Prosperity by Colin Mayer
better business makes the greater good
The word ‘company’ comes from the Latin ‘cum panis’ meaning partner or ‘sharer of the same bread’. Business was founded on the idea of collective endeavour and working towards a common good.
We can all agree that, certainly for some big business, this concept got lost in translation.
“Prosperity” is Colin Mayer’s attempt to change this. His focus is on large, global corporations as drivers of “inequality, deprivation and environmental degradation”, whilst also acknowledging the role they have historically played as “the creator of wealth, the source of employment, the deliverer of new technologies, the provider of our needs, the satisfier of our desires, and the means to our ends…”. What he is saying that business is unequivocally a good thing - but not in its current guise.
My work is geared to the much, much much smaller end of the spectrum but Mayer’s central message is as applicable to solopreneurs as it is to multinationals...
Have a purpose to what you do.
When interviewed by Oxford University about the book, Mayer said “the way I define purpose...is as producing profitable solutions to the problems of people and the planet, and not to profit from producing problems for the people or planet”*.
I love this idea. You can make money from what you do - and you cannot have a business without making money - but that should not be your fundamental driver. A business cannot simply be there to ‘make money’. Making a profit should be a derivative of what you are actually doing.
He makes the point very firmly that ‘purpose’ should not be thought up as a PR exercise or sidelined to a CSG team (often made up of employees who have volunteered for the task and have a full-time role to be getting on with)... corporate purpose should be a fundamental part of the company’s mission statement. Everyone from the CEO down should be fully engaged with and committed to that purpose. And to go back to his interview, that purpose should be “producing profitable solutions to the problems of...the planet” so it is very much a social, global responsibility rather than simply making a company’s purpose to “be the best” in whatever market they happen to find themselves in.
Mayer spends quite some time discussing the legal and regulatory framework around how the current crop of big multinationals ended up being quite so disconnected from any sense of social responsibility. As a Professor of Management Studies and former Dean of the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, he is very well qualified to discuss the intricacies of business jurisprudence in the 21st century. I won’t pretend I’m even half way competent to do the same here so would encourage you to read the book if you want to get a coherent explanation! However, what I would say is that much of his agenda for change is something we should all pay attention to.
Working in the world of social impact, this is sort of a given but it’s always worth repeating. Keep your founding principles as your compass. They should guide your long term strategy as well as your daily business decisions. Companies large and small, and very small, are uniquely positioned to promote social and economic wellbeing and - cum panis - as a collective endeavour.
In reviewing the book on researchgate.net , Ryan Burg** pretty much sums it up by saying “Owners who are committed to meaningful pursuits have a special moral purpose to accomplish something that they did on purpose without depleting resources in the process.” For me that sentence hits all the right notes when it comes to thinking about what makes a responsibly run company. The key is in “without depleting resources” - so whatever you’re doing, make sure it is additive and positive. Give something back.
Individual contributions to a good cause can be amplified many times over if they’re working for the right company. Similarly if you run the right sort of company, you have the opportunity to do far more good collaboratively than you might do otherwise.
“Prosperity” puts so much of today’s business practice into a historical and philosophical context and it’s honestly fascinating. Coupled with a forceful and incredibly well informed agenda for how we achieve positive change, this book is staying firmly on my ‘must read’ list.
Give it a go and let me know what you think…
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