Tag: Corporate Social Responsibility

Who doubts that the future of 3-D printing is that you will soon be able to print with almost any substance that can be turned into a spray?  Or better yet, the drive for new compounds and materials will harbour an explosion in stronger-than-metal fibres that will negate the need for high temperature processing?

Obviously this is many years off, but you can already produce some of the crappy little plastic nick-knacks that tourists pay squillions for every year in a 3-D printer you can buy for less than £1,000 and put on your office desk. The price of these printers goes down as the quality goes up (very similar to Moore’s Law on transistors), so it’s fair to say that, like computers, they will become just as mainstream and widespread as any other home computing device.

So why this blog?  I was just sitting here, on a gorgeous Autumn day, in the house in front of my computer (like you do), when I  took a look at everything within my reach to see where it was made.  I’m sure you can guess; anything small plastic and disposable was made in China.  My next though was; what happens to all of those people whose livelihood revolves around making cheap, plastic, disposable, and in no way useful crap, when I can print equally useless crap at home?

Then I thought of a scenario; I see a guy in a far away airport rushing for a plane to get home to his family.  It suddenly occurs to him that he has not bought anything for his for his 2 little children – that’s why it’s a ‘him’ in my story BTW, women are far less stupid – and he has no time to buy something. So, he takes out his smartphone and takes a picture of a generic toy for the country he’s in, processes it through a scanning app, and sends the results to his printer sitting at home in his office.

By the time he gets home, there’s two, identical but for the colour, cheap, plastic, disposable, and in no way useful, pieces of crap sitting on his desk. Great for Daddy, bad for shopkeeper in far away airport, and VERY bad for family scraping by on the income the receive from making the cheap …you get the point.

I have no solution for this, in case you’re wondering, I LOVE the thought of what we’ll be able to do 5 – 10 years from now, nor do I have it in me to do anything more than write a stream-of-consciousness blog on something I read while browsing Wired articles.

I understand that technology, innovation, and the sheer inventiveness of the human race means that things change, and they change quicker every year, and that if you’re not ahead of the wave you will get left behind and potentially suffer.  But I can’t help wonder if this is not a perfect time for concepts such as corporate social responsibility to make their way off the marketing fluff, and into a demonstrable service provided by the leaders in the future trends.

Maybe I just ate a bad bagel…

 

I think most of us have either heard of, or experienced in some way, this statement; “Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.”. (Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull)

And some of us, if we’re completely honest, were guilty if it ourselves at some point [cough].

But what happens when it’s the person who started out at the top? By either point-in-time genius, or sheer dumb luck, they manage to take a small company into the big-time.

How do you tell the person at the top it’s time to step down?

There are 3 types of CEO:

o

  1. ‘CEOs’ who are very good at taking an idea to a level where they are noticed by larger companies who wish they had thought of the idea first. But that’s it;
    o
  2. CEOs who are gifted at taking a small company public, and making everyone lots of money. But that’s it; and
    o
  3. CEOs that can lead a company for the long haul. And yes, that’s it for them too.

The BEST CEOs know which they are, and have the ego-less foresight and common sense to step aside when their job is done. Unfortunately the rest end up driving their companies into the ground and taking their employees with them.

Which begs the question; Why is corporate social responsibility almost entirely outward facing?

I have long thought of our places of work as the new communities. Historically, we humans derived a great deal of our security, sense of belonging, and even a large chunk of our identities from the communities in which we lived. But, not any more. At least not in the major cities of the industrialised countries that represent the lion’s share of the people reading this. Physical communities have been replaced by the organisations where we spend increasing amounts of time, especially now that we’re never off-line.

Should CEOs be more accountable to the people they employ? Not for money, healthcare, career advancement etc, but for the more fundamental human needs expressed in the previous paragraph?

A business is not a democracy, and the CEO has no legal obligation whatsoever to do anything of the sort. But is it really so difficult? Security and a sense of belonging just takes a culture that places values on them. As for our identities, don’t we all love buying into a vision of the future? One in which we can believe?

And what’s so wrong with just saying thank you? A SINCERE thank you directly from the CEO to an individual will engender a 100 times more loyalty than an annual 3% cost of living increase.

In a global market where competitive advantages are measured in weeks, not years, and where people can telecommute from half a globe away, the most successful businesses will be the ones where they have the hearts of their people. Not a resignation of things never getting anything better. Innovation and creativity will only be shared within the company if their basic human needs are met, otherwise they’ll take their ideas with them to the competition.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have employees, but I would hope that I treat them with all the respect they deserve, and not as things to be used for my benefit.

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