Amitai Givertz’s Blogversity Blog

It has been a good many years since I first got my hands on a copy of Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur by Gifford Pinchot. Few books have had such a lasting impression on me. I have kept a copy close to hand in every office I’ve worked in since 1986.

If I had a dollar for every time I quoted from the book: “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” or warned a friend, “You don’t want to trigger the ‘corporate immune system,’ Bud,” I would be quite a few dollars better off than I am this morning. Of course, it would hardly be as I had billed it then, free advice!

Anyway…

I have been busy researching open source values and various concepts that fly in the face of my traditional upbringing. It is a struggle to reconcile what I have learned in a career spent leveraging competitive advantage with what I know is a better model given a whole new set of circumstances and the proliferation of enabling technologies.

Reading up on The Gift Economy I bumped into Mr. Pinchot again, writing on the very subject in In Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture. Once again what he had to say resonated with me in the same way as when I first picked up Intraprenuering.

In particular, this poignant passage stopped me in my tracks:

A Shift from Capital to Talent

The critical factor controlling success in business is shifting from capital to talent. Employees are no longer interchangeable parts. This is not good for everyone, the undereducated and those whose talents are not now in demand are losing ground. But there is a bright side. Employers must curry the favor of their talented employees who increasingly have an ethical agenda. Employees who can easily find work elsewhere are refusing to work on projects or for companies that offend their values, even if they would be well paid to do so. As this trend increases, as people take a stand for sustainability in choosing their work, even public corporations seeking the favor of bloodless institutional investors will find that sustainable companies have the best future because they have the best talent. In fields where creativity counts, sustainability is a competitive weapon.

This strategy will not work if we are so pure that no realistic level of improvement would meet our standards. It will not work if we sell out for greenwashing instead of instituting real environmentally conscious practices. Biasing the system for sustainability requires some of us to be in the game demanding change.

Frugality and Choice

Our ability to make our talent count for change will often require us to take less for our services than if we were selling to the highest bidder.

One consulting firm I know virtually requires new consultants to use their fine salaries to buy expensive cars and houses. They want them up to their eyeballs in debt so the company can have complete control over them. They want their consultants living in fear of losing their jobs so they don’t ever put ethics ahead of their sales and profits.

Voluntary simplicity is not just polluting less, it is having more to “spend” on integrity at work. If we can live on less, we can turn down unsustainable projects at work just as we do in our choices at home.

Talented people have been making sustainable career choices in increasing numbers. This gives businesses that can provide good work towards good ends a great advantage, and this advantage will grow as the highly environmentally and socially conscious generation in school now becomes important talent to business.

The real game in the business world of the ecological age is running a business or a career so as to make a contribution to the community, the nation, and even to the planet as a whole. True business competence in the ecological age is demonstrated by producing a better product or service for customers and at the same time setting new standards for reducing pollution, for creating habitat, for helping the less fortunate. We cannot play this new game until we move beyond the fear of insolvency and learn to live frugally regardless of financial success.

The old status system is hard on the heart. Living for the larger self through a strategy of frugality and service opens up the heart to the glory of creation all around us. The gift is repaid manyfold.

Wow! How cool is that? You wriggle and writhe trying to articulate something so abstract — or so you think — and there it is, where you least expect to find it!

Thank you, Gifford, you’ve made my day — yet again.