There are many business books out there. Too many, in fact. Heavens, if you were to ever sit down and try to read all of them (much less write one– trust me), much less implement all their many bits of business advice, you wouldn’t have any time left to . . . well, you know . . . do any business.
It’s not that there isn’t plenty of good advice in them, but . . . after a while, you have to admit, it’s all more or less the same thing, i.e., it’s all advice about how to make more money. Sometimes it’s how to be more efficient, sometimes it’s how to motivate people to move faster, sometimes it’s how to be more creative, but again, these are all subsets of advice on . . . how to make more money.
Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with making money per se, but . . is that the highest goal of business? After all, in the final analysis, money is just a tool. If the highest goal is to make more money, that’s a little like saying the highest goal is to make more screwdrivers. At some point you have to ask, what the heck are we doing this for?
So here’s an idea: let’s talk about business . . as a religion.
This isn’t that much of a conceptual leap. There are already lots of religious elements in business. For example, once a year we all recite our sins in a confessional we call a performance review.
And speaking of sin, well . . . fyi, the word “sin” is an old archery term, meaning, “we have not hit the bulls-eye,” meaning, we have not achieved our full potential. Let he who thinks the company is without sin spend a few hours taking calls in the customer service center.
Now when Malcolm Gladwell talks about “disrupters,” well . . . aren’t these people just garden variety heretics? They aren’t necessarily smarter or better, they just have the willingness to blaspheme against tradition. We always praise this kind of thing from a distance, but it’s awfully hard to be a heretic in business (or anywhere else for that matter), as nowadays, everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Now another category of business book that could use a little religion is the type of book that lists the attributes of effective leaders. Mind you, this sort of thing is all very pleasant and uplifting, but if you think for a moment, many of these fine leadership attributes were also possessed by Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, and, oh, well, all sorts of “effective” but ultimately not very nice people. Without some overlay of ethics, leadership by itself is neither good nor bad but that megalomania makes it so. The devil can quote Peter Drucker to suit his purpose, and I’ll bet there are portions of Hell that have been made more efficient using lean methods.
Of course, when it comes to dogma, there’s always plenty to go around. You have probably encountered many business people who blindly follow tradition, even when it actually goes against their making more money.
It is important to have a higher purpose in business. It’s not just because money is not our primary motivation in the first place. Whenever something has been justified or rationalized by the bottom line being the top priority, well, that sort of more or less tells you right out that the “something” is either unjust or irrational. It also means that the “something” is something that everyone is ashamed of.
Religion is not just about getting into heaven, it is a guide for understanding who we are, how we should treat our fellow creatures, and seeking our highest purpose. The answer to these questions is not something you can divine by crunching the numbers. The answer lies in your business religion, and if don’t have one, god help us all. – JL
