When I was a student in France and practicing interviews to get into business school, I was drilled by an older student who had already got into business school and exuded the self confidence of someone who doesn’t realise he knows very little. He asked me why I wanted to work “en entreprise” – for a company-, and what kind of company. I answered I’d want to work for a company with a soul, with a clear purpose. He stared at me as if I said “I want to be a flower girl”, then proceeded to explain that wasn’t the kind of thing to say to get into business.

 

So I was very happy and relieved when I recently read “Conscious Capitalism” by John Mackey, founder and CEO of Wholefoods, where he explains companies have obligations to all their stakeholders – staff, suppliers, customer, local authority (taxes and compliance…), central authority (axes and compliance), neighbours, the environment…-, not just their shareholders, and that while making money is a condition to be sustainable, it isn’t the purpose of a company, that there should be a vision that serves the greater good. Whole Foods sells high quality organic food throughout the US, its products are expensive, but then maybe quality is better than quantity, and suppliers get properly paid for their produce. It employs 91,000 people, and had a turn over of US$15bn in 2016.

 

Capitalism has made such a bad name for itself, fingers have been pointed at it for being the cause of greed, excess consumption, pollution, reckless destruction of the environment. Yet many entrepreneurs have made invaluable contributions to our quality of life. Ford and Volkswagen wanted to build cars for the people, to enable everyone, not just the monied, to be able to go to the countryside on week-ends with their families and have more independence.

Apple wants to help people connect, and every Apple technical person I’ve spoken with lives and breathes that idea, they know the product, they’re enthusiastic about it and have spent hours on the phone with me trying to solve problems.

 

Check out any company that is appreciated by its staff, suppliers, customers, and you’ll usually find behind it a clear vision, usually led by an individual who has formulated that vision. Sell that company to a corporation who only sees ways to sell it on at a higher price, or to maximize profit, and you’re likely to lose the vision, and the ability to adapt to a changing environment while keeping your eye on the company’s higher purpose (which isn’t to make money).

 

Unfortunately John Mackey has done just that and put himself in a situation where he has been pressured by a new investor to sell out to Amazon just last week. It’s a lucrative operation for the shareholders, Whole Foods sold for US$13.7bn, but it will be interesting to see if the company will manage to keep is commitments to top quality food and respect for suppliers and customers.

 

The Body Shop grew and thrived on Anita Roddick’s desire to produce skin care products with a social and environmental awareness, and when she sold it to L’Oreal in 2006, she said it would be a Trojan horse, and would help make changes from within the large multinational company. L’Oreal did stop testing on animals in 2013, but Body Shop seems to have lost its way, and profits have dived.

 

It is ironical that someone considered as the father of capitalism, the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, wrote about sympathy (which we can understand as the present day ‘empathy’), and humans’ need to look after each other, in “The theory of moral sentiments”, yet he is often quoted as a source to explain why the well being of employees, customers and suppliers should be sacrificed in favour of maximizing profits for shareholders. Have his ideas been hijacked and reinterpreted to justify privileging shareholders over other stakeholders?

 

It is a fact difficult to contest that most companies can serve a higher purpose. Construction companies can build safe and comfortable houses for us to build homes. Clothing companies can make our bodies warm and possibly even beautiful. Cosmetic companies can help our skin be healthy. Cement plans can give us the material needed to build our houses, etc, etc.

Even banks – those companies so vilified in the press because of high bosses being paid large bonuses sometimes at the tax payers’ expense – serve an important purpose: enabling you and I to set up our own business and grow it.

 

When the Bangladesh based Grameen Bank started giving loans to impoverished women in the 1970ies instead of giving them money, it was considered immoral – how were they supposed to ever pay it back, and worse still at an interest rate of up to 18%?!- It’s only when it turned out they did pay back, and thrived on the businesses they started, and had a much better pay back rate than the fat cats who had contacts with senior managers of commercial banks, that the world of development realized how powerful people’s sense of entrepeneurship was. They just needed to be given half a chance and a tiny bit of capital.

 

So why this niggling feeling that companies’ intentions are impure, that they’re in it just for the money, and will take shortcuts when it comes to the staff, the customers’, the suppliers’ interest. Because often, they are.

 

There seems to be a worship of shareholders in board rooms, and maximizing their profit. Nothing matters but the bottom line. How sad and boring. Money is way over-rated.  It makes life easier, but it’s the other things that make life fun and interesting and worth living: creating a family, a wider community, fighting to build something that benefits many people.

 

Also, if and when all stakeholders are aligned on one vision, staff, suppliers, customers, shareholders, that’s when everyone becomes really creative, and the sum of the parts becomes a lot more than everyone taken individually. Also, it’s easier to ask for sacrifices when times get tough, if every member of staff, every supplier, every customer, feels they’re in it together, and will benefit together when things improve. Instead of having a polarization between management and workers, with strikes and everyone trying to take the better of the other party.

It is a shame that often staff are considered a ‘necessary evil’ (true quote from a CEO), and any suggestion to make their working lives more rewarding, or to give customers a bit more  for their buck is considered suspiciously, as if there was a risk of becoming too sentimental, and the company collapsing from being too kind to everyone.

I’d argue the opposite is true. If your working partners (staff, client, suppliers, local authorities, neighbours, etc…) are dedicated to your mission mind, heart and soul, there is no limit to what can be achieved. I’ll define heart and soul here, I don’t want it to come across as some hippy talk disconnected from reality.

Work done with heart means it is conducted with empathy for everyone involved, as well as for the environment. There is a clear sense that the company has a purpose, but also that many different parties need to be taken into account and not suffer from the work done towards that purpose. A ‘conscious’ company is a guardian of the environment, fights wastage and excess packaging, instead of being a threat to nature and its natural processes.

Work done with soul means there is a sense of a bigger picture, a knowledge that the company helps improve lives, in whatever way (it can be as mundane but crucial as emptying sewage tanks), and that the job gives satisfaction in itself, regardless of the pay.

So it is a welcome development in my mind that there is a change in thinking from companies being tools to make money for shareholders to them fulfilling a much bigger and more interesting role in society.

The movement “Conscious capitalism” around the world is a place for entrepreneurs to share these ideas and further them.

 

In France I just heard the term “entreprises à mission” – enterprises with a mission-.

I was talking with a friend fund manager about social enterprises – enterprises with a clear social benefit-. She countered that she hoped every company she invested in was socially aware, and helped better the lives of its staff and every other party involved-.

 

After all, companies are agents in our society to provide goods and services we need. Just like an organism needs healthy organs to sustain it, so we need healthy companies to listen to the needs of society (real needs, not made up ones), and fulfill them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used to think that rational thought was the best tool to use to make decisions in life, big and small. I would stay awake for hours when big decisions had to be made, weighing all the pros and cons, anticipating the likely outcomes of every move, and estimating what move would bring about the biggest benefits.

Not now. I’m still a novice at this, but I’m experimenting with a different tool: intuition. Actually, I’m really enjoying the idea that I don’t have to spend hours plotting out all possible outcomes, rather just relax in what is now, and trust my intuition will guide me as and when needed. It is a total act of faith. Like driving out on a road when a car is coming with its indicator on, and trusting it will indeed turn and not crush into me when I pull out.

Actually, better than that, I feel like a secret agent who only gets her instructions on a need to know basis, with no clear idea of what the overall operation is, but knowing that some higher intelligence is at work and gives the best instructions possible.

From an experimental point of view, intuition is the tool that has served me best. The best outcomes have been those guided by intuition. Even when there’s been pain and hardship along the way, it has turned out there was a reason for those, and they were strong learning experiences.

The key to using this tool is that I need to FEEL, rather than THINK. That’s been a tricky one. It has meant un-programming myself from years of being told by school and society that reason is the supreme tool for living one’s life.

I do think reason has an important role to play, but it is in implementing goals, not in fixing them. If intuition is the rudder on a boat, reason is the sails that propel it forward. Allowing the sails to guide the boat could take you to some disastrous places.

Feeling allows me to take in a lot more than my rational mind can. It seems to tap into an intricate network of all the desires, wishes, fears of the people around me as well as my own, beyond any pretense or show they/I may put up, and work out what serves them/me best. It is not a verbal process, it can’t be articulated. It is a Knowing.

Actually, the more I give up on wanting particular outcomes, the more the feeling increases. And there’s a huge, beautiful landscape of feeling, right here, at my finger tips – grey feelings of sadness, yellow-dark grey feelings of grief, vibrant reds of life bursting, soft pink and ochres of tenderness, bright green and indigo blue of love and connection, etc-

The intuition comes as a deep quietness once the feelings have sorted themselves out, fought for attention, spent all their energy saying whatever they had to say. It can take months, or it can take seconds, the only thing that is certain is that they need to have their say, they need to to be able to burst into my life like a child needing attention, and I need to give them full attention, often making me  smile, or cry.

I’ve had to accept that odd feelings pop up at unexpected times. And just let them come in, always giving them a warm welcome, whatever they may be. They always leave too, none have overstayed their welcome. Some come back rather incessantly, but I have learned that if I let them in graciously, they leave graciously before I get really tired of them.

Coming back to intuition, my beloved husband, who claims to be a very rational person, quipped recently at me when I suggested he could slow down and appreciate the beauty around him “of course, you think you can just trust the universe to take care of everything”. Hah. That’s a big one: it’s OK for me to do my yoga, and play with thoughts of love and trust, when he’s working his socks off to make sure we’re provided for, and actually provides for not only our family of 6, but his family, my family, friends when needed, staff of projects he’s invested in. Indeed, it’s his incessant fear of the future and of the disasters that may happen (it’s just a matter of time, in his mind, before they do) that have motivated him to build an asset base to make him feel he and his loved ones are safe (a feeling of safety which of course always eludes him, no matter how big the asset base).

Maybe I should just be honest with myself and answer back “yes, the universe will take care”.

What if there is an incredible intelligence out there that is available for us to tap into?

Isn’t that what Jesus did when he retired in the desert for 40 days – trying to enter in communication with this higher intelligence?- Or was he working out all the moves he could chose to carry out in order to bring Love to the world, like a chess player, rationally working out outcomes, discarding those that would work well, and keeping that which was the most promising?

I would argue he was tapping into a higher intelligence.

Isn’t this the teaching of St John’s “Wedding in Cana”? Jesus reminds the organisers of the wedding that they need only trust, and God will provide.

We hear this parable often, at weddings, confirmations, and yet we don’t allow ourselves to trust.

Maybe because we are too attached to particular outcomes. “I need to have a husband who tells me I’m beautiful in order to feel good about myself”, “I need to have a job that guarantees me a monthly income before I can feel safe”, “I need to have a child to feel fulfilled”….

Maybe we can open ourselves to the possibility that these outcomes are insignificant compared to what a higher intelligence has in store for us.

Now for intuition and women.

WHY WAS I NEVER TOLD THAT MY INTUITION RISES THROUGH THE ROOF WHEN I HAVE MY PERIODS?

I was prescribed the pill when I first started needing contraception, I was put on a morena coil after I started having children, it releases hormones at small doses in the body, and when I finally took it out, my moods went haywire, it took a year for them to stabilize.

I have only just learned to appreciate, just when my periods are about to disappear, that those few days when I am in my “moon time” my body tells me to slow down and feels so much more strongly. Everything that is not quite right in my life feels so much more uncomfortable. Everything that is not aligned with who I am, with who my loved ones are, shouts out.

Isn’t this an amazing gift? To have a tool that tells me what needs addressing? It is not a time to make decisions, rather a time to tune in to this higher intelligence that says “this is right”, or “this is wrong”.

I recently learned from a Navajo lady that in her culture women in their moon time are honoured and respected for the deep insights they have then.

Do the medical bodies realise the damage that is done when they administer willy-nilly hormonal contraception to women, many for most of their lives?

Maybe because many doctors are men, they have no idea about the gifts of women’s complex hormonal cycles.

I feel there is a whole body of work to be researched on how women are attuned to life’s creative process, to their instincts to create life, nurture it, protect it. It’s in their physical make up. They create life (in all ways, not just having babies), and yet they have been led to believe their female attributes are inferior to men’s. Their moods irrelevant and dangerous.

I believe it is time to come back to a mode of functioning where we feel more, and allow ourselves to be more attuned to our environment. More in our hearts and bodies, less in our brains. We may then stop working so hard for things we don’t need, and realise everything we ever needed is right here already.