I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: this blog is not about replacing capitalism.
I went to a political rally tonight for Utah’s newest candidate for governor, Jonathan Johnson. I’m lucky to have known Jonathan for a couple of years, ever since my wife and I moved back to Utah after law school. One of my favorite parts of our friendship is our sharing of good books. Jonathan and I both read voraciously and whenever we get together for lunch we always spend the first little while talking about the good books we’ve read recently. So I was excited when we arrived at the rally and at each setting he had placed a copy of Leadocracy, by Geoff Smart. I knew it meant I was getting another of Jonathan’s great book recommendations.
Tonight before tackling this latest post, I read the first couple of chapters. Geoff describes the purpose of Leadocracy, which is to encourage us to hire more great leaders into government. His goal, he explains, is based on the idea that government is only as good as who is in it. He rightly points out that those great leaders come from the private sector. They are you and me. And he’s careful to explain that he’s not calling for a new form of government. Instead, he’s describing “the next step in improving the grand experiment known as democracy.” The rest of the book is his attempt to show us how greater involvement in government from you and me is that next step.
I write this blog partly because it forces me to focus on the question of how to make business better at least once a week. But more than that, I write this blog to encourage each of you, dear readers, to develop a business that serves its customers and its employees. My goal is based on the idea that capitalism is only as good as the purposes it serves.
Just like the great leaders Geoff is looking for, the leaders who will improve capitalism come from the private sector. That might seem obvious. And it is. But the leaders of tomorrow’s capitalism aren’t government leaders, they’re not even today’s executives. They’re MBA students and entry-level customer service reps and kids who grew up during the Great Recession. Hopefully, they’re reading this blog. Maybe, just maybe, they’re people who learned early to avoid debt like the plague, to work hard, and to create. Whoever they are, they won’t replace free markets with some other economic system, they’ll fine-tune capitalism to give better than it gives now.
If capitalism really is only as good as the purposes it serves, they’ll fine-tune it by learning to be otherish in business. Like Marley’s ghost, they’ll fine-tune it by learning that “mankind [is their] business. The common welfare [is their] business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, [are all their] business. The dealings of [their] trade [are] but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of [their] business.”
That’s the next step in improving this grand experiment known as capitalism.
