Be Good For Something

“It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world. Only such a new understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.”
-Vaclav Havel, former President, Czech Republic


Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”. His words were a clarion call to his countrymen to become people of principle and to work for the greater good. It was a reminder that unless our lives and work are tied to bigger things, we risk failure and marginality.

As it applies to business leaders, the notion of goodness presents an entirely new set of thorny issues. Corporations exist to produce and to profit. By design, they are not persons, but institutions of commerce, trade and service. In human terms, companies don’t have a heart or a soul. Morality—beyond what is legally required and expected—has no place on the corporate agenda, some would argue.

But they would be wrong.

Today, society expects corporations to act differently than in the past. Consumers, activists, regulators and policymakers have come to believe that corporations should have a heart, if not a soul. Some even believe that companies should wear their hearts on their sleeves. As a society, we embrace the view that a company must stand for something other than productivity and profit—as a leader, this is one of your greatest challenges.

(c) 2008 Adonis E. Hoffman