Over the past forty years, we have become increasingly aware of the total impact of the Industrial Revolution and Information Technology Age. Many of us are among those who dream of a shift to a more flourishing world. What will it take for us to actually shift our economic culture and systems? In March and April, we touched on how important clarifying our definition of success and realizing our purpose is to shaping the world we dream of. This month, our focus is on how individual behaviors can powerfully influence our economic culture and systems.
First, let’s imagine a designer who is looking to produce an eco-friendly clothing line. They’ve formed their business on a set of values statements like “fair wages”, “organic”, “locally sourced”, “sustainably produced” and “locally made with love”. While preparing their supply chain structure, they were excited to find a Western US fabric source during a trade show and made a “hand shake” deal to contract with them as a vendor. As the designer moved through the contract process, they realized how the wholesale cost of materials would impact their profit margin and pricing. Feeling uncertain about their customer’s purchasing behavior and their own ability to successfully market their products at a price that would make their business financially sustainable, the designer contacts a fabric producer in India (who doesn’t really match their values) and cuts a deal at half the wholesale cost of the US vendor. Feeling rushed to get their first product line out before the winter holiday shopping season, they didn’t research the true cost of this “cheap” material which would include manufacturer’s fair labor, environmental practices, ongoing communication with a foreign vendor, and the energy costs of overseas shipping. This designer also didn’t consider the impact of reneging on their verbal agreement with the US vendor, including their own reputation in the industry, potential for future business with that vendor, and the financial burden on the vendor due to lost business.
With their stated values, how has this designer gone so awry? Are they behaving in ways that model and generate the economic structures and culture of business they believe in?
To offer a holistic set of perspectives as a foundation, we’ll first provide a very basic introduction to the four quadrant 
framework of Integral Theory. In the integral view, every moment holds the complexity represented in this image, the inter-relationship of everything. When we as individuals are reflecting on situations and making decisions, it’s important for us to pay attention to each of these quadrants. This attention to all the potential issues, ideas, influences and impacts supports decisions and actions that are grounded in greater awareness, compassion and positive intention. Such practice supports our understanding of our impact in the world. When we develop and participate in cultures and when we create and reinforce systems, we potentially affect the experience of individuals, including their beliefs, mindsets and behavior. We as individuals and as groups also have the power to influence cultural and system change. As we’ve so often heard, we need to “be the change we want to see in the world.”
Looking at the example of the designer, they believed and represented that they would be a sustainability-based business. However, in practice, they didn’t build that into their business culture and systems or into their own behavior as a business owner. This is likely to be rooted in their own beliefs and mindset. For example:
- Anxiety and fear around their ability to market and sell the products at a price that could sustain the business
- Belief that profit needs to be maximized to ensure the sustainability of the business with little regard for the impact of the cost-cutting actions they took to support that goal
- Belief that it was just okay to back out of a handshake deal because it wasn’t really perceived as their active commitment to another business
- Belief that the current culture of business supports their actions, e.g. larger organizations are seen to focus on maximizing profit, do business based on signed contracts, and seek cost-cutting in any way possible.
In a flourishing world, what does the culture of business need to be? Who do we need to be in order to create that culture? We believe that these are the essential questions we all need to reflect on and wrestle with as people in business.
Psychologist Bill Plotkin characterizes modern society (including our business culture) as egocentric, an adolescent society where many adults are still behaving (and encouraged to behave) in adolescent ways. He also frames our current state as an opportunity, saying, “adolescence holds the key to our becoming fully human…The adolescent [of whatever age] comes to know what she was born to do, what gift she possesses to bring to the world, what sacred quality lives in her heart, and how she might arrive at her own unique way of loving and belonging.”
We agree that this is a time of opportunity and accompanying challenges. A time in which we are designing and prototyping a culture of business where we can know and act on our purpose, bring our gifts, engage our hearts, and co-create an economic system rooted in loving and belonging.
Third Wave Business 