I temporarily relocated to West Michigan three years ago as part of a quest. I anticipate the quest will end here, and my wife and I will become longtime residents of the area.
We have no family here. We were not raised here. And yet, we choose to live, work and play in West Michigan. (And no, we don’t mind the winters.) If you are involved in economic development or talent attraction in the region, please read this post and consider how my experience might be relative to your efforts.
The quest that led me to Michigan was a mission to find the best practices for doing good business. By ‘good business,’ I mean commercial activities that naturally produce positive economic, social and environmental outcomes, which are also called triple bottom lines. Before landing in Michigan, the quest took me around the globe to meet authors, philosophers, CEOs and philanthropists. It was this same quest that led me to become a member of the TED community and to attend TEDGlobal in the UK.
I spent four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on my quest to learn the practices -- not just theories -- of doing good business. I’ve learned a lot, but two lessons stand out.
1. Most business people want to do good business.
2. Most business people find doing good business very difficult.
Does that surprise you? It did me. The problem is that our economy is not structured to support good business. Instead, our economic systems have evolved to serve a small number of people who covet wealth and power. This is the reality that Occupy Wall Street protestors are attempting to bring into public awareness.
Are you curious how our economy got to be this way? It is simple; the economy was cobbled together by people who gave it their attention. For the most part, those were people focused on wealth and power. This didn’t happen in a sinister or conspiratorial sort of way. It was the natural outcome of focused attention and activities. If you spend your attention building a happy, well-balanced family, then you increase your odds of having one. If you want to understand why the economy is the way it is, study the history of our economy and who has spent their time building it and why.
In my own study of economics, I noticed that somewhere in the middle of the 19th century, the ethical concepts of economics gave way to the production of profit. Capitalism became a profit machine devoid of any attachment to human values. The reason is that values are messy, fussy, non-quantifiable concepts, and therefore, hard to measure and turn into repeatable processes. Profit, on the other hand, is easy to measure. It’s really just counting coins.
Consider how many people you know who would leave their current professional positions to take a similarly paying job that is more meaningful. Why don’t they? The jobs don’t exist. That should strike you as both strange and sad. We’ve allowed our economy to box us in and are socialized to accept it.
Try this thought experiment: Imagine an executive that makes a six figure salary and drives a Mercedes. That’s not unusual and seems perfectly normal. Now imagine this same person is the CEO of a nonprofit that serves underprivileged children. How do you react? Does some tension arise? If you are like most people, the idea of a nonprofit CEO making a high salary and driving a fancy car doesn’t feel right. This is evidence that you have been socialized to have an unconscious bias against simultaneously doing well and doing good. The cause of this socialization is a bizarre interaction between capitalism and theology that is its own topic for another article.
We have been socialized to have an unconscious belief that doing good work should not provide economic wealth. Our culture teaches us that doing good and doing well should be separate things which is why nonprofits are constantly strapped for cash and mega for-profit companies are devoid of humanism.
Good business should be directly related to doing well, but that won’t happen until we make some fundamental changes in how our economy works. As a young Steve Jobs said, “Everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that are no smarter than you….and you can change it.”
Imagine a stock market where the value of the stock is not solely driven by profit, but also by how well the company produces positive outcomes for humanity. Imagine a job market where companies seek to match an employee’s skills and values to their own triple bottom line strategies. Imagine schools that teach children not just how to get jobs, but how to thrive as human beings and find meaning and purpose in their work. Steve Jobs says we can change things. Sir Richard Branson, in his new book,
Screw Business as Usual, says we should change things, and research like that found in the book
Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose proves that doing good provides better returns, even better than Jim Collin’s Good to Great companies.
All this leads me to why I choose to live in West Michigan.
The conditions in West Michigan seem primed for the birthing of a new form of commerce based on collaboration and triple bottom line thinking. I call this economic philosophy Collaboratism. My sense is that the pragmatism and strong social values of this region are naturally evolving into ways of doing business that promote doing good and doing well simultaneously. Fred Keller and Cascade Engineering are prime examples of good business in the region.
Every social revolution is born somewhere and usually due to unrecognized initial conditions. Silicon Valley was born out of military R&D work focused at Stanford University. It didn’t happen at Caltech or MIT as some would have predicted. Grunge music rushed onto the music scene in Seattle as an evolution of Punk and a cultural retort to the media-hyped hair and spandex bands of the 80s. It didn’t happen in LA, London or NYC where the big media companies were located.
It’s the western shore of the United States that is most associated with good business. A lot of thought leadership on social entrepreneurship is happening there. But I believe the conditions on the shore of Lake Michigan, with its social values, design thinking and strong environmental stewardship is where Collaboratism will fully come into being. I sense an explosion of social entrepreneurship is about to happen right here in West Michigan, bigger than anywhere else in the country.
I live in West Michigan because I think something amazing is happening here. It is a beautiful and affordable place to make a home and I want to be a part of what is beginning here. I can, and so can you.
West Michigan is approachable and friendly. It isn’t hard to get involved and make a difference. In August of 2010, I didn’t know anyone in Grand Rapids and so I stepped up to run TEDxGrandRapids as a means to take an active community role. The event was a huge success and we are doing it again in 2012. If the new guy in town can get that going, what can you do?
Grand Rapids isn’t a complex economic behemoth like LA, Houston, Chicago or New York City. In fact, anyone who wants to make a difference and is willing to take some risks and put in the effort can find a welcoming community of like-minded people here working on transforming the region, the country and in some sense, the world.
I admit all of this could be observer bias. My focus on creating human centered forms of commerce may cause me to see only the best parts of West Michigan. That’s okay. Maybe other people who have the same focus and biases will get excited about living and working in West Michigan too.
Let’s send out some invites and see who shows up.
Steve Frazee is the Host of TEDxGrandRapids and co-Founder of SEED Collective, a social entrepreneurship and emergent design consultancy, in partnership with Bill Holsinger-Robinson.