What defines success?

In reading chapter 8, “Leadership and Corporate Responsibility” in Kolp & Rea (2006), the kernel that jumps out at me is the question of success in terms of corporate strategy. In a very practical sense, profit is the initial answer to this question, as it is the immediate gratifier of business. What is lacking here is the systems thinking lens that includes the impetus and the outcome together into process analysis.
I wonder, if a piece of the puzzle here in reframing business successes to include citizenship is found in training self-awareness and values lead-leadership into corporate training as a way to allow individuals to get clear on their own interpretation of success. What if an unexamined population in terms of their own definitions of success is what is holding back the evolution of progressive corporate business practices?
If a corporation can only be as strong as its weakest member, then all members who operate with an unexamined measure of success can alter the course of the business practices. Tacit knowledge bases vested in profit as the only measure of success will inadvertently drive pure profitability in lieu of holistic business practices. So, what if the beginning of solving this pickle is to start at the individual level in training self-examination, values-lead leadership and a revised measure of success to organizational members. Then, citizenship can begin at the individual level and spread outward to the whole organization.

Comments

[Heidi Marmen]

I can't help but to think of Wal-Mart. They boast of giving back to the communities and brag about their charitable work, yet they don't take care of their employees. These employess are part of the community, and yet they don't pay a living wage, avoid paying for health care, and fire people for family emergencies. As a champion for workers, I cannot shop there. I have read about the good things they have done for the community, but it must be for everyone.
Their touted values become a mere marketing tool.

[Derecus Slade]

I think Chris and Tiffany raise some important points here. Since corporations are legally bound to make a profit, I wonder just how far they will be willing to go with "training self-awareness and values lead-leadership". Just how much time will employees and shareholders permit for such training? As a training manager I have had experience with personnel questioning the value of ethics training and any kind of leadership training. If it doesn't directly tie into what they are doing in the field, it provides little to no value for them. If there is a corporate culture of cynicism or skepticism there will be little buy-in also. Making training available alone does not produce the results needed to promote and implement servant leadership.

For me this is where a strong leader has to step in and set the tone and direction of the organization. Accountability for actual implementation of policy and directives for ethics is always needed to produce buy-in. Only by involving the people who have the power to create the culture can a company of servant leaders. However you will most certainly have to give them reason to, and it will have to be more than a philosophically PC line of "it's the right thing to do." You will have to answer their question of "What's in it for me?"

[Chris Borne]

You ask some great questions and raise an attractive banner; your post taps an earlier discussion we had: the value of liberal arts education. The vision of educating individuals about “self-examination and values-lead leadership” as part of their employee orientation and their ongoing corporate training is great. In fact, the organization I work for provides their own intranet based program that teaches a variety of business management fundamentals. While their company-specific bias reigns, much of the course content provides sound and ethical management education. If our company employs such a tool I can’t imagine that others don’t. Perhaps the mechanism for your vision is out there and just needs to be filled with additional content.

[Tiffany Rosario]

Similar to my response to another post on this topic, it seems that there is a question of how yeilding profits at the highest levels in a corporation's market meshes with servant leadership. Could a company practice servant leadership and still be at the top in terms of revenues in their industry? I would say this would be a challenge, and if it were possible the company would be using their profits to give back in meaningful ways.