Do you and I create authentic value? As we build our personal brands do we try and differentiate ourselves by demonstrating how we’re better than others or do we try and differentiate by making a positive difference to people, communities, and society. This challenge may sound a bit ambitious for a blog. But I believe that if each of us committed to adding authentic value at every level in our lives can be revolutionary.
Many of us are pissed off at the banking system and at being stuck in our current (and apparently worsening) economic malaise. We know there was no constructive value built into making credit available in irresponsible ways and making the system sick with obtuse financial products that few could even understand. Financial institutions hid and shifted costs from each other for profit and greed until it all fell apart. It wasn’t authentically sustainable. Many of us participated directly or indirectly and are now living with the consequences.
In his thought provoking book the The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business Umair Haque challenges the current industrial model and challenges business to ensure our products and services result in tangible, positive benefits to each other. Read the book to gain insight into how that $/€/£ 3.00 burger may really cost us ten times that much. (…I love burgers…) Umair is a capitalist but really gets readers thinking about whether the principles under which many of us operate continue to serve us well.
Character Move: most of us can’t control much of the macro economy, but you and I have control over what we do regarding our daily actions:
- Do our daily actions add to the well being of others? How?
- Are you and I metaphorical equivalents of a gas guzzling, road hogging Hummer? (i.e. “It’s about us.”)Clear the road baby!
- How do we make a tangible lasting difference by authentically adding value? I’m not talking about saving whales… Just you and I CONSCIOUSLY adding “better” to others in our daily interactions.
Being big and juicy – being BETTER – in the Triangle,
Lorne