Leadership Development: What is The Business of Business?
As we welcomed in the year 2000, there were fears of computer breakdowns that would destroy life as we know it.”Y2K” had people hoarding food and worrying about how we would navigate without technology at the helm. Then, nothing happened.
December 31, 1999 rolled into January 1, 2000 without missing a beat. However life was for people in the old century did not really change much in the new one.
That was until September 11, 2001. That was a day etched in almost every head around the planet. "Do you remember where you were on 9/11?” I have asked in numerous seminars that I lead. Heads bob up and down and a certain faraway look comes over the crowd. We all remember; sadness and confusion show up in the room, even today.
Elections, cliff hangers all of them have made most of us more attuned to the world of politics. With the changes in government there have come divisions in our society. Are you blue or red? Are you with us or against us? We have become an either /or society with almost no shades of subtle colors. There is no dialogue, only sound bites that chip away at the fabric of our nation.
The economic roller coaster seems stalled in the down part of the ride and we are so far along we can’t get off, just wait till momentum is gained and we can trudge up the next hill to enjoy the adrenalin rush of the next downhill slope.
Now is the time, while we are still at a stop point, a very, very slow point to ask what the business of business is? Is it still mainly to provide vast financial reward to its executives and investors or is it something else?
Now is a perfect time to ask how business can share in the total responsibility of the planet. It is, after all, something just about everyone participates in, working somewhere and it has a strong impact on everything that happens from environmental sustainability to health care, through the way we raise our young and treat our elders.
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