Notes on Noble Business

Once a year, we get to celebrate the birth of America and the freedom that makes our country a beacon for other people and whole countries. The power of the human spirit in its desire for freedom results in many inspiring stories of how freedom is gained. We have our own in the U.S. But in this blog, I’d like to share briefly the stories of two other countries, for these stories exhibit the depth of that desire and the power of its expression.

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What do leading MBA students see when they look into the future? What shifts do they see affecting their companies? How  well do they think their employers are tapping the human resources of their companies – and what changes would they like to see in how their company approaches business?

These are some of the questions I recently put to the students in an Accelerated Executive MBA program at a leading Northeastern business school where I spoke recently on Noble Enterprise. Though the sample is small (a little over twenty students), I found it interesting because these are all at least mid-level management people who have several years of experience, and who are looking to improve their management skills. They come from a wide range of industries (and even some from outside the “for-profit” world).

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When people hear about “Noble Enterprise”, they often think, “Well, that would certainly be nice, but not in our business, not in our industry.” They think it too lofty a goal that can’t be reached because Reality interferes – the need to sell to demanding customers without losing your shirt, the need to control waste and keep employees focused on the proverbial “bottom line” etc. “We can’t afford (the thinking goes) to serve some lofty purpose, or to be honorable because it’s just not practical and stands in the way of profitability.”

Yet when a business is shaped and led as a Noble Enterprise, it can actually achieve traditional business results far beyond the norm.

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With a New Year starting, it’s a great time to step back from your business and take a fresh look at something most business leaders take for granted or seldom work on – your “business model.”

What is your company’s business model – and how’s it working for you? I don’t mean its strategy – that’s different. The “business model” is the very core definition of your business – WHY it exists, to Serve WHOM – and what those NEEDS really are.

The traditional business model focuses on things like: 

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While many companies still remain almost “locked down” with a clamp on spending, waiting for the economy to recover, now may actually be just the time for you and your company to shift into action. Those who act early will seize an opportunity caused in part by the economy’s having stopped its free fall – and also by the fact that many competitors may still be essentially dormant, just waiting until it becomes (truly) “safe” to resume “business as usual.”

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An amazing coincidence happened in 1776 that changed the world. Two different documents on two separate continents each published that year made the case for individual freedom, each in its own way. The ideas in both documents have had a huge impact on the world, one in terms of the spread of political freedom; the other in terms of the advancement of economic freedom – and prosperity.
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Last week, I participated in a two-day conference on Conscious Capitalism, a term describing both a business philosophy and a way of operating that goes beyond the narrow financial focus of historical Capitalism.
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How are you managing through these difficult times? Over the past month, I’ve spoken to several groups of managers and executives in the Northeast and Midwest (of the US) on the subject of: “Energizing Performance and Motivation in Difficult Economic Times”. I asked them two basic questions: 1) Is your business revenue stagnant or declining? 2) What are you doing about it? I then shared strategies they can use to up their likelihood of success.
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Writing in a recent (April 10, 2009) Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Peggy Noonan calls for a restoration of business as a “noble endeavor.” She describes the fall of Wall Street, contrasting it with the raising up of the financial sector after 9/11, when firms were decimated and the Stock Exchange brought to its knees, yet those who remained brought the Exchange back up and running the Monday following the 9/11 devastation.
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In its most recent issue (March 23-30), Business Week offers “Game-Changing Ideas for Business” with an impressive array of examples of companies using both well-established and new ideas to improve their performance.
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