ADP Founder, Will Marre, Interviewed in Forbes about Careers

I think a lot of us have the wrong idea of what it takes to make a big impact on the world.  We don’t have to relinquish all material belongings, retreat to Africa, and hold crying babies to make a difference.  Those that are making the greatest impact are making money at the same time.  That’s right.  They’re making money by saving the world.  It’s actually the strategic thing to do.  It makes solutions to our problems sustainable and scaleable.  It helps us solve big problems faster.  I call it socially strategic enterprise.  What a great idea.

I was recently interviewed for the Forbes magazine article, “Get Paid to Be a Do-Gooder.”

*Taken from Forbes SLIDE SHOW

The article discusses the growing trend of people looking for careers that benefit humanity and the environment.  These opportunities are indeed endless.  As I suggested to Forbes, social entrepreneurship is a vastly growing field where entrepreneurs base their business on offering products or services that directly benefit society.  Great examples are the South African Roundabout that provides rural areas with water pumps driven by a human-powered merry-go-round mechanism and makes money selling advertisements on its water towers.

Also, the Grameen Bank, who generates a strong profit giving microloans to the poor and has created a worldwide movement toward self-reliance.

Of course you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to have a fulfilling, socially responsible career.  There are huge opportunities right now in the non-profit sector for strong business-minded individuals as non-profits are trying to come up with strategies to create sustainable income from either products or services to support their mission. What’s needed are people who are skilled in marketing, web development, IT, SEO, finance, etc.

Non-profits are not in short supply of people who want to go to Africa and hold babies, console mothers, and improve orphanages.  What they are in short supply of are people who can create an infrastructure to scale up systematic solutions and create sustainable income strains.

And finally, if you’re not in a position in which you can start a socially strategic enterprise or work for a non-profit, transform your current job into one that brings you meaning and satisfaction. Your opportunity is to just start seeing your current job as a means to reduce waste, promote responsibility, help your community or innovate new, sustainable value.

Yes, I know, the job market is tough right now, but this unemployment crisis has brought each of us to a moment of truth. We can either use it as an excuse to make our work meaningless, merely a paycheck, or we can see it as an opportunity to make our work count for something bigger than ourselves.

As I tell audiences around the world, it’s an exciting time to be alive.  We can save the world and make a sustainable living doing it.  We can have a fulfilling career and make a difference.  Our difference.  Just start.

Business Model for Corporate Social Responsibility

There is a growing realization that business-as-usual will lead us to the end of our world.  What the leaders of the future want to learn is how they can build businesses that build a better world.  Now.   The movement away from short term, self-interest is taking hold in the most unlikely places.  Suddenly, business gurus like Harvard’s Michael Porter are holding up socially strategic companies like Whole Foods as a new model for business strategy.  It’s nothing short of a re-definition of capitalism.

Raw, financially driven capitalism rewards anything that reduces cost and increases price.  Anything.  Even Adam Smith, capitalism’s philosopher, knew that.  Before he wrote Wealth of Nations he wrote Moral Sentiments, which makes the case that virtue is at the core of all enlightened self-interest.  He never intended for butchers to cheat or bakers to poison their customers for a few shillings and then leave town.  We live in an age that was unimagined by 18th century economic philosophers.  The size and scope of power of global businesses tied to constant advances in technology have become the most potent force on our planet.  Whether it’s a force for good or is a force simply to amass more wealth and power without regard to the world we are creating is simply a leadership choice.

Good Capitalism

Good Capitalism is a bigger idea than industrial or financial capitalism of the 20th century.  It challenges us to think about free enterprise as a means to be free to create as much real value as we can.  It’s not the freedom to exploit, pollute, and poison.  Rather, it’s the freedom to create a more just, sustainable, and empowering world.  Academic journals and now the traditional business press are flooding us with a steady stream of articles on the social and environmental good forward-thinking leaders can wield through business enterprise.  This is not turning business into non-profits or even semi-profits.  You can make a fortune using innovation to benefit humanity.  It’s simply “Good Fortune” for all concerned.

This is not simply bringing social responsibility to business.  That is a small idea.  Social responsibility asks business leaders to reduce pollution, ensure fair labor practices, give to local charities and use local suppliers.  All that’s good, but wholly insufficient to save the world.  It’s giving aspirin to a cancer victim. Good Capitalism is based entirely on a new leadership model.

What is needed today is a new form of capitalism.  I call this Socially Strategic Enterprise.  The imperative is to create your core business model, the way you make money as a “Socially Strategic Enterprise.”  This means your products or services will cause 1) human wellbeing and 2) save our planet.  To make money by saving the future.  It demands a whole new way of thinking of how to produce your product or service and how it is used or consumed.  It starts with the challenge of creating infinite, one-of-a-kind value and zero waste. Social Strategic Enterprise is scalable.  It isn’t limited to woodsy, mom and pop, organic enterprise. Socially Strategic leaders seek to enrich billions of lives and solve huge challenges.  They don’t seek to limit ecological damage; they seek to heal our planet.  You get the idea?

The four ideals of Socially Strategic Leadership is what I call the REALeadership Model:

1. Be Responsible…for everything you do. The fact is, we are responsible.  A leader’s impact is long.  Their decisions weigh more than others.  So they must be wise enough to constantly see the big picture, to carefully consider the impact of their decisions on employees, customers, suppliers, the environment, the community, and the generations of unborn.
2. Be Ethical. To be ethical is to be moral.  The highest level of morality is beyond the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have done to you.  The moral standard is do as much good as you can.  Create the Greatest Total Value you can.  For everyone, all the time.  Why else lead?
3. Create Abundance. Abundance requires more than innovation.  It demands invention.  It requires creating something with unique value and constantly recreating more unique value.  Unique value puts in an “uncontested marketspace”  that enables you to also enjoy a unique margin advantage.
4. Create a Legacy. A leader’s legacy is his or her impact on the future.  The world needs saving.  We need new solutions we can implement as fast as possible.  If you aren’t going to save the world then get out of the way.  Make room for someone who is.

What’s the Greatest Thing We Can Do?

Adopt the Realeadership Model for Our Businesses, Our Work and Our Personal Lives.