Ethics and Values: December 2008 Archives

I offered the invocation for the hooding ceremony of our graduating MBA students last evening.  Let me offer it to all entrepreneurs as a prayer for the new year:

 

Lord, we thank you for these entrepreneurs and business leaders. 

 

We pray that they understand that their work on earth should never be just a career, but a true vocation that connects their faith to all they do in the work.  We pray that they remember that true integrity is to find God helping us to live as He intended us to live in all that we do:  in our family, in our community, and in our work.

 

We pray that they always remember that real Courage is the courage to the right thing even under the most difficult circumstances.  It is the courage to treat all people justly, even in difficult economic times like these.

 

We pray that they never forget that all they are given in this life comes from God, so they should be prudent stewards of all of His gifts. 

 

We pray that they temper their drive to succeed in their careers - keeping time for their spouses, their children, their families, their friends, their community, and of course, for God.

 

We pray that while they may attain great power in their careers, that they remain humble.  We pray that no matter how successful they become that they always see the face of Jesus in everyone they meet in their work.

 

Finally, we pray that we never lose faith, even in difficult times like these.  Jesus said, "I am leaving you with a gift--peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid." 

 

We pray that we never forget that God gives us peace, even in the worst of times.

 

All of this we pray in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.

 

Amen.

The John Templeton Foundation hosts a series of "Big Questions" discussions.  They ask each question to  leading scientists, scholars, and public figures.

The latest question is: "Does the Free Market Erode Moral Character?"

The responses to this question really get to the heart of the current debate about the role that free markets and capitalism played in today's economic woes.  I would encourage everyone to ponder the responses these folks offer, as we need a more informed debate about what really has been going on and where we go from here.

I will offer my thoughts....

Free markets are morally neutral -- neither good nor bad.  What brings morality into free market activities are the actions of people. 

People's decisions and actions become habits.  First we choose to lie, but eventually if we continue to lie we become a liar.  Virtues are habits, and these habits shape our character over time.

It is time to stop blaming morally neutral systems for what we do and who we become.  Ultimately, we become good or evil through our own actions and decisions that are taken through our own free will. 

It is time to take a long, hard look at our culture; for it is there that we find our shared sense of right and wrong.  We must stop the folly of deferring morality to governmental policy and regulatory control.

(Thanks to my colleague Harry Hollis for passing along the Templeton link).

The millennial generation is, as they say, an enigma wrapped inside of a contradiction.

In a column at Forbes, Dr. Steven Berglas wonders about the entrepreneurial mettle of those born from the 1980s to the 1990s:

I admit I harbor some concerns about the country's evolving entrepreneurial ego. Joseph Schumpeter, the famous economist who coined the term "creative destruction" and likened entrepreneurs to nothing less than "heroic" innovators, believed that self-made men and women possessed a "rugged individualism" and a "will to conquer"--not exactly millennial DNA.

I think what we have to get used to is that they are redefining what entrepreneurship is all about.  To them, it is not simply a ticket to unimaginable riches. 

When I talk to students about why they want to be entrepreneurs, the answer "to become the richest person in town" does not come up like it did back when I was teaching Gen X-ers.

They are using entrepreneurship as not just an economic tool, and not just a social tool as we see with their fascination with Social Entrepreneurship, but as a cultural tool.

I go back to a comment one of my students posted at this blog a few years ago:

My generation is really focused on keeping family first, even before career. Some say that this is because we watched so many baby boomers screw this whole family thing up. My take on it is that because the baby boomers sometimes grew up wanting, they determined in their minds that their families would want for nothing. Unfortunately, my generation has all they want, but grew up with workaholic parents who were absent in their lives. I believe we're searching to find that balance between family and career.

And they view entrepreneurship as the path to help them rebuild what they see as a damaged culture.

Paul Orfalea, Founder of Kinko's, succinctly summed up this viewpoint when asked shortly after selling to FedEx about his biggest success:

"Success in life is having kids who want to come back to visit your when they've grown up."

Berglas ends his essay as follows: 

My prediction: The best and brightest millennials will combine missionary zeal, hardcore management skills and Silicon Valley-style creativity to attack social ills. Will that recipe lead to serious overall wealth creation, even if piles of money aren't the stated goal? I think so, though the paradigm shift will take some time.

A paradigm shift indeed!

Today's young entrepreneurs are telling us that "this is not their father's entrepreneurship."

The Entrepreneurship Research and Education Network of Central European Universities (ERENET) has just published its latest issue of Profile, which examines the role of faith and beliefs in doing business from a wide array of authors from around the world.  Mike Naughton and I wrote a piece for this issue based our work together in our Good Entrepreneur Project. (You can purchase our latest book on this topic, Bringing Your Business to Life, using this link).