Dick Brunton, the executive chairman of New Zealand market research company Colmar Brunton, cites a study where the world’s fastest growing companies have, embedded at their core and worked out in their business, ideals for improving the lives of people.
He says that if businesses want to be successful, in terms of motivated staff, loyal customers, and happy shareholders, the only way to go is to be a social enterprise. By that he means a business which fundamentally makes peoples’ lives better.
“This is the age of standing up for something, for pursuing a big ideal, for creating profit by creating purpose,” tells Brunton to the Otago Daily Times. “It did not matter how large or small the business, it should be good for society as a whole.”
Brunton has been working for more than a decade to help companies regain or discover a customer- and meaning- focused reason for existing. “Meaning unleashes energy, which delivers excellence.”
Business owners should ask themselves:
- What do I see in my industry that grieves me?
- What do I stand for or stand against?
- What could I change or put right? Where can my organization make a difference?