Survival and profit are fine, but if you don’t have values or “higher purpose” at the heart of your business, you may be losing out in the battle for the hearts and minds of customers, suppliers and employees…
[Jason Fried] recently broadcast a 100-character challenge to his 24,000 Twitter followers: “What’s missing most from business today? Not sales. Not service. Not technology. Answer: A point of view.”
That’s more telling than the speeches last month from Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, and Lawrence Summers, economic advisor to Barack Obama who told the World Economic Forum at Davos we must all build a better capitalism that “reflects shared values” and a “common morality.” A manifesto bubbling up from successful young entrepreneurs on the front lines of global marketing and collaboration is worth two dozen top-down political rants…
A company known for having a point of view and commitment to community generates a payback worth more than money: Trust.
Rick Spence in What do you stand for? [Financial Post]
Michael
on 12 Feb 10First comment in three posts. What do I win?
Anonymous Coward
on 12 Feb 10Jason comment is a great sound bite (“point of view”) but there is nothing tactical about how to accomplish it.
What Sarkozy and Obama are trying to bring is Tactical change to the world, not philosophical concepts like “point of view”.
How do you push the world to have greater “point of view”? You can’t.
However, “building better capitalism” can be accomplished through economic policy.
jforth
on 12 Feb 10Perfect timing, I was just thinking about this the other day.
I believe that Jason is on point with this.
Ed
on 12 Feb 10How do you build better capitalism by putting a greater percentage of the national economy under government control and increasing rules and regulation thus creating better prospects for crony capitalist?
I don’t think Obama is interested in capitalism.
Big Business & Big Government
on 12 Feb 10I agree with Ed. Government regulation, while often desirable in theory, more often that not simply results in crony capitalism. So if you hate “Big Business,” I humbly submit that you should be worried about Big Government.
Anonymous Coward
on 12 Feb 10ff
Anonymous Coward
on 12 Feb 10I would love to see Jason Fried run the country. “This is my opinion about how the country should be run and although I hear you, I don’t have do anything about it.”
Anonymous Coward
on 12 Feb 10“This is my opinion about how the country should be run and although I hear you, I don’t have do anything about it.”
That is how countries are run. When you have 250,000,000 people in a country, you can’t do what every single one of them wants to do. Even a town with 2000 people can’t do what everyone wants.
EH
on 12 Feb 10What the fudge does this have to do with “big business?!” Crimony.
The point is that convincing other people to give up their point of view (shared whatever) creates an opportunity for other people’s to hold sway. It’s touchy-feely demagoguery.
David Andersen
on 13 Feb 10AC#1 -
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve read all week, and I’ve read some crap from Pelosi.
Greg Laws
on 13 Feb 10“A company known for having a point of view and commitment to community generates a payback worth more than money: Trust.”
I think Rick Spence sums up what Jason was trying to say well in this quote. I would MUCH rather be a long term customer of a business that earned my trust. It is such a rare thing for a company to do this sincerely. The ones that do have a huge advantage, in my opinion. It fosters a larger community of loyal customers who are advocates for that company, which is worth more than money.
Anonymous Coward
on 14 Feb 10I don’t even understand what you mean by “point of view”
This discussion is closed.