategy whose purpose is solely about making money at all cost, or they are being tied in knots by trying to achieve that outcome whilst, at the same time, managing part of the business which is intent on pursuing a separate social strategy. The result is all sorts of misalignment, frustration, inefficiency and chaos.
The solution is to tie both the economic and social strategies into one single strategy, the outcome of which is not only commercially sustainable, but also meaningful for those wishing to find fulfilment in what the business does. It’s about total commitment and being organised around a single plan of action the progress of which can be both managed and measured. It’s not about tricking a box or having a cheesy ‘doing well by doing good’ style purpose statement. It’s about finding the means to get on and do it at a time when all stakeholders are demanding business do more to make the world a better place.
First things first: find your guiding star
A Single Organising Idea (SOI) is your guiding star to a sustainable future. It’s the single point of reference against which every part of your business and the ecosystem it contributes to can organise around whilst continually measuring progress, improving efficiencies and performance. It will help you navigate through the process of changing your business for good, help solve ethical dilemmas, guide decisions and settle governance policies. It will encourage people to think about opportunities, parameters and constraints, how they can work better together, and what they can expect from each other.
An SOI is a powerful call to action. The best ideas are simple, direct, clear and determined. These attributes will give clarity and meaning to your leadership. Explanations about what your business is doing and why will always be anchored in truth and what actually matters, with your single organizing idea at the core.
Remember, change is possible
Almost any business can change and be a force for good if the pepe who run it so desire. The size of a business doesn’t matter either. New Zealand tech business Data Torque has less than thirty employees. That said, it has literally millions of stakeholders all over the world. In enabling small countries to successfully collect taxes rather than rely on foreign aid, what DataTorque does and how it does this boils down to their single organising idea that helps guide what ‘collective success’ looks and feels like.
Dutch logistics company Europool System is the biggest distributor of fruit and vegetables in Europe with an annual turnover of many millions. Each day, its operations are governed and directed by an SOI that ‘maximises circular value’ for the benefits of all its stakeholders. Having a single organising idea has driven the development of new products and services, helped attract new talents, and won the firm admiration and recognition as a pioneer in its field.
It’s easier than you think
One of the biggest barriers to initiating the reorganising of a business around a single, organising idea, is a fear of the unknown. Will it be complicated, will it be too expensive, will it even work? Many of these questions mean that despite good intentions, many businesses fail to get past their paper thin CSR initiatives. The truth is that the path towards a more sustainable business operation is much easier than many people think. Much of the work is already being done in different guises across the organisation, the dots just need connecting and the efforts centered around the company’s guiding star. It’s about turning those good intentions into actions by systematically coordinating all of your business functions within it. It will take some time, effort and patience to align, but the process will undoubtedly unlock new opportunities and unparalleled levels of commitment from staff, customers, and investors, who see the benefits for themselves.
Today, we need many more ideas that are prepared to question the status quo and rewrite the rules. Ideas and businesses that can do more for less. Stopping unsustainable products and services will speak volumes about you and your business. Committing to developing new ones will crank up that volume even more. At the forefront of this will be leaders who are brave and bold enough to take the leap and initiate change.
Imagine two ledges where one is lower and slightly out of alignment with the upper ledge you are jumping from, the gap seems much wider than it actually is. It’s an illusion. It still takes courage to make the jump, but once it’s done you question what all the worry and fuss was about. If you knew it would have been that easy you would have jumped months ago, right? So what are you waiting for?
Neil Gaught is a strategic adviser, author and speaker, who helps businesses to reorganise around sustainable ideas. He is best known as the conceiver of Single Organising Idea (SOI®), a proven approach to organisational management that ensures purpose is made real for the benefit of all stakeholders. He is also the author of CORE: How A Single Organizing Idea Can Change Business For Good and CORE The Playbook: The Single Organizing Idea.
