The art of good business

Agile to prevailing winds or true to long-held values?

When things go wrong, first and foremost, we encourage organisations to deliver on their long-standing commitments and live their values as they respond – or to explain clearly where and why they can’t.                

After a crisis, maintaining or restoring the trust that forms the basis for all their relationships will inevitably come back to whether they kept their promises and applied the ethical standards they proudly set out when seas were calmer.

Reputations are damaged when customers, employees and wider communities see that promises are easily broken, and values are nothing more than graphics in the annual report.

How then does the abrupt abandonment of core policies and principles in the interest of political expediency affect trust? Do those same customers, employees and communities simply accept sudden U-turns because the prevailing political winds have changed or is their trust in corporations eroded? And if it is, does this matter when the immediate rewards seem great?

As some of the world’s biggest businesses shed long-held positions with an ease that feels uncomfortable whatever your politics (albeit trying to convince us – and themselves – that they are returning to their founding principles), other, perhaps unexpected, voices stand out.

While Apple has the might to push back on activist shareholders pressing it to discard its Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies, Costco’s response is altogether more interesting.

Although Walmart, the US’s largest retailer, acquiesced to a demand from conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research to ‘evaluate business risks posed by its DEI practice,’ Costco’s board unblinkingly reaffirmed a commitment to being “an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion.”

Brave? Perhaps, or just better at understanding the basis of its enduring relationships with those who influence its success – members, employees and the diverse communities around the bricks and mortar stores where it focusses its investment.

Short-term investors may welcome the immediate gains that dramatic changes of position will undoubtedly bring, but is good business purely about the art of the deal in front of you or about standing firm behind long-held commitments and values whatever the weather?  Time will tell, but prevailing winds change.

Image from FMT: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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