Bernard Mohr
DOES CAPITALISM NEED AN UPGRADE?
Financial (shareholder) capitalism has simultaneously lifted more people out of poverty and created more health and education than any other economic system we know of – while at the same time sustaining or creating higher levels of social discord and injustice, economic inequity, and environmental destruction than we could have imagined in 1971 when Milton Friedman introduced idea of profit maximization.
Continuation of “maximum profit at any cost” capitalismas our dominant business model now dangerously exacerbates our current social, economic, and environmental challenges. We are seeing highly developed nations ripped apart by social injustices and inability to deal with either human, cultural, or ideological differences. The level of economic inequity both within the developed world and between it and other nations is unparalleled. Every day we experience new environmental disasters with increasingly significant human and economic tolls.
These challenges threaten the future of society as we know it and by extension, the context needed for businesses to thrive. Simply put, business-as-usual can probably continue to work in the short term – if we are prepared to accept minimal progress on the challenges threatening our future.
However, the future for all of us, individually and at the corporate level, is not sustainable, socially, economically, or environmentally by continuing “maximum profit at any cost” capitalism. We need a better world.
A BETTER WORLD DEFINED
If individuals, businesses, economies, and societies are to grow and prosper, much more progress is required toward the United Nation’s Global Compact 17 goals. The pursuit of these Goals is what forging a better world is all about.
IS THE NEW STAKEHOLDER CAPITALISM A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE
Stakeholder capitalism, in which corporations shift to serving the interests of all their stakeholders, (including, but not limited to, shareholders) is gaining momentum both as a strategy and practice.
The strategy and practice of Co-Creating Mutual Value is one approach to accelerating that shift to stakeholder Capitalism. Consider the following:
- Benefits for Business: Investors, consumers, employees, and regulators are calling for business to shift from financial to stakeholder capitalism. Given an opportunity mindset, these challenges offer a chance for businesses to attract capital, innovate, expand market share, build new ecosystems of support, and mobilize employees, while ensuring a viable long-term context for their enterprise
“We need, in the next twenty-five years or so, to do something never before done. We need to consciously re-design the entire material basis of our civilization. The model we replace it with must be drastically more ecologically sustainable, offer large increases in prosperity to everyone on the planet, and not only function in areas of chaos and corruption, but also help transform them.” – Alex Steffen’s words from his book, Worldchanging
- Benefits for society: The Co-Creating Mutual Value (CCMV) approach activates the potential within corporations (public and private) and their ecosystem partners to jointly forge a world where people, corporations, economies, and the environment thrive.
- Benefits for Individuals: Through a newly discovered phenomenon called Mirror Flourishing, CCMV fosters high-quality connections, extraordinary engagement, self-confidence, meaningful work, and wholeness at work – by creating flourishing at the ecosystem level
NEW THINKING IS INVITED
As Einstein once challenged us, “the problems of today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that was used at the time of their creation.”
The Co-Creating Mutual Value Collaborative is part of a community of researchers, practitioners, executives, and advocates all working to offer new models, new thinking, and new practices to the world of business and its roles in society. This community includes, but is not limited to, groups such as The Economics of Mutuality, the Shared Value Initiative; The RSA; B-Lab; Conscious Capitalism Inc.; Imagine.One; The Vatican Council for Inclusive Capitalism, and The Blackrock Center for Stakeholder Capitalism.
In support of ‘Forging a Better World”’(as defined by the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals) CCMV uniquely braids together five distinct and complementary elements into some new thinking and new practices:
- Stakeholder capitalism as business strategy
We believe that successful business strategies (going well beyond CSR efforts and ESG reporting) can be built around addressing social, economic, and environmental challenges.
- The whole system approach
Our work:
- Integrates the key pieces of organizational architecture – purpose, strategy, business model, and operating model.
- And, we engage multiple stakeholders across the ecosystem with a focus on bringing into the dialogue the voices often excluded
- Focus on strengths We are deeply experienced in identifying, magnifying, and integrating the strengths of a business and its key stakeholders. This appreciative approach to change enables organizational learning partners to bring to life a future in which the business prospers not WHILE but rather BY catalyzing a world that works for all.
- Extraordinary engagement
We understand the value of actively involving large numbers of employees, customers, suppliers, community members, and other key stakeholders to tap into their collective wisdom and create ownership of the process AND we have the capability to manage it.
- Deep learning.
We approach our work with the spirit of experimentation. Engaging in regular structured reflection with our client partners, we jointly develop innovations, quickly improve our work together, and build internal capability for future work of this kind.
Additionally, our work encompasses:
- A practical set of tools and methods to translate business strategies built around addressing social, economic, and environmental challenges into viable business models.
- A commitment to complement and build your internal expertise every step of the way – applying our experience as designers and facilitators through the hardest part of this work, full implementation.
- Our CCMV team of senior practitioners who each bring:
- 20-40 years of hands-on consulting experience across 6 continents in a wide range of industries focusing on the dual goals of business performance and the creation of a flourishing workplace
- expertise in state-of-the-art approaches for extraordinarily powerful stakeholder engagement in planning, designing, innovating, and decision making
- capability in Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, and Whole Systems design as applied to reinventing and integrating an organization’s purpose, business model, operating model, and culture
We look forward to speaking with anyone who shares our commitment to forging a world that works for all in the ways we have described.
Please reach out – let’s have a conversation,
◻ if you want to know more about our work
◻ If you want to explore becoming part of our team
◻ If you think we might be good partners with you on the journey of forging a world that works for all