Business is Not About Business. It's About Life.
Business like life is neither linear nor simply black and white.
Navigating the shades requires embracing the many paradoxes of leadership and in my opinion, the biggest paradox of them all is that business is not actually about business, it’s about life.
Our new world has made this brutally clear.
Meeting the moment with purpose
Whether business leaders are putting the word ‘purpose’ to it or not, it’s been quite amazing to see how many companies have stepped up to the plate in the Covid-19 crisis and have met the moment with purpose - taking care of their people, their suppliers and their communities.
Sadly, it is not universally true, but it has shown us that in times of uncertainty, the only way forward is audacious.
We’ve been here before
Way back in 2003 Stephen Carter and Jeremy Kourdi published The Road to Audacity: Being Adventurous in Life and Work and opens with the eerily familiar words:
“Our country is at war and no one knows how it will end. A deadly new virus is gripping the peoples of Asia and other places, with no known cure.”
We have been here before, but clearly the lessons were not learned. Only now have the depth and breadth of the pandemic and the unprecedented economic shutdown brought us crashing down to reality.
So perhaps it is time to reconsider the message of the book.
Uncertainty. Risk. Audacity.
Ironically, they wrote: “It is perhaps ironic that at a time when human knowledge, discovery and insight have never been greater or more widely shared, the biggest discovery of all is how much we do not know.”
The three themes — uncertainty, risk and audacity — are spelt out as:
Uncertainty — not knowing the likelihood or nature of possible future events
Risk — the probability of one particular outcome occurring
Audacity — the mindset determining which course of action we take in relation to that probability
The central argument is that in times of uncertainty the odds are unknown and incalculable.
Risk management is therefore hamstrung by too many variables.
And so, in the words of one of the best risk theorists of our time, John Adams, the only chance of success lies not in the realm of calculation, but of judgement.
In other words… we need to be audacious.
Same same but different
We have seen pandemics before, but this time there is, unfortunately, a perfect storm of risk factors making the Greater Recession now inevitable. And as if that's not depressing enough, there is increasing evidence that our environmental failures are not only to blame for this pandemic but likely to cause more.
Quite simply, there can be no return to normal.
Graffiti in Hong Kong subway: We can't return to normal, because the normal that we had was precisely the problem
We have to chart a completely new way forward with purpose at the core of our new strategy. And we need to be audacious enough to take this risk even when there is so much uncertainty.
Our last chance
As McKinsey's latest paper "Leading with Purpose" states: We are in a generation-shaping moment from which a significantly different world will emerge.
I am hoping that this time business leaders will remember that business is not about business. It's about life.
It’s our last chance.