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You are here: Home / Archives for 5 - Industries / Business / Business Philosophy

Five Fundamental Beliefs for Business Success

November 7, 2019 by Matt Perman

In his excellent book A Business and its Beliefs: The Ideas That Helped Build IBM, Thomas Watson Jr. (the second chief executive of IBM) gives us five great lessons on business success.

From the time of our divisional reorganization we have found that an ingrained understanding of the beliefs of IBM, far more than technical skill, has made it possible for our people to make the company successful. 

In looking back on the history of a company, one can’t help but reflect on what the organization has learned from its years in business. In thinking specifically of the period since the war when IBM faced the twin challenges of great technological change and growth, I would say that we’ve come out with five key lessons. They may not be applicable to all companies. All I can do is attest to the great value these five lessons had for us. 

  1. There is simply no substitute for good human relations and for the high moral they bring. It takes good people to do the jobs necessary to reach your profit goals. But good people alone are not enough. No matter how good your people may be, if they don’t really like the business, if they don’t feel totally involved in it, or if they don’t think they’re being treated fairly — it’s awfully hard to get a business off the ground. Good human relations are easy to talk about. The real lesson, I think, is that you must work at them all the time and make sure your managers are working with you. 
  2. There are two things that an organization must increase far out of proportion to its growth rate if that organization is to overcome the problems of change. The first of these is communication, upward and downward. The second is education and retraining. 
  3. Complacency is the most natural and insidious disease of large corporations. It can be overcome if management will set the right tone and pace and it its lines of communication are in working order. 
  4. Everyone — particularly in a company such as IBM — must place company interest above that of a division or department. In an interdependent organization, a community of effort is imperative. Cooperation must outrank self-interest, and an understanding of the company’s particular approach to things is more important than technical ability. 
  5. And the final and most important lesson: Beliefs must always come before policies, practices, and goals. The latter must always be altered if they are seen to violate fundamental beliefs. The only sacred cow in an organization should be its basic philosophy of doing business.

The British economist Walter Bagehot once wrote: “Strong beliefs win strong men and then make them stronger.” To this I would add, “And as men become stronger, so do the organizations to which they belong.”

Filed Under: Business Philosophy

What is the Purpose of a Corporation?

September 4, 2019 by Matt Perman

From Harvard Business Review on August 23:

On Monday, 181 CEOs — from top companies including Apple, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, and Johnson & Johnson — acknowledged that firms do not exist only to serve shareholders. In a statement issued by the Business Roundtable, a corporate lobby group, they affirmed a commitment to “all of our stakeholders.” Those include customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and — last but still very much not least — shareholders.

It’s a welcome shift. In 1970 the economist Milton Friedman made the case in the New York Times that management’s sole obligation ought to be maximizing value for shareholders. Over the past few decades, that view became commonplace in many boardrooms and business schools and on Wall Street. But there have been dissenters, especially in recent years.

In a 2017 HBR article, Joseph Bower and Lynn Paine of Harvard Business School argue that the shareholder-centric view “is flawed in its assumptions, confused as a matter of law, and damaging in practice.” They write that “a better model would recognize the critical role of shareholders but also take seriously the idea that corporations are independent entities serving multiple purposes and endowed by law with the potential to endure over time.”

To which I say: It’s about time.

I love Milton Friedman, but he got this one wrong. The purpose of a corporation is not simply to make a profit but to make the world better. The best businesses have always understood this and seen their own companies in this way. Jim Collins’ excellent chapter “More than Profits” in his classic Built to Last, for example, brings together dozens of incredible quotes on this. For example:

We’ve also remained clear that profit — as important as it is — is not why the Hewlett-Packard Company exists; it exists for more fundamental reasons. — John Young, Former CEO, Hewlett-Packard

We are in the business of preserving and improving human life. All of our actions must be measured by our success in achieving the goal. — Merck & Company, Internal Management Guide, 1989

We try to remember that medicine is for the patient. We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been. — George Merck, President and Chairman, Merck & Company, 1925 – 1957

We are workers in industry who are genuinely inspired by the ideals of advancement of medical science, and of service to humanity. — George Merck II (once again, because it’s so good)

Sony has a principle of respecting and encouraging one’s ability…and always tries to bring out the best in a person. This is the vital force of Sony. — Akio Morita, Co-founder, Sony

I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. … Our main task is to design, develop, and manufacture the infest electronic [equipment] for the advancement of science and the welfare of humanity. — David Packard, co-founder, Hewlett-Packard

Service to customers comes first … service to employees and management second, and … service to stockholders last. — Robert W. Johnson, Co-founder, Johnson & Johnson

Man’s objective should be opportunity for greater accomplishment and greater service. The greatest pleasure life has to offer is satisfaction that flows from…participating in a difficult and constructive undertaking. — Bill Allen, Former CEO, Boeing, 1945 – 1968

Putting profits after people and products was magical at Ford. — Don Petersen, Former CEO, Ford

Collins also shows that the companies in his study who saw their purpose as more than making money actually made more money than their competitors who didn’t.

This is in line with the biblical purpose of business, where every sector of society exists for the service of people.

However, if business exists to bring good into the world, then how does it differ from the non-profit sector?

The answer is that “more than profit” does not mean “other than profit.” The mandate of business is to bring good into the world in a way that is profitable for the long-term . So profit is essential to the nature of business. It is simply not the only, or even most ultimate, purpose.

In the Christian view, a corporation exists to do good for the world in a profitable way. In so doing, it must give appropriate attention to the needs and interests of all stakeholders, not just the shareholders.

For more on this, see also the excellent book A Sense of Mission, which brings together additional academic research showing that companies who have a purpose beyond making money perform better. [I can no longer find it at Amazon, but here is a short summary.]

Filed Under: Business Philosophy

Don’t Divide Your Christian Principles from Your Practical Decision Making

July 21, 2015 by Matt Perman

This is well said by Phillip Johnson, in his foreword to Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth: 

Every one of us has a worldview, and our worldview governs our thinking even when — or especially when — we are unaware of it.

Thus, it is not uncommon to find well-meaning evildoers, as it were, who are quite sincerely convinced that they are Christians, and attend church faithfully, and may even hold a position of leadership, but who have absorbed a worldview that makes it easy for them to ignore their Christian principles when it comes time to do the practical business of daily living.

Their sincerely held Christian principles are in one category for them, and practical decision making is in another. Such persons can believe that Jesus is coming again to judge the world and yet live as if the standards of this world are the only thing that needs to be taken into account.

That’s a very profound statement. It is worth re-reading and reflecting on.

I remember experiencing this dichotomy in my own life. My senior year in college, I had an internship as a claims adjuster at a large insurance company. One of the things we were taught was that the popular dictum “the customer is always right” would bankrupt the company.

The reason is that customers often had an inadequate conception of their insurance policies, thinking that certain things would be covered when they are in fact not. If we granted the wishes of the customer in each of those cases, we would be paying far beyond what the policies were designed to cover, which would indeed spell disaster for the company.

In this case, of course, the reasoning is correct. The policy rates were set on the basis of the limitations on the policy spelled out in the contract, and to go against those would be to over extend the capacity of the company to pay the claims. I don’t think there is anything unbiblical about sticking to agreed upon characteristics of the insurance policy, especially since the customers are able to read and agree to the policy with full knowledge and consent when they sign on.

The problem, though, was that this could easily have an unwelcome side effect. Even though the company did not advocate doing so, nonetheless this reality could easily create an adversarial mindset toward the customers of the insurance company. You could go in expecting them to disagree, and your mission was to make sure not to give in. Your task could easily become not seeking to maximally serve the customer within the constraints imposed by the policy, but standing your ground against the customer. And justifying that by saying “this is what the policy states. You just have to deal with it.”

That would be an example of following the standards the world often follows — and thinking you are justified in doing so because, of course, you really can’t pay out for things the policy does not cover. Right?

The problem here is not with upholding the policy. The biblical answer here would not be to go against the agreed upon characteristics of the insurance policies. The problem is with what is being left out — namely, humanity. 

The biblical answer here was not to go against the policies, but to remember compassion and understanding. As claims adjusters we might not be able to give the customers what they really wanted in certain cases, but we could always accompany that with saying “I understand this is frustrating. I am sorry about this. And perhaps the conception of this policy is not as helpful as it should be, and we will need to look into that. But this is the policy that was agreed on, and this is what we have to stick to.”

That is a very different approach than just giving people the cold hard facts and saying “deal with it.” It seems so obvious. This is a way of treating the customer with dignity and respect, even when they are not “right” and cannot have their way.

Yet, that that is the type of thing you don’t always see. Perhaps some people think that showing understanding opens them to liability or risk. To acknowledge the person’s frustration, they think, is perhaps to acknowledge that the policy is indeed bad, thus opening them to a lawsuit.

But fear of risk is never a good reason to fail to take the actions that are necessary for affirming a person’s dignity. People’s concerns need to be validated. Even if the company is technically “right,” as was the case most of the time in these situations, it is never right to toss that out as a cold hard fact that a person just has to “deal with.”

This is just one small example of how Christian principles can be set aside in the name of seemingly doing “the right thing” according to a certain (even legitimate) set of standards, and how a Christian view can come in and provide what is missing so that people are always treated the way they ought to be treated.

There are lots of other examples that are more extreme and more significant. Regardless of the situation you are in, always remember to ask not only “what are the typical practices for handling this situation in my industry” but also “what does God have to say about this type of thing, and how does that apply to me as well?”

Filed Under: Business Philosophy, j Productivity in Society

Beliefs Before Policies!

July 14, 2015 by Matt Perman

Thomas Watson, Jr., the second president of IBM and 16th US ambassador to the Soviet Union:

I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions. Next, I believe that the most important single factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs….Beliefs must always come before policies, practices, and goals. The latter must always be altered if they are seen to violate fundmantal beliefs.

Note that: if your policies are inconsistent with your beliefs, you change your policies — not your beliefs. So many companies do the opposite, saying they value people all the while enforcing policies that communicate anything but that.

Of course, the way you know whether a company (or person) really believes something is by what they do.

So what are companies that institute person-depleting policies really saying?

Filed Under: Business Philosophy

The Gospel-Centered Business

March 17, 2015 by Matt Perman

From Tim Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work:

The gospel-centered business would have a discernible vision for serving the customer in some unique way, a lack of adversarial relationships and exploitation, an extremely strong emphasis on excellence and product quality, and an ethical environment that goes ‘all the way down’ to the bottom of the organizational chart and to the realities of daily behavior, even when high ethics mean a loss of margin.

In the business animated by the gospel worldview, profit is simply one of many important bottom lines.

Keller nails it here. It is also very interesting that his statement that profit should be only one of many bottom lines syncs up with the research of Jim Collins. In the landmark book Built to Last, Collins’ research shows that the most profitable companies actually don’t put profit first — they put the customer and the mission first.

This doesn’t mean they don’t seek profit (just as Keller isn’t saying not to seek profit). Rather, it’s that they realize that profit is not the point. Making a contribution and serving the customer is. You have to do this in a profitable way, but ironically, Collins’ research shows, you will be more profitable when you pursue more than profit rather than just profit. 

And so here we see that the nature of a gospel-centered business is very much in line with what the best business research is showing as well. Common grace and the gospel are allies, not opponents.

Filed Under: Business Philosophy

How Google Works

January 7, 2015 by Matt Perman

An excellent summary of the best principles for making organizations effective today by Eric Schmidt,  executive chairman at Google. And here’s his book, How Google Works.

How Google Works from Eric Schmidt

Filed Under: Business Philosophy

Lost Conversations from Steve Jobs' Best Years

April 20, 2012 by Matt Perman

From the latest issue of Fast Company. Here’s the summary:

A treasure trove of unearthed interviews, conducted by the writer who knew him best, reveals how Jobs’s ultimate success at Apple can be traced directly to his so-called wilderness years.

By the way, if you aren’t a subscriber to Fast Company, you need to be. It gives the best insight on the new world of work, and shows how work is not supposed to be boring or constrained.

You won’t regret subscribing, and there’s no excuse not to. And, you need to subscribe to the actual physical magazine, because it is much more fun than just reading it online (and it’s easier to remember, in my view at least). Plus, with any print subscriptions you now get their iPad app so you can read it digitally each month if you prefer.

Filed Under: Business Philosophy

Goldman Sachs, Self-Interest, and Greed

March 29, 2012 by Matt Perman

The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics recently wrote:

On March 14, Greg Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation in the pages of The New York Times. He described a culture that had become “toxic” and outright callous to the interests of the firm’s clients.

The Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (IFWE) saw the news of his resignation as a teaching moment. Without taking sides, we sought to point out the important and often misunderstood difference between greed and legitimate self-interest.

Their visiting scholar, Jay Richards, and Vice President of Economic Initiatives, Anne Bradley, did this in a very helpful and brief op-ed for The Washington Times. Here’s an excerpt:

On Wednesday, Greg Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation in the pages of theNewYorkTimes. His reasoning: The company’s employees and culture have morphed into a gross entity that sidelines the interests of the client in favor of making a quick buck. By his account, Goldman Sachs‘ culture has become “toxic and destructive.” Mr. Smith no longer wants to be associated with the Wall Street giant. “People who care only about making money,” he argues, “will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.”

Amen! To care only about money is not only unbiblical; it is also — contrary to what many people think — out of sync with capitalism. Contrary to the 80’s movie “Wall Street,” greed isn’t good, and never has been. Greed does not drive the free market, but actually ruins it. What drives the free market is legitimate self-interest — which is very different from greed. Richards and Bradley explain:

This paradoxical biblical principle, that self-denial is in our self-interest, is also an important economic principle. The greedy miser who hoards his wealth closes himself off to greater economic gains. And in a free market, the greedy merchant who swindles his customers is not likely to maintain profitability.

On the other hand, if we seek to meet the needs of others – whether we are hedge-fund managers or plumbers – we are likely to reap personal benefit. Great entrepreneurs who risk their wealth, delay their gratification and successfully anticipate the needs of others can become fabulously successful as a result.

This is the beauty of the free market: It harnesses our narrower self-interest for the common good. Markets bring together the most willing suppliers with the most willing demanders, and exchange takes place. You freely pay the grocer for groceries, he freely sells them, and you both end up better off than you were before.

Read the whole thing.

Filed Under: Business Philosophy, Economics

The True Meaning of Justice in the Workplace

December 12, 2011 by Matt Perman

Biblically speaking, to be just means to use your strength on behalf of the weak.

Justice most certainly includes an overall “fairness” and truth and integrity and honesty and refusing to show partiality.

But the essence of justice goes beyond that.

The essence of justice is that those with greater authority and influence are to use their stronger position in service of those who are in a weaker situation.

Helping those in a “weaker situation” might mean helping those suffering from poverty or sickness or some other harm, but it doesn’t have to be. It means helping anyone without the influence of formal authority you have. Which means, if you are a manager or leader in an organization (or in politics or anywhere), that it includes those who work for you.

Some people think that the biblical commands to be just in this sense and their corollary, radical generosity, do not apply inside the bounds of an organization. Inside an organization, “business rules” apply, which is interpreted to mean that people must be impersonal (a distorted notion of the concept of being “impartial”) and that doing things for your own advantage primarily is correct and right.

But this is wrong. The biblical commands to be generous and to be just apply in all areas of our lives, without exception. The Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) and commands to be merciful as God is merciful (generous to all, especially the undeserving, Matthew 5:43-48) do not cease to apply at our jobs and in our work and in our organizations. They are not simply for the personal realm.

Their manifestation may look different in each area of life. But these principles of justice and generosity still apply in every area of life and we must be diligent to apply them in all areas.

So, here’s one example. Let’s take the workplace. Being just and generous in the workplace means that, if you are in authority over people, you use that authority in the service of everyone you interact with — including those in the organization who directly work for you, those around the organization who don’t work for you but you are in a position to influence, and those outside the organization that you interact with. It means you see yourself as the servant of all, and that you see your authority and position and role as existing not as some statement of how great you are or how hard you’ve worked, but rather as existing for the sake of those around you. Your authority exists to do them good.

Now, immediately here we run into “the fallacy of doing good,” which is the tendency of people to act contrary to the purpose and role of their vocations in in their attempts to “do good,” which ends up making things worse. One example might be a chef at a restaurant who gives away dozens of free meals every night out of a spirit of generosity, when it’s not his restaurant and the owner has not given him the authority to do that. In this case, the chef’s generosity of spirit is right, but the way he carries it out is not. (If he owned the restaurant or had been given the leeway to do that sort of thing by the owner, however, go for it!)

So, what does using your authority and role to “do good” at your job look like when done right? A lot could be said, but let me just say one simple, yet core, thing.

It means being for the people who work for you. Which means believing that they can excel and do good work and make a contribution, even when few other people might be able to see it. And it means using your influence to give them opportunities and, yes, advance their career whenever you have the chance.

Note I’m not saying you shouldn’t be smart and discerning. But I am saying that you should have a default belief in people and therefore do whatever you can to give them a chance, to give them greater opportunities, and to give them a break whenever you can and whenever it seems they will be able to meet the opportunity and succeed in it.

And it means, even when you aren’t in a position at the moment to help advance someone or given them an opportunity, that you are encouraging and always seek to be the type of person that builds others up and helps them get better at what they do.

So much here is about your spirit and attitude — the disposition you have and with which you carry yourself. You need to see yourself as existing for the good of others, and charged with the responsibility from God to use any influence, authority, and resources you have in service to others.

But note that I’m not simply saying “be for other people.” That is a critical thing. But it’s not enough, because it’s so easy to say that we are “for” someone but never take action. It’s easy to say words that we don’t back up with our behavior. The true disposition of a servant is to be for people and to be diligent and forward and effective in identifying ways to promote their welfare.

This is a call to give thought to improving in both our dispositions and our concrete actions. See yourself as existing in your role for the good of others, and be proactive in finding real opportunities to use your authority and influence and resources to serve others and build them up.

That’s a how true Christian operates in his job and lives his entire life.

Filed Under: Business Philosophy, Justice, Work

Google and Amazon on The Importance of Taking the Long-Term View

June 22, 2011 by Matt Perman

It is noteworthy that two of the companies that have made the greatest impact over the last ten years, and continue to do so, have explicitly rejected the common approach of focusing on the short-term over the long-term.

They have both done this in spite of the fact that, when becoming public companies, the pressure from Wall Street is precisely to focus on the short-term. Many companies give in to this, and thus fail to become great. Google and Amazon stated from the start that they would resist this temptation and continue to think long-term, in spite of the pressure. This is a good lesson that is applicable to all areas of life, and is essential to effectiveness: take the long-term view, even when it is challenging.

Here’s what Google had to say in its founding IPO letter:

Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world, even if the near term financial returns are not obvious. For example, we make our services as widely available as we can by supporting over 90 languages and by providing most services for free. Advertising is our principal source of revenue, and the ads we provide are relevant and useful rather than intrusive and annoying. We strive to provide users with great commercial information.

We are proud of the products we have built, and we hope that those we create in the future will have an even greater positive impact on the world.

As a private company, we have concentrated on the long term, and this has served us well. As a public company, we will do the same. In our opinion, outside pressures too often tempt companies to sacrifice long term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations. Sometimes this pressure has caused companies to manipulate financial results in order to “make their quarter.” In Warren Buffett’s words, “We won’t ‘smooth’ quarterly or annual results: If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you.”

If opportunities arise that might cause us to sacrifice short term results but are in the best long term interest of our shareholders, we will take those opportunities. We will have the fortitude to do this. We would request that our shareholders take the long term view.

And here’s what Jeff Bezos had to say in Amazon’s 1997 founding IPO letter (to get to it, just scroll down beneath the 2010 letter):

It’s All About the Long Term

We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term. This value will be a direct result of our ability to extend and solidify our current market leadership position. The stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model. Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.

Our decisions have consistently reflected this focus. We first measure ourselves in terms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand. We have invested and will continue to invest aggressively to expand and leverage our customer base, brand, and infrastructure as we move to establish an enduring franchise.
Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh tradeoffs differently than some companies.

Accordingly, we want to share with you our fundamental management and decision-making approach so that you, our shareholders, may confirm that it is consistent with your investment philosophy…

Among the many lessons from these, here’s one of the key ones: The path to effectiveness is often unconventional. The conventional approach is often the easy, risk-free, uninspiring path of low impact. It often seems safer, but actually isn’t. Organizations that make a difference are those that, in the words of Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, “stand for a truly distinctive set of ideas about where [their] industry should be going.”

Filed Under: a Leadership Style, Business Philosophy

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About Matt Perman

Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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