Wherefore Art Thou - Volume 2 (the organization)

In the second in the series "Wherefore Art Thou", Stephen Barden argues that if  human beings need to have a balance of meaning and value with their world, then organizations certainly do. 
 

For more information about Stephen Barden and his work please visit:
www. stephenbarden.org
or
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenbarden/

Transcript

If this is the first time you’ve listened to “The Power of Balance” – welcome. If you’re coming back to us, welcome back. Either way, thank you.

So… we continue with the theme of “Wherefore art thou”. In the last episode I talked about how it applies to individuals, in this one I gradually move on to the “wherefore” of organizations. 

But before I do it’s probably sensible if I retrace and expand on some of the stuff I talked about last time and clear up some of the terms. 

Most theorists and practitioners talk about how crucial purpose is to individuals and organizations My experience tells me that before purpose, (the why and what-for) comes the where- for? Where is the place of meaning that we and world we live in, that is the context we operate in, share the highest mutual value? 

Wherefore Art Thou comes – of course -from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet in which Juliet asks Romeo whether his place is to be a member of his father’s clan with all their conflicts and restrictions or is it to be a free man to love and to be loved in equal terms? 

This balance (of significance, caring and value between oneself and the world we directly experience) is crucial to the “Wherefore”. It’s a development from my theory and book on the Partnering Stance, which holds that if – as I found in my research – the most successful leaders were those who learned to assume that they and their world held a reasonable balance of power, then it should also be true that they held a reasonable balance of value, of meaning with their world. They valued their world as much as their world valued them.  It makes sense that if you see your context as your equal partner in power (the capacity to do) – you’re going to see them as your equal partner in value and meaning (the capacity to be). 

And even though, I’m still taking about the wherefore of individuals, all of this – as I hope I make clear later – applies to organizations as well. And probably countries.

Many extraordinary leaders have formed this assumption of equilibrium with their world at a very early age. The rest of us, as I said in the previous episode, need to develop that assumption. How? By finding a place, a situation, work, a community where you can experience and, more important, practice what it is like to be of equal value and meaning with your world. If at first you can’t find that place, I suggested that you act and be as if you have, in a bite sized chunk. I told you, as an example, about my brother who brought into one task- fixing his battered old truck - the care and patience of his creativity, that he loved but that he couldn’t express in his work as a farmer.

This search for the place of meaning shouldn’t be focused on “what can I do to be valued, or what can my context (my community, my institution, my world) do so that I can value it?” because then neither you nor your world have intrinsic worth. Only what you can do for one another has value. Think of a family where the only value you place on your mother, your brother or your daughter is what they can do for you. They become tools for your profit – as, of course, do you, become instruments for their gain. It is a family where no member has inherent value as a human being. When you judge yourself and your world – first and foremost -by what you do for each other, you are not at your best value-place in that world. You don’t value your world. And your world certainly doesn’t value you. You are in fact nothing – other than a transaction When you find your wherefore, your place in the world as a human being, then you act for your family or your community or your organization from a place of connection, caring and balance – and therefore you give of your best. 

Now the question is whether organizations have, or even need, their “Wherefore”, their place of balanced value and meaning with their market, before they get to their purpose. Or whether organizations have to be, by definition, purely transactional to” thrive.

What did that fairly successful billionaire Warren Buffet say, amongst a load of other things? “In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love”.

I can only assume that applies to organizations as well, since they’re -as we speak still controlled by people. 

I know that the language of Love, value, meaning, caring, heart can seem just completely out of place in the realm of organizations and business. It’s all together too soft.

 Apparently. 

But think about this for a second: I suspect you didn’t blink when Buffet used the word “love”, or when you talk about the value of the dollar today; there’s nothing strange about “meaning”, when we’re analysing a market. And caring? We’re not exactly feeling soft when we tell someone, “For heaven’s sake take some care with how you’re treating that piece of equipment”. Or even when we use the phrase “customer care” to describe our priorities as an organization. What’s that about? Pure cant? And what about Heart? ---the heart of your business. We both know that if you don’t know the heart of your business, you, your business and your bank balance are going to have some problems. 

For a long time, my model for developing strategic alignment for organizations started with purpose. Why are you here? What are you here to do? From there, we would tackle the network of: “for whom, with whom, with what, to what end – and with what levels of achievement, of return 

But, more recently, I have worried that I missed out the key first step – the “Wherefore””. 

Can an organization have a place of meaning -where it holds a balance of value with its world? What was the “Wherefore” of Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, Meta before their very first product or service – and can that place change?

You can find Apple’s original ““Wherefore”” right there on the flyleaf of “Make Something Wonderful”, the collection of speeches and writings by Steve Jobs:

He said in 2007, “There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there. 

  He continued: “And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands. You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something’s transmitted there. And it’s a way of expressing to the rest of our species our deep appreciation. So, we need to be true to who we are and remember what’s really important to us.”

A few things stand out for me there: his emphasis on “being”. Being comes first –and then action. First, one is a being, then one is a being that appreciates “the rest of humanity.” And how do you express your appreciation to someone? You give them your gift. And with Jobs, I think, he brought to his world his gift of making something wonderful through his organization. Beautifully designed, revolutionary and very useful, personal communication tools. And finally, he didn’t do that because he glimpsed a money-making gap in the market. He had no idea whether it would make money.  He did it because, as he said, it was really important to him. How do we know? Because he drove everyone nuts with insisting on it.  

It was Job’s “Wherefore” that gave Apple its place of meaning in the market. And it, like him, had to decide what was important and how to stay true to that meaning. Not once but twice. When he left the company, the wherefore was removed and started to fail. When he came back, it returned. For a time, after his death, it looked as if his heirs held fast onto that place of meaning. Now, I’m not so sure. 

On the surface, finding the organization’s “Wherefore” may look no different from spotting a money-making gap in the market and going for it. Actually, It’s a lot different. When you go, purely, for the gap in the market, you’re looking for what you can get out of it. What you can extract. The level of quality you provide is entirely dependent on the market’s tolerance – or ability to find an alternative. So, you’ll have a few options if you want to stay afloat. You can periodically up your quality to get back into your market’s levels of tolerance. But then you’ll be bound to drop it again when the profits slip. 

Or… you can capture the market. You can become so big that you not only squeeze out your customer’s alternative suppliers, but you probably own them. Even better, you can invest in so many different assets in different sectors that you’ll be able to smooth out your profit-volatility across the sectors. Which is what those massive investment companies do - increasingly so. In the meantime, of course, quality of service goes down, customers feel more and more powerless, resentful and irrelevant; trust in institutions – including those that are supposed to protect you– diminishes. And here’s the irony: those organizations that treat their customer, their market, as a commodity, become a commodity themselves. They lose their differentiation. How much difference in service, reliability and performance have you experienced in the utilities, telecoms, and even the banks you’ve used? 

So, going purely for profit, finding those gaps in the market and controlling them, may make some people very, very rich but it kills innovation, it alienates customers and it breaks down trust in institutions, well beyond the market place. Why? Because there is no balance of meaning or value: there is no “wherefore”. There is a purpose, of course. A purpose to make money. 

Now: you may be saying to yourself: that’s a good enough purpose. But actually, it isn’t. The trajectory of the market place over the last 20-30 years shows that the ability to make sustainable profits, is narrowing for all but the very, very few. And chances are: you are not one of the very, very few. SMEs, for example, account for around 90% of businesses worldwide – and 50% of employment. Despite their significance, they are facing increasing difficulties accessing finance, markets and resources. And, staying afloat.

Bankruptcies are on the up. According to Brabners.com, global bankruptcies increased 9% year on year by November 2024. More larger companies are collapsing. The rise of bankruptcies amongst larger organizations in Western Europe is 23%. The behemoths, however, remain intact, because they have ensured they have most of the resources to do so.

So purely transactional companies are struggling more and more, unless they have been swallowed up by the very biggest. And the customers – that’s us – are experiencing near zero customisation, differentiation and – yes- meaning in products, services and distribution.

Remember what happened when Steve Jobs was turfed out of his own company between the years of 1985 and 1997. Apple became yet another computer maker that struggled against IBM and others that were producing cheaper and probably more reliable PC’s.  It retained its purpose – it lost its meaning. Jobs, himself apparently, although he made buckets of money through shrewd investments while he was away, probably also lost his “Wherefore” – when he formed a company that sold computers to businesses; computers that needed cost efficient functionality, not beautiful design. When he returned he brought back his gift – borne of that meeting place of appreciation between himself and his world, his customers and his people.   

And, since his death, while Apple has continued to design excellent products, it   may well be damaging itself by not holding true to that place of deep mutual value. 

I often look at changes it makes and wonder: did you do that because it’s helpful to me or to you? 

The Wherefore asks the question of organizations: in what space do we and the market value each other most? Where can we bring our best value – and be recognised for that value. The value – the place of meaning – can start with the founders but it can also be changed by new leadership. Any leader can discover – or rediscover - their organization’s place of meaning, no matter how soulless that company has become.  Once unearthed, that meaning can then go on to be expressed by the organization in its purpose: into both the products and services it provides as well as the relationship with the market: the design, the care; and the mutual respect and integrity. 

Ironic isn’t it, by the way, that the billionaire Steve Jobs used the words appreciation, gift, care and love to describe his approach to his work. In the meantime, I have to reassure myself, let alone you, that I’m not sounding corny. 

So are heart, love and gifts too soppy? Do they have any place in the hard world of enterprise? 

I think, there’s a clue in that phrase: “the hard world of enterprise”. Enterprise may be tough – resilient, even ruthless. But it’s not hard, it’s not indifferent. What is ultimately indifferent is stock trading or value trading. And it is that attitude that has been imported into the world of enterprise. And with it, it’s language. I have never heard the words care, love, quality or make something wonderful, on a trading floor.

Indifference – in both the language and the quality of service and product – made itself felt not just when private equity started buying up service, production (and increasingly) manufacturing companies, but even more so when those self-same PE companies were dominated by even more transactional shareholders: investment institutions and mutual funds. 

If I am buying into your company or investing into a private equity company that is buying your company, my interest is only – or at least primarily – on how you impact the value of my equity. 

Financial and investment institutions are largely indifferent to the quality of your service or product. But your customers are not. 

As Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle is quoted as saying, "... Don't mistake any of this for altruism...Fear and greed just doesn't work. If you want to be successful, quality and service just works better."

Here’s the thing: to provide quality you have to care about the product you’re providing. And in order to provide service you have to care about who you’re providing it to. If you think that your customers are there just so that you can make money out of them, then even if you initially think that quality and service is the way to get money out of their wallets, sooner rather than later you’ll have to cut back on both because your priority is increasing profit– in the short term. The irony, of course, is that the customer who came to you for quality and service will walk away. Hence “quality and service just work better”. 

However, Ellison, whether he knew it or not, had to find, his “Wherefore”, his place of mutual value with his world, to know what “quality and service” actually meant, what levels both he and his world expected, before his company started providing it.  So, find your and your company’s “Wherefore”, then you can act.

What does this all mean in practical terms for an existing or new organization? 

Start your strategic analysis, not with “what is our purpose” but with the question: where are we for? Where does this company belong? Where does it and its context, its customers, it stakeholders, meet in value and values? And don’t think like an investor institution – think like a member of your society, a creator. Think and talk, not just about making something wonderful but your organization being something wonderful – because of the way it gives and earns respect and integrity as employer, producer, and value to its society. Whether you are a manufacturer, a financier, a designer, a media company, and yes, even a private equity fund, think about where your organization – and its context, (its market, its customers) can be in balance. Care about your customers – and you’ll care about what you’re providing for them. Care about your customers and they’ll care about you. 

Understand where your place is, your “wherefore”.  And then work on your “what for” – your purpose.  Do that and you’ll be rewarded in spades. 

I’m Stephen Barden, this has been another episode of The Power of Balance. Thanks for listening.

Books:
Stephen Barden:(2021) "How Successful Leaders Do Business with Their World".  Abingdon: Routledge Focus

 

Excerpt From:

Steve Jobs:  (2007) "Make Something Wonderful"

https://books.apple.com/gb/book/make-something-wonderful/id6446905902