Ethics and Values: July 2006 Archives

I was going through the press clippings that my Dad sends me via snail-mail every few days (now you know where I get my Luddite tendencies from) and came an article that highlights a business not far from where I grew up in Wisconsin.

Badger Mining, a family owned business, was named the best place to work in the US by the Society for Human Resource Management. Badger Mining, headquartered in Berlin (pronounced BER-lin since WWII), manufactures aggregates out of silica, limestone, etc.

Here is their mission statement:

Our mission is to become the quality leader in the industrial minerals industry with a team of people committed to excellence and a passion for satisfying our customers. We will allocate all our resources by having self-directed work teams identify, evaluate, and develop our most profitable opportunities, with controlled growth and the highest quality standards. We are committed to environmental responsibility, safety, health, and integrity while providing a rewarding and enjoyable place to work.

They have been able to develop a very profitable business that has been around for twenty-seven years, while treating their employees and other stakeholders with respect:

- They were lauded in the award for their open communications, which includes communication from dissenting points of view. Employees said they felt free to discuss any decision with the person who made that decision no matter what position they hold in the business.

- Flexible work hours allow employees, or associates as they are known at Badger Mining, to attend family events.

- They have an "impeccable safety record" that got them an additional award from the U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the Industrial Minerals Association - North America

- They share 20% of profits with those who generate their profits, their employees, every quarter.

- They offer full insurance for the entire family, and if your family waives their coverage, you get the cash -- $8,000.

- They offer four $5,000 college scholarships, one to a student located in each of their four operating locations.

- Badger has been recognized for their land stewardship and conservation efforts.

This is a small business that has put their values into practice in how they run their business. They clearly manage their operations with integrity.

What do farmers do? They farm. What do designers do? They design. What do managers do? They manage. What do entrepreneurs do? Well, they.....

Those who start and build businesses engage in a career that has no simple verb to describe what we do. Entrepreneur is a noun. Entrepreneurship is a noun. Entrepreneurism, a newer form of the term, is a noun. Entrepreneurial is an adjective. But, as you remember from 8th grade, adjectives simply describe nouns.

Entrepreneur comes from an Old French word (a fact that I still find hard to accept) entreprendre, which means to undertake. So it started as a verb, but now is a noun. As a side note, I am glad we did not take the literal translation of the French term to refer to those who start businesses. Otherwise all of us who are entrepreneurs would be known as undertakers instead.

So why is Professor Cornwall going into a long, and rather seemingly trivial diatribe? Am I finally becoming the doddering old academic we see mumbling to himself, shuffling across campus?

I assure you there is a point to all of this.

I have been watching the crusty old journalist (another profession that is not a verb), Dan Rather, go ungraciously and rather defiantly off into the sunset of his life. His career as a journalist is clearly behind him, but he won't give it up. And then it came to me. His understanding of who he is is defined only by what he does for a living. He defines who he is as a person by the career he has pursued. Without his career he has very little else. Without it he is lost as he has nothing else in his life that has any real meaning.

We have seen others fail at retirement. Lee Iacocca could not stay retired as a corporate executive (noun). Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan could not stay retired as athletes (noun). For all of them, what they did for their work defined who they were as people.

Careers can do this to us. If we are not careful, they can consume all that we are. And what gets lost? Our families, our friendships, and even our souls.

If we are to become all that we were put on this Earth to do, we have to temper the temptation to become consumed by our work. We need to resist becoming the noun of what we do for a living.

Work hard at being a spouse. Work hard at being a parent. Work hard at worshiping God. Work hard at being a friend. Work hard at being a good citizen in your community. And yes, work hard at your vocation. None of these alone can fulfill our humanness.

One of the risks of using nouns to describe what we do in our work is that it can reinforce the tendency we all have to get carried away with our work. I loved starting a growing businesses (most of the time, at least). I love teaching and writing. It is indeed a blessing to love what one does for a living and joy the hard work that goes along with it. But, with every virtue there is a vice looming in the background. Although hard work is a good thing, it can be taken to excess and become a vice if it keeps us from all the other things we should be doing with our lives.

American society does not make this any easier. I am reminded of the lyric from a jazz record from the 1980s that said, "Everything in moderation, and moderation is the first to go." We have become a culture of excess.

This is particularly true for the entrepreneur. We seem to create folk heroes out of entrepreneurs who expend Herculean efforts to achieve success in their businesses. And while this is good to a point, if entrepreneurial success comes at the expense of our marriage, our families, our faith, and our friendships, it is a hollow victory. If all we have at the end of our lives is our wealth, if that is all we leave behind, that is not a life well lived. As the old saying goes, "you never see a hearse with a luggage rack."

So here is what I am going to commit to: I will help to find us a verb to describe what entrepreneurs do. It has to be catchy, like the term entrepreneurship, so that people will actually use it. And if they do, maybe that will be one small step toward no longer defining those who start businesses only in terms of that activity. We can be, and should be, so much more.

One key aspect of effective marketing for entrepreneurs is to learn how their customers think. By learning how to "think like your customer" you have a better chance of developing accurate revenue forecasts and more effective marketing plans. Every good bootstrapper has mastered the art of getting into their customers' heads and using this knowledge to get the most bang for their precious marketing dollars.

But, an article at StartupJournal reminds us of another important lesson. What customers say is not always reflective of what they really believe and how they will actually behave. Customers may say things to us that are based on what they think is socially acceptable and politically correct. But, they do not always act on what they say.

In the StartupJournal piece we find out that all of the talk by consumers about being environmentally sensitive and aware does not always lead to a decision to buy.

Running an environmentally friendly business can be a good way to distinguish yourself from competition in your area and create a niche, and that's especially true with today's growing concern about global warming. But be careful of assuming that just because you're "green," consumers will naturally be willing to throw more greenbacks your direction.

After all, look at how many failed attempts McDonald's has had when trying to react to the stated preference from consumers for healthier foods. Time after time, even though they offer "healthy choices," we go back to our Big Macs and fries -- albeit maybe with a Diet Coke. We say we want healthy food, but when we pull up to the drive-thru what we really order is what tastes really good at a reasonable cost. And what still tastes best to us is fried and fatty.

If you want to have a "green" business or offer healthier foods, do so because you think it is the right thing to do, and not because you think it is trendy and will increase your profits. Equating ethics and social responsibility with better business performance misses the point and rarely holds true over the long term. We should never do what we think to be the right thing because we get some reward (at least not some earth reward). We should do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. And know that you will still need to compete on what customers really look for: value, convenience, service, quality, special features, and so forth.