Inspiring a worthwhile purpose

Gone are the days that people can go about their business with a scant disregard for the ramifications on others. We are increasingly expected to be corporate citizens who demonstrate a clear social charter and responsibility to society rather than just being pre-occupied by profit and shareholder return.

Aiming a little higher and broader can make a world of difference to the support you will receive for your business and provide a much higher potential for long- term success. As Dr Ronald Forbes, from the Leaderskill Group in Sydney reminded me in a timely e-mail, if the benefit of what you and your business do does not add to the well-being of the planet, society or the client you should scrap it. He went on to say that if you take this stand you will find that people will respect you more and you will feel a greater buzz in what you are doing. Such intentions will enable you to see the gaps in your current approach and will lead to higher levels of accountability, transparency and integrity.

Here are some well-known and not so well-known examples of how a different thinking can affect business strategy and process:

• At Kodak , they moved from the photo business to the memory business.

• Scandinavian Airlines moved from flying planes to flying people.

• A counselling service , instead of offering only marriage counselling, now offers relationship counselling.

• A health-care provider , instead of providing health-care administration on breast cancer, is now focusing on saving lives.

Of course, to arrive at such resolutions you need to understand your market or business environment. There must be an honest assessment of capabilities based on current and future trends. Such studies will often lead to a number of trend areas being explored:

• technology

• business culture

• economic and financial change

• environmental demands

• individual capacity and morale

• political government pressures

• demographics /trends in society

• global trends

• organizational capacity

• customer expectations

• regional or local issues.

The result is that you and your business will become more acutely aware of the business s strengths and weaknesses while also becoming clearer as to which knowledge and capabilities will need nurturing.

Of course, the benefits of these conversations will not occur overnight. Deeper and far-reaching explorations need to be part of the corporate or business psyche. In some cases it could take three to six months before any workable and agreed strategies can be attained. This will be particularly the case if this type of thinking is seen as unusual and unnatural . In the more stable business environment such scenario thinking should be seriously considered every two years. How far you look ahead will depend on the nature of the business. For example, in 1998 Honeywell set up a global think-tank process over several months looking at the year 2010, CSIRO looked twenty-five years ahead in 2001 and the country of Singapore has done similarly in their mission to become an Intelligent Island.