Why Do We Work?

On average Americans work 52.2 hours a week, 261 days a year resulting in 2,088 hours a year.  Wow.  That’s a whole lot of time spent working.  So this brings me to my question…..

Why do we work?

In What People Want From Work Susan M. Heathfield states, “Whatever your personal reasons for working, the bottom line, however, is that almost everyone works for money. Whatever you call it: compensation, salary, bonuses, benefits or remuneration, money pays the bills.”

In Why Do We Work? One Career Changer’s Answer Lisa Cullen gives the definitive answer….PASSION.  She goes on to give an example of a Kinko’s executive who gave up the big career to pursue work that aligned with her passion of walking.

In Why do we work? Brian Dumaine states, “When Fortune asked scores of managers, from CEOs to warehouse supervisors, why they worked, the three most common reasons cited besides paying the mortgage were to make the world a better place, to help themselves and others on their team grow spiritually and intellectually, and lastly, to perfect their technical skills.”  The article goes on to give the example of Tom of Tom’s of Maine, an environmentally focused company that makes toothpaste and other personal items, who set out to make his work more fulfilling and better the world.  The article also explains how an insurance CEO found his work to be a worthy profession because “life is unfair, bad things happen to good people, and insurance is a way to help those good people for whom fate dealt a bum hand. For him, something as seemingly mundane as insurance took on great meaning.”

In The Future of Work:  Engaging Employees to Drive Innovation Will Marré asserts that employees want to work for reasons beyond a paycheck.  He cites research that indicates over 85 percent of workers want work that contributes to a better society and a healthier environment.  They want to work to benefit society.

All of us have our own reasons for working.  But the truth is more and more of us work for reasons besides just the money.  Let’s face it.  We work 2,088 hours a year.  Why not spend that time doing something that makes the world a better place and brings us something more than money?

Does Employee Engagement Come Down to Social Responsibility?

There is a crisis in the workplace today—employee disengagement.  In fact, Disengagement has reached what many would call a crisis level encompassing over 70% of the workforce and over 50% of management (Towers-Perrin Global Workforce Study).  Disengagement manifests itself in a lack of commitment to an organization’s goals, absenteeism, low performance, cynicism, low trust and chronic complaints of being overstressed.

The High Cost of Employee Disengagement reports that “actively disengaged” workers are costing US businesses $300 billion a year in productivity losses.  $300 billion!
Measurable costs such as product failures, customer service failures, and absenteeism are huge, but immeasurable opportunity cost associated with lack of innovation and execution are likely even larger and are manifested in loss of market share, margin, growth and even survival.

So what’s the answer?  It might surprise you.

According to Will Marré, acclaimed expert, in The Future of Work:  Engaging Employees to Drive Innovation asserts that disengagement stems from employees not having their needs met at work.  Marré refers to research that indicates that employees today long for three things: 1) meaningful work that contributes to a better society and healthier environment, 2) flexible working arrangements, and 3) personal growth.   The article states, “What 21st century employees want is to be engaged in meaningful work that benefits society.  This is the biggest driver of engagement.”

Tony Robbins agrees that a sense of fulfillment is important for our happiness and wellbeing.  In the TED video, Tony Robbins Asks Why We Do What We Do, he states, “When it comes to fulfillment, that’s an art.  And the reason is, it’s about appreciation and it’s about contribution.”  He further discusses the importance of our need to make a greater contribution.  Of six basic human needs, according to Robbins, our sixth need is to contribute beyond ourselves.  He states, “We all know, corny as it sounds, the secret to living is giving.  We all know life’s not about me, it’s about we.”

Social Responsibility Boosts Employee Engagement also agrees that a company’s social responsibility can lead to more engaged employees.  The article quotes Douglas Klein, President of Sirota Survey Intelligence who states, “”Businesses that recognize the importance of social responsibility often have employees who tend to be more satisfied with their jobs, adopt similar values, and become more committed to achieving success within the industry.”

Furthermore, Corporate Social Responsibility Pays Off reports that 70 percent of North American students surveyed in the 2003 CSR Monitor by Globescan said they would not apply for a job at a company deemed socially irresponsible.  What’s more, the survey found that 68 percent disagree that salary was more important than social responsibility.   The article also states, “Instead of just cutting a check to a foundation, companies find that the connection between CSR and employee engagement is deeper if employees are directly involved.”

The bottom line is we want to have meaningful work that makes a greater contribution to humanity and the environment.  It’s not just about a paycheck anymore.  It’s about a sense of fulfillment and a purpose beyond our own.  We want to make a difference.

Outraged at the Politics of Healthcare

I’ve really tried not to write this. I’ve said my peace on a national health care make over (see Will Marre’s Radical Solution to Health Care), but now my hair is on fire. Those framing the debate are focused on all the wrong things. We cannot repair a completely broken model. We must re-think and thoroughly re-invent health care. Arguing about projected costs made by assumptions that can’t be validated is pretending to know the unknowable. Trying to close a $1 trillion gap is an exercise in science fiction. It is also strange that Republicans are so concerned about costs when they gleefully agreed to pay drug companies a trillion dollars in a deal George Bush made on Medicare drug benefits. They weren’t concerned about the trillion-dollar cost of a non-strategic war, but now when we want to end our Neanderthal ways of health care, they are wringing their hands. Right.

The financial interests that currently thrive on our broken system are reportedly throwing $10 million a week at keeping their flood of money flowing. The current system is constantly escalating costs and shrinking benefits for those that can afford insurance. Most people have no real idea what costs are actually covered by their policies because they are so complex. And the whopping bottom line remains—we have the most expensive per capita health care system in the world with the worst results in the developed world. Yet this is the system that is being defended by the brainless mouthpieces on right-wing radio and television. This is not the best we can do.

How bad is our system? Well, the American Medical Association estimates nearly 1000 people a day die from mistakes made in our state-of-the-art hospitals. Die. That’s not a problem. That’s a tragedy. The FDA approves drugs for wide use and promotion on television that kill people. Vioxx anyone? Last year my mother-in-law was hospitalized for four days. She never saw the same doctor twice. Instead a team of hospital-based doctors strolled through her room cluelessly looking through paper charts muttering questions about the previous doctors’ prescriptions. Their big achievement was completely disrupting her blood sugar levels that she had spent years controlling. She was released but never was able to get them under control before she died nine months later. Our current “system” is polluted with toxic self-interest at every turn. And the competition of competing self-interests has not produced high-quality low cost care, but it’s opposite—low quality, high cost industry. And the answer is not some medical version of the post office, an expanded Medicare system or a mish-mash of compromises of special interests. To re-invent the system we must revolutionize it.

First we begin with the premise brilliantly articulated by the philosophers who inspired the American ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The father of moral capitalism, Adam Smith, argued that the purpose of any economic system must be to maximize human benefit, to maximize the quality of life for the most individuals. He opposed slavery, child labor and all forms of economic exploitation. Jeremy Betham proposed that the best society was the one that created the most opportunities for happiness. This means that as governments form to promote public policy they ought to be focused on reducing avoidable suffering. That’s a big idea. Reducing avoidable suffering. And history is clear the most efficient way to do that is to empower individuals to be self-reliant by eliminating or controlling special interests, powerful cartels and a monied aristocracy while providing a public and private infrastructure of education, transportation, electricity, technology, access to capital, and yes, health care. This doesn’t mean the government has to provide these services; rather, our government needs to provide a system of enforced laws that prevent the powerful from manipulating and exploiting the middle class and the poor and provide infrastructure when the common good is served.

An American version of universal health care should:

1. Make each of us responsible for our own health care up to 3% of our household income each year. This responsibility will reward healthy lifestyles and promote service providers like Minute Clinics and keep us personally responsible.
2. Make all citizens part of the 300 million member group that dilutes individual catastrophic health care risks across our entire society. We need to be committed to our common good.
3. Tax harmful habits, food and beverages so that people who consume them contribute more to health care.
4. Create a non-governmental non-profit citizen co-op to manage health benefits whose employees are highly bonused to create six-sigma quality service.
5. Radically increase the number of nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants to lower the cost of routine care. Increase incentives for preventive care and eliminate incentives for redundant, wasteful testing and lab work.
6. Bring the cost of all prescription medicine to be no more than the average paid across the 20 most developed nations.
7. Eliminate the strange connection between employment and health insurance. It’s both bad for business and traps people into jobs they don’t want. It makes us less competitive internationally.
8. Allow and encourage a competing private insurance, private hospital, private doctor system to spring up so that no one can claim health care is rationed. That is, anyone who chooses to afford extra tests, extreme measures and other services our society cannot afford should be able to get it on their own terms.

Obviously these are broad ideas, but they serve as a framework for common sense thinking about American health care. Meanwhile, what are we likely to get? Most probably a hodgepodge of deals and compromises that enable the medical aristocrats to continue to make billions of system inefficiencies while ignoring the real opportunities for healthy change.

Our mutual quality of life depends on more of us understanding that the most important things in life are more than the sum total of commerce. Health care and commerce are simply not ideal partners. When we try to make it so, corruption is the sure result. This is what gives capitalism a bad name. We need bolder leadership. Moral vision and clear ideals. Frankly, regarding health care we need to go back to the beginning and start all over again.

My Case for Cause Marketing

Cause Marketing—good or bad?  Let’s see…

Will Marré, branding speaker, is a strong proponent for cause marketing and in Author Will Marré Says Nike’s Livestrong Campaign is Compelling Case of Why Businesses Worldwide Should Adopt Cause Marketing Today discusses how cause marketing can be beneficial for everyone involved if the cause perfectly aligns with the brand and taps the six sources of brand energy: physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and emotional.  You can see Marré speak on the subject on YouTube.

In Cause Marketing Matters to Consumers Kim T. Gordon also makes a case for cause marketing.  She states, “There’s a strong connection between entrepreneurship and giving.  The challenge is to make your socially responsible efforts a winning proposition for the nonprofit group you support, the community and your business.”  She gives these five steps for a strong cause marketing campaign: 1) Give from the heart, 2) Choose a related cause 3) Contribute more than dollars 4) Formalize your affiliation, 5) Mount a marketing campaign.

One creative website refers to cause marketing as Selfish Giving whose punch line is, “A cause marketer’s musings on doing well and good.”  The website is a great resource and proponent of cause marketing.

While cause marketing can be widely successful and positive for all involved, it’s not without its criticisms.  Referring to cause marketing as consumption philanthropy, Angela M. Eikenberry states in The Hidden Costs of Cause Marketing, “Consumption philanthropy individualizes solutions to collective social problems, distracting our attention and resources away from the neediest causes, the most effective interventions, and the act of critical questioning itself. It devalues the moral core of philanthropy by making virtuous action easy and thoughtless. And it obscures the links between markets—their firms, products, and services—and the negative impacts they can have on human well-being.”

Marré even admits to the downside of cause marketing in his blog, Cause Marketing is the First Step in A More Virtuous Business World, stating, “Of course there is a lot of fake cause marketing going on, companies that pretend to be green when they are brazenly toxic or businesses who spend huge sums promoting their connection to a cause and little on the cause itself.  Of course I have found myself rolling my eyes more than once at yet another cause marketing campaign such as Exxon Mobile’s mosquito net commercials during the Olympics.  I have also come across a website, Think Before You Pink, that calls out “pinkwashing,” or companies that are attached to breast cancer cause marketing and actually contribute to the disease they’re supposed to be fighting against.”

Okay, Okay.  So while cause marketing isn’t 100 percent positive, I still lean towards “good.” I guess my attitude is…it doesn’t hurt to try.  I think it’s good to see companies doing something outside their own bottom line, and if it helps contribute to the bottom line in the process, right on.  So even if the motivation is selfish, as “Selfish Giving” infers, it’s still giving, and I think we need to take everything we can get.

I think Marré states it best in his blog, “When I get close to many of my clients’ motives, what I am finding is a genuine movement toward social good.  What may have started as sponsorship or don’t-want-to-get-my-hands-dirty philanthropy is rapidly transforming to well-funded business innovation…Cause marketing is a Trojan horse to get inside the strategic walls and retake the intellectual power of business leadership.”

Minimize Avoidable Suffering

Over the weekend I heard an interesting sermon about the prophet Jeremiah and his concerns 2,600 years ago. It seems that the government had cracked down on people who were too public in professing their faith. It was also a time when every family, tribe, and race thought they were the only ones who had the truth. Everybody was searching for a way to be superior. I guess that has been true since the dawn of human consciousness. The sermon was about tolerance, and tolerance has certainly brought us to a point of civilization where fewer people are outwardly claiming to be a chosen people. That’s a good thing. The problem with tolerance in any culture is that eventually everything is acceptable, but there are evil things inflating others. Child abuse, actually abuse of any kind and Nazism are examples of those things that are truly evil. They aren’t just someone’s cultural opinion of it. In 1949 the world got together and agreed on the Declaration of Human Rights. It’s a good starting place to consider what we should tolerate and what we shouldn’t. We need to create a world where avoidable suffering is minimized. That should be a goal we can all agree on.

Cause Marketing is the First Step in a More Virtuous Business World

Today everyone is trying to stand out. But just spending money on being famous is foolish. Marketing guru, Seth Godin in his TED speech, Seth Godin on standing out discusses how marketing must be remarkable.

He states, “The thing that’s going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets changed, what gets purchased, what gets built, is – is it remarkable?” He goes on to say that remarkable does not just mean neat, but it also means worth making a remark about. Increasingly what people notice is how much good a business does.

I think some cause marketing campaigns are indeed that, remarkable. If done properly, they benefit everyone involved. The for-profit creates a buzz about their product and recruits new customers who are aligned with the cause, and the non-profit gets wider attention and needed funding to support their efforts. For cause marketing to be truly remarkable, it has to be authentic. It has to represent the soul of the company that supports the cause.

A perfect example is Nike’s and Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong campaign that has generated $63 million for cancer research and programs and has since expanded to include an entire line of products in which 100 percent of the profits go directly to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I was recently at Nike doing a workshop for their executives and I was impressed at how broadly and deeply Livestrong had impacted their brand, their culture and the visibility of the need to beat cancer.

Other great examples of cause marketing include Product Red in which over $130 million has been raised for the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa, and Pampers and UNICEF who donate one tetanus vaccine per pack of Pampers sold and have already given 50 million vaccines and hope to reach their goal of 200 million over the next three years. Now that’s something worth talking about. Pretty remarkable.

In my professional work I often speak about the power of authentic cause marketing when the cause perfectly aligns with the brand and taps the six sources of brand energy: physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and emotional. These six sources of energy separate brands we care about versus brands that are just famous. Consider your own energy when comparing Nike with Reebok. This doesn’t mean that Nike is good and Reebok is bad. But Nike’s mojo has been transformed since the mid-nineties sweatshop scandals to a company that is trying to help the world get fit, healthy and excellent and has scores of engineers trying to figure out how to have greener, leaner products, and much of that vibe has been accelerated by programs like Livestrong.

(For more on the subject read Author Will Marré Says Nike’s Livestrong Campaign is Compelling Case of Why Businesses Worldwide Should Adopt Cause Marketing Today).

Of course there is a lot of fake cause marketing going on, companies that pretend to be green when they are brazenly toxic or businesses who spend huge sums promoting their connection to a cause and little on the cause itself. Of course I have found myself rolling my eyes more than once at yet another cause marketing campaign such as Exxon Mobile’s mosquito net commercials during the Olympics. I have also come across a website, Think Before You Pink, that calls out “pinkwashing,” or companies that are attached to breast cancer cause marketing and actually contribute to the disease they’re supposed to be fighting against.

But when I get close to many of my clients’ motives, what I am finding is a genuine movement toward social good. What may have started as sponsorship or don’t-want-to-get-my-hands-dirty philanthropy is rapidly transforming to well-funded business innovation. For instance, Apples’ decision to market their products greenness has motivated their designers and engineers to go for more radical and responsible solutions to e-waste. Wal-mart’s efforts at recycling and waste reduction have helped save them gobs of money and spread best practice compliance with their suppliers. And just last week Exxon-Mobile announced their serious investment in bio-fuel development. 300 million smackers in promoting algae-based fuel. I know, we’ll see. But anything is possible.

Undoubtedly some cause marketing is dumb and counterproductive, but what I see happening is that marketing message is getting through to many of the sponsoring companies’ own employees and leaders. And they become a new generation of internal innovators creating new business solutions that turn cause marketing into a cause business strategy. Making sustainable profit by creating a sustainable world.

What’s the best thing we can do? Support the causes and companies that do the most good for the issues you feel strongly about. Contact the cause sponsor companies. Ask tough questions. Ask them to do more. The business revolution we need to create a sustainable future is being driven by consumers and employees. Cause marketing is a Trojan horse to get inside the strategic walls and retake the intellectual power of business leadership.

So what do you think? Is cause marketing a hoax or a needed step in the evolution of business to benefit humanity?

Nike’s Courage to “Just Do It”

I was in France recently, and there is definitely a different feeling about Lance Armstrong in that country. Before, he was despised for what many considered a kind of over competitive arrogance, and others just think it’s sour grapes. Undoubtedly, some of the softening towards Armstrong has to do with his age; age makes any athlete an underdog, and secondly his very public and passionate commitment to cancer research. Armstrong’s LiveStrong campaign with Nike has made worldwide reverberation, and as I’ve written before, it is Nike’s most successful promotional program. It is a promotional program with a general purpose. The money really does go to cancer research. In fact, 100% of all the profit that Nike makes off their LiveStrong products are finding their way into research labs. So we wish Lance well in his quest to win a bicycle race and admire Nike for having the courage to, “Just Do It.”

Save the World - Launch 1000 Entrepreneurs

I had some really great talks with the Grameen Foundation about the book launch, Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner coming to a bookstore near you in early October. We’re trying to really do something different. Why just sell a book when you can also try and help launch entrepreneurs? So my idea initially, is to try to launch 1,000 entrepreneurs through the Grameen Foundation micro credit partners. I plan to do this through both selling books and connecting with those who read the books, who really want to make a difference right where they stand.

Goldman Sachs Has Record Earnings

Those bankers are at it again. You have to admit that they are shameless. Goldman Sachs, who was a prime beneficiary of the recent taxpayer bailout, having just paid back 10 billion dollars last month, announced they had record earnings this quarter, the highest profit in their 140-year history. Because investment banks pay out their profits in bonuses the average employee is likely to earn between 7 and 8 hundred thousand a year with between 50 to 100 earning over 20 million. This is eye popping, especially given the fact that Goldman Sachs was a leader in creating some of the exotic instruments that brought us down. Yes, they significantly benefited by our taxpayer bailout. They had made a very toxic investment with AIG of 13 billion dollars that was paid of in full from yours and my money. The leaders of Goldman Sachs are defensive about these payouts after all the say, “We pay for performance!” Of course the core question is how to we define performance? There are really two economies, people who really work  for a living, and then the whole financial economies, which is based on a lot of people analyzing risks on computers, and making huge financial bets that trickle down in ways that affect the general economy, far beyond their initial intention. I think most of us want to see performance redefined before we get too excited about rewarding people, many of whom have created so much misery.

San Diego - The Center for Biofuel Research?

Today the San Diego Tribune reported that Exxon Mobil has pledged to invest 300 million dollars into a private venture in San Diego. It is headed by J. Craig Venter, who is a pioneer in the study of the human genome. Venter is a rock star scientist, a true genius that has allowed us to study the human genetics much more effectively. He says that he got involved with bio fuels in the 1990’s during the course of his work. He discovered that as algae grows it draws on sunlight and carbon dioxide and as a by-product produces fats and bio-oils that have a structure similar to crude oil. It’s also true that algae grows extremely fast, and is very resistant to disease and other problems common with crops. So, because of this its one of the only research areas that looks like it could be scaled up to provide a significant amount of our energy needs. The fact that Exxon is investing so much money in this project is startling. In fact, an official from Greenpeace, who has been really skeptical of big oil companies investments in alternative fuels remarked that he was very encouraged, that it looks like Exxon Mobil has finally decided to pursue alternative fuels and earnest. Obviously people in San Diego are pretty excited today both from the direct economic impacts of this investment and the long-term chance to become a world center for bio fuels research!

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