“If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.” — Anita Roddick
What’s the impact of your business on society and the economy?
Businesses don’t exist in a vacuum.
They exist within a society and an economy. If your business is valued by society and the economy, you have a chance for survival. If it’s not valued, society can put you out of business overnight.
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management
You Need to Think Through the Impacts of Your Business
Your business has an impact on society. You need to think through your impact and responsibilities.
Drucker writes:
“Only a few years ago managers as well as economists considered the social dimension so intangible that performance objectives could not be set. We have now learned that the intangible can become very tangible indeed.
Lessons we have learned from the rise of consumerism, or from the attacks on industry for the destruction of the environment, are expensive ways for us to realize that business needs to think through its impacts and its responsibilities and to test objectives for both.”
Business is a Creature of Society and Economy
Your business needs to serve a necessary, useful and productive job:
Drucker writes:
“The social dimension is a survival dimension. The enterprise exists in a society and an economy. Within an institution one always tends to assume that the institution exists in a vacuum. And managers inevitably look at their business from the inside.
But the business enterprise is a creature of a society and an economy, and society or economy can put any business out of existence overnight. The enterprise exists on sufferance and exists only as long as the society and the economy believe that it does a necessary, useful, and productive job.”
You Need to Build Social Objectives Into the Strategy
A manager has to include social objectives in their strategy:
Drucker writes:
“That such objectives need to be built into the strategy of a business, rather than merely be statements of good intentions, needs to be stressed here. These are objectives that are needed not because the manager has a responsibility to society. They are needed because the manager has a responsibility to the enterprise.”
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:
- Consider the social and economic impact. Think through your social and economic impact and responsibilities.
- Society needs to believe in you. Society and the economy need to believe that your business serves a necessary, useful and productive job.
- Add social objectives up front. Bake social objectives into your strategy.
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