How Choicemob will Change the Market

The goal of the choicemob is to make it profitable for companies to practice Fairness, Compassion, and Respect for the Earth. Here’s why:

1 - The first priority of business is to make a profit. This focus on profit has pulled billions of people out of poverty and given much of the world unprecedented standards of living. But…

2 - Profit drove many businesses to bad practices. Over the last 50 years businesses flew all over the world looking to cut costs with the cheapest labor and raw materials in order to increase profits. Sometimes this led to abuses like child labor, deforestation, and conflict minerals. And we consumers didn’t ask many questions. We just enjoyed the cheap stuff and the rising stock prices. Anyone can tell you that this is unethical, and now that global business has gone from a $1 trillion game to a $61 trillion game over that same fifty years, we can see it’s also unsustainable.

3 - Only profit will convince the business world to embrace social values. Making money is still top priority for business. So if we want business to do good we have to make doing good profitable. Luckily this is way easier than it sounds. As a business owner, let me tell you: Consumers are powerful. If you buy something from me, I’ll keep making it the same way. If you don’t buy it, I’ll try something new. And if you buy from someone else instead of me, I’ll start doing what they’re doing. It’s that simple.

So if we aim our collective buying power at companies that uphold our common values: Fairness, Compassion, and Respect for the Earth, we can change the market. By supporting their bottom line and shouting all over about how great their social values are, we’ll draw the envy of other businesses. They’ll see that we’re serious about our values, and they’ll start to change to earn our business.

And when business changes, the world changes. This coming Monday we choicemob Better World Books. Let’s show the world that we mean business.

An invitation to the choicemob

Business is changing the world, right now, every day, more dramatically than ever. Our industrialized, globalized, informationalized economy has offered billions a ladder out of poverty and improved livelihoods around the world. But it simultaneously exploits our planet and our fellow men at unprecedented levels. And it doesn't have to.

Business is the most radically adaptive form of organization, constantly testing the marketplace and shifting to accommodate. If we speak our values loudly enough business will listen and adapt. But we must speak in the language of the market - money and attention.

That's why I'm starting the choicemob. It's a simple idea: A community of people committed to improving the way that business operates by supporting companies that uphold our common values: Fairness, Compassion, and Respect for the Earth.

By driving sales and attention for these companies we will improve their bottom line and draw the envy of their competitors. We will help make social value the next disruptive force in the marketplace.

The first choicemob starts in a week in support of Better World Books. Check them out - they're an amazing company. We need as many people as possible to buy gifts from and write articles, posts, statuses about Better World Books - hundreds of people, thousands of people - the more the better.

If you agree that business should reflect our common values - Fairness, Compassion, and Respect for the Earth - please join the choicemob and invite your friends.

choicemob Statement of Purpose:

The Post Crisis Consumer

Business Will Change the World, chapter 4: If you won't buy it...

Business is the most powerful force shaping our lives, so this chapter asks: How do we guide business to do more good and less harm?

I believe that this question is one of the great callings of our moment in history. If we can aim the unprecedented power of global business in the direction of progress, and I believe we can, then we might not only avert a number of potential crises, we will also make enormous improvements in the lives of billions of people.

So, how do we do it? First the general principle, then the strategy:

If we don't buy it, they won't make it. And if we do buy it, everyone will try to make it. Business is that simple.

When you purchase a product you fund the entire supply chain that got that product to you, from mining, drilling and logging, through design and manufacturing, to transport, wholesale and retail. You give the CEO his allowance.

And so that very same CEO and his counterparts in companies all over the world spend billions of dollars trying to figure out what you and your friends want, hoping to make the types of things you will buy. So if we come together and send a clear message that we will only buy products that uphold our values, companies will fall over themselves to make them! And the clearest message you can send to a company starts with a dollar sign.

Telling a company that we don't like their labor practices but continuing to buy their shoes sends a clear message: "We want your shoes regardless; don't worry about it." And likewise, telling a company that we love their commitment to the environment while not buying their dish soap does nothing to pay salaries and keep the lights on; it tells them that we don't care. Money is the language that business listens for in the market, and it's the language that we must use in order to be effective in guiding business.

So the lesson is simple. Continually shift your purchases towards the more ethically and environmentally sound companies and products, reinforcing their good practices and drawing their competitors into that space.

Of course, if only you and I do this it won't make a difference. We need masses. This is where the principle must be breathed into a powerful strategy for success. I believe that any effective strategy here is going to have three components: stories, leaders, and tools.

Stories: If you're reading this you likely understand the importance of guiding business to do better, but many people don't. They don't feel a connection with or responsibility for the history of the products they buy - the people and environments that are affected both positively and negatively. We need great storytellers to capture and relate the fascinating, emotional, human stories behind our products, in all their immeasurable buoyancy and desperate tragedy. Films must be made, books written, songs sung, until millions realize the huge opportunity and responsibility that we have to improve our world.

Leaders: This is going to be a big, controversial, chaotic movement, and I believe it will grow exponentially over the next 5 years. We need passionate, self-assured, single-minded leaders to stand up and guide this growing community towards effective action. The great principle of their leadership will be partnership with business, finding and supporting the great businesses and encouraging the others to catch up. This focus on progress will give hope and energy to the movement, and financial incentive for businesses to listen.

Tools: Right now it costs people a lot of time and effort to find businesses and products that uphold their values. But it doesn't have to. The technology exists to make this as easy as pulling out your cellphone and scanning a barcode. I've been working on a project called WikiChoice to do just that, and there are different projects around the globe with similar aims. We need the best minds, the most talented programmers, the most visionary technologists to devote their focus to these tools. The right tool is going to change the world. Can you build it?

Right now, and while you sleep tonight, and tomorrow and every day and night thereafter, businesses all over the world are going to be building the future of this planet. You have power in that process. We all do. And now is the moment in history when our influence on business is most critical. Business is changing the world more boldly than ever before, and it needs our values to guide it towards progress. If we rise to that challenge we will turn the most powerful force in the world to the work of our common values: fairness, compassion, and respect for the earth. Let's do it together.

[I'm working on one of the starting points for this movement. Check back soon for more info.]

Business Will Change the World, chapter 3: The Crescendo

So this is where we find ourselves.  Business is the most powerful force shaping our world, and likely the most powerful force influencing our individual lives.  And even more sobering, there are good arguments to be made that our business decisions - where we work, what we buy, and how we use it - impact the world more than any other part of our lives.

Now for the crescendo.  We are the beating hearts of the business juggernaut, and our purchases are its lifeblood.  A political analogy is apt here.  Every time we buy something, we vote for that product and the company that makes it, funding their role in changing our world.  These commercial votes are the crucial deciding factor in determining which companies get to shape our world and how they get to do it.  We hold the controls to the whole system!

But there's an enormous problem: We don't apply the same values to our purchases that we do to other parts of our lives.  In most things, including our politics, fairness, compassion, and respect for the natural world are paramount, even if we interpret them differently.  But not in our purchases.  Instead we ask only that a product does what we need it to do, and that it is cheaper than the one next to it.

We have divorced our values from the most powerful force in the world.

And so business has learned how to make amazing amounts of good, cheap products.  And we have funded them.  But at what cost?  Stories of exploitative labor and environmental havoc have filtered back across the globe, coming from the same places as the products on your local store's shelves.  And we all sit anxiously as our planet's temperature rises, wondering what the world will look like in a decade.  Cheap comes at a price.

This is not to say that business is bad.  Far from it!  Business has lifted people out of ruinous poverty by the billions.  Business has given us new ways connect with one another and to enjoy the beautiful planet we find ourselves on. 

Business is not bad, and is not good.  Business will do exactly what we tell it to do, so long as we speak with our wallets.

Business will change the world.  It will do so faster and more drastically than ever.  And we hold the controls.  If we begin to base our business decisions on our values business will transform to accommodate us, and will take the shape of the values that we hold in common - fairness, compassion, and respect for the earth.

So now the question is, how do we that?

Business Will Change the World, chapter 2: Most Powerful Force

Business is the most powerful force shaping the world.  I don't often use superlatives like 'biggest,' 'best,' or 'most powerful,' because they are usually wrong.  But today I'll make three assertions, and they will all be superlative.  Although these can't be definitively proven, there is evidence by the freighter-load to back them up, and it's headed your way.

Assertions: 
1 - Business is the most powerful force shaping the world.
2 - Business is the most powerful force shaping your life.
3 - Your business decisions are the most impactful part of your life.

Assertion # 1: Business is the most powerful force shaping the world.

Perhaps the biggest change in human culture since the advent of agriculture is happening right now - billions of people are moving from rural lands to cities, following the promise of prosperity offered by business.  In Africa and Asia 1 Million people per week are showing up in cities, looking for a future.  As people move off the farms and grazing lands that used to sustain them, they become consumers.  Business's influence in the world grows with every new family that arrives on the outskirts of a city.

Some of business's other accomplishments: The percentage of the world population living in extreme poverty has dropped by half since the early 80s.  The average person's income in the world today is 50x more than it was in the late 1700s, at the kickoff of the Industrial (i.e. Business) Revolution, and that's adjusted for inflation.  Today there are over 1 billion cars on the roads.  There are over 1 billion computers running Microsoft Windows.  There are over 1 billion people using the Internet.

Maybe bigger, we're changing the composition of earth's atmosphere, and the huge majority of that change comes from business - even the gases attributed to cattle are largely from industrial (i.e. business) farms.  With me now?  Let's move on.

Assertion # 2: Business is the most powerful force shaping your life.

Look around you right now.  How many of the things that you see were made by a business?  Business is why your world looks the way it does - all the stores and restaurants and cafes and furniture and gadgets and styles and movies - all business.  The paycheck that covers your rent and bills comes from business, even if you work for a non-profit or the government.  Business is where they get their money.

Even more fundamentally, since business so profoundly shapes our world, our choices must often conform to the mold that business has built around us.  Many of our biggest decisions: our professions, hometowns, whether to buy or rent, when to marry and retire, are deeply affected by business.

Assertion # 3: Your business decisions are the most impactful part of your life.

What you buy and how you use it, where you work, and what you invest in - your business decisions - have a greater impact on the world than any other part of your life.  The things you buy touch people around the world - miners and smelters and farmers and fabricators and stitchers and assembly line workers and cargo ship deck hands and retail managers and janitors.  Your purchases fund the entire supply chain.  Your work and investments support businesses that do similarly, on a larger scale than you personally.

Almost all of the resources that you use - oil, minerals, trees, electricity - are connected to these decisions, along with almost all the greenhouse gas emissions that you're responsible for.

Let's recap.  Business is the most powerful force shaping our world, and shaping your life.  And your part in business is the most impactful thing that you do.  Business will change the world and you will support it, whether it does what you like or not.  My questions for you are: Can you shape business as it shapes the world?  If so, how, and why don't we?  Discussions of these questions coming next.

Business Will Change The World, chapter 1

[This is the first chapter in a series of thoughts regarding business's role in the world, and our role in business as consumers, workers, and citizens. It began as a workshop at The Idea Camp D.C.]

Business will change the world. This isn't a pitch or a proposal, this is a fact about the future. I am as sure of this as I am of the sun peeking over the eastern hills come morning.

The last 200 years plot a story of global transformation. Billions of people moved from subsistence farms to cities, where employment and education hold the chance for prosperity and wealth, and services like water and electricity promise comfort. Last year, for the first time in history, more people lived in cities than not, and the move is accelerating. By 2030 it is expected that 5 billion (5,000,000,000) people will live in urban areas and their slums and suburbs.

This is a massive cultural and geopolitical change driven by business, starting with the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s and continuing in today's information revolution. Business is the most dynamic form of organization: self-funding and profitable, facilitating mass employment, bankrolling governments and nonprofits, meeting the needs and desires of a huge portion of the world's population, and growing faster and larger than government's ability to oversee it.

Despite the recession, business as an aggregate institution is stronger than it has ever been, with more of the world dependent on its success than ever before. As technology continues to advance and the global economy recovers to growth, business will have an enormous impact on what tomorrow looks like - perhaps a greater impact than any other single factor. This series of articles will investigate business's influence on the world and on our lives, and the opportunity that we have to sculpt this dominant force in the shape of our common values.

For good or ill or both, business will change the world. What are we going to do about it?