Business Models, Economics and the Structure of Work

Fact: Ours is a capitalist system. Or, to be specific, the western world runs on an economic system based on capitalism. 

Another fact: this economic system is defined by a need for infinite growth in a finite planet. This is the current capitalist model: make more, buy more, throw more away. And repeat ad infimum. 

Thing is, infinite growth with finite resources doesn’t quite work. 

It kind of works when we compartmentalise, looking at a small section of the world or of time – you can assume there are more resources elsewhere, and that you can put your rubbish somewhere else too. But you can’t pretend forever – as the humanitarian crisis marked by ever-growing inequality and the worldwide climate crisis has unequivocally reminded us.

Of course, nature’s incredible way of compensating for and bouncing back from the damage done to it means we’ll never truly be able to calculate the extent of what we’ve done. But even with the evidence we have we can’t pretend that this growth is sustainable – in that it literally cannot be sustained it; it only goes on as long as the resources do, as long the planet lets it. 

So what do we do? 

We have to work out a system whereby all people and planet can thrive. We have to change the way we value things – and we have to integrate compassion, kindness and fairness (to all animals, oceans and plants, as well as all humans) into the way we do it. 

If we really, truly value biodiversity, we need to properly cherish the commons: valuing a forest by its choppable wood or a sea by its edible fish (or, indeed, a person by the price of what they can produce) has proven unsound time and time again – causing a colossal loss of biodiversity, and a loss of future access to those wonders (and resources) for our children. Integrated into our economy properly, the commons could, and should, be our legacy. 

Shall we include “a person by the price of what he/she can produce”?  Maybe I am just feeling too touchy these days about inequality and our crazy economic system not giving all the opportunity of living and covering basic needs, no se… but I am!  

This re-evaluation has human equality at its heart, too – returning to giving a fair worth to natural resources would help fairly value the different gifts of each species, region, ecosystem and country, putting each on a more even playing field and working towards international equality. 

And maybe at the same time as thinking globally, we could go back to acting locally, consuming, sourcing and producing what we need from our neighbourhoods and most immediate environments, thus reducing our carbon footprints and waste while helping our communities thrive. 

Because thriving isn’t the same as growing – it implies an aim other than its own expansion. A quality over quantity. And we can use it as the starting point to change the way we look at our economic system: to think holistically, of the long-term and the entire planet; thinking in terms of happiness and fulfillment, of regeneration and respect to all things.

And the easiest way to impact the economy? 

To address the very cells of our economic organism: our businesses. Because when you change the parts, you change the whole, and when you change the intention, you change the result. 

So let’s opt for a more humane, holistic business model that doesn’t just look at profit as the goal of business, and the human and environmental experience as collateral. Let’s follow one that equally values people, planet and purpose (an objective, or legacy, beyond the day-to-day work, for the greater good of the whole) and considers profit a means for providing for all these other elements, for its long-term legacy, and taking care of the planet and nature, and the people (from customers to local communities to staff).

Speaking of people…

The environment certainly hasn’t been the only thing impacted by our obsessive pursuit of growth; infinite consumerism has, ultimately, meant infinite working hours, as we frantically follow economic agents that focus on profit over our personal happiness and wellbeing. 

We are in the era of psychological capitalism – an era where more money is generated by the human psyche than by muscle power. That means that how we make our money, and how we spend much of our days, is increasingly linked to our brain power – and, thus, our to our thoughts and ideas, so we feel that our work defines us more and more. We put more and more weight on work as a way of defining self-worth. 

But because of the weight of how much money we make – which we need more and more of for all that infinite consumption – we might dedicate our lives to professions that pay well, rather than those that are (necessarily) aligned to our gifts, and hence joys, talents, geniuses and, ultimately, higher purpose. So, somehow, we tie up our self-worth, and most of our waking hours, in work we don’t even want to do, that we might not even be that brilliant at.

This, of course, has a huge impact on our health and happiness, and cuts into the time and space humans need for free time, for fun, friendship, holidays, hobbies and quality time with our families –notably our children, whose education we put in the hands of institutions for lack of time ourselves. Given that the development and education they experience now effects the future of all of society, of all humanity, it makes sense that we dedicate more of our days to this rather crucial evolutionary task, no?

The small question of the colossal impact on humanity aside, this is also a very inefficient way to operate a company from an entrepreneurial point of view. This is the human side of thrive economics: the understanding that when you make sure your staff are working in alignment with their highest gifts and have control over how they work, they thrive in the company – they feel valued and purposeful when they know they’re shining, trusted, that they are part of a holocracy rather than a hierarchy, and that raises the vibration of the whole business. As well as being generally quite nice, it’s much more economically efficient – boosting productivity, creativity and staff retention, where the happiness of the individual helps the “happiness” of the holistic business. 

But you know what’s more efficient? Nature

This is where biomimicry – designing our systems taking inspiration from nature – can help us. Nature operates from a vantage point that everything is useful, everyone is occupied, used, their gifts recognised – and the organ is efficient, its circles closed. Think of a beehive, or the superficially chaotic but no less spectacularly efficient thriving forest ecosystem – each element is integral, each has a different, but no less important role in helping the whole thrive. 

But we are, ultimately, human

And we should celebrate and feed what makes humans distinct from nature too – including the unique way in which we work and create, and what helps us do that best. So the best business models include elements that help workers reach their optimal creative/productive states – environments that feed the innate human need for fun, beauty, greenery, flexibility and spontaneity as we’re working creativity and productively (find out more about how we reach our optimal creative state: The Flow). 

Again, this is more than just a millennial tech-start up demand for beanbags, away days and work-from-home days, but adjoining what is most humane with what genuinely, scientifically makes the most business – and therefore economic – sense. And it makes even more business sense now we’ve seen that, at any time, world events could call on us all to work away from our offices. 
Ultimately, it’s yet another way to encourage a thrive rather than growth model – and it’s the sustainable model that, we think, is the only way forward. Fact.