Business is justice work.

Or it’s injustice work.

A business, I believe, is a unique machine to move the world. It moves the world toward justice – or toward injustice. It goes either way.

The difference is in who you think you’re building for.

I want to argue, in the next few minutes, that the power of business to do harm or heal depends on how you view it.

First, a bit of my religious journey (!).

DOES IT COME IN CHRISTIAN?

When I was 24, I started my first business.

I had just read a book called “The Shaping of Things to Come” that resonated with my deep suspicion of religion as I had experienced it.

Why suspicion? I had moved in Christian circles my whole life but couldn’t shake the sense that many American churches had things backward.

They seemed like they were in competition with – well, everybody.

Churches started their own coffeeshops. They hosted concerts. People got certificates in “Biblical counseling” and presented themselves as alternatives to licensed psychotherapists.

There was Christian cereal, Christian breath mints and a Christian yellow pages that helped you choose local businesses based on the owner’s faith statements instead of (forgive my bluntness) sensible criteria.

It was a weird time.

The book I picked up as I was starting my first business helped me name why. It asked, what if we helped our neighbors pursue what they need and want – instead of assuming they’ve got it all wrong and telling them to come to church?

The book was by two missional ecclesiologists. That’s academic-speak for people who ask, “what shape should a church take if it wants to make an impact?”

They both said, essentially, not this one.

I knew they were right.

Because the best bands weren’t on Christian radio.

IN HERE OR OUT THERE?

A year before this I had started showing up at Cornerstone Festival, a sort of alt-Christian Woodstock for bands that didn’t fit the commercial Christian scene.

Or any commercial scene.

➡️ I heard a college professor lecture on the spiritual value of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

➡️ I heard Don Miller, years before he founded Storybrand, tell a tentful of people why the Christian book business was basically bullshit.

➡️ I heard contractors from a commune describe sharing business profits with everybody in their building, Acts 2:44 style.

And the music!

Every morning I woke up to the same band playing the same punk cover of Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” at 8am three websites over. Then I went out and heard folk, alt country, rock, goth, metal and EDM all being made with spiritual interest – and NOT necessarily spiritual content.

The sense here was: If we do our best to create beauty, we trust God will be in that.

This felt directionally different from what I saw in the rest of my subculture.

The big churches and the radio stations seemed to operate on a premise of We’ve got God in here. God was in the building and the Bible and the board-blessed budget; the objective was to get the mints and cereal in here, too, so it could all get holy.

At Cornerstone, the premise seemed to be God’s out there. God was lurking behind Britney and in Buffy; dancing to an EDM song could be worship even if there were no words.

If God was out there, the objective was to get yourself out there, too. And get looking.

You may not believe in God.

But you believe in something, right? Some person or idea or goal is giving your life meaning; something matters. Something is important.

And the question is: Are you the only one who has that?

Or do others have some of it as well? Maybe with a different shape or name?

This question matters for your business. It’s a business question.

It’s the question that determines whether what you’re building at your job will help the world or hurt it.

Let me show you how.

MOAT OR LIGHTHOUSE?

Don’t read “The Shaping of Things to Come” – unless you’re starting churches as your job, it’s going to seem absurdly niche. I’m sure I don’t remember most of it.

But I remember this:

These pictures show two ways of grouping human beings – of thinking, in fact, about organizations.

On the left: the bounded set. The organization is a castle with a moat, a boundary separating people who are “in” from people who are “out.” If you belong, you’ll be inside the moat.

Inside is where the value is.

And on the right: the centered set. This organization is more like a lighthouse. It’s defined by something – Meaning? Purpose? Jesus? – at the center of the picture.

Whatever that thing is, that’s where the value lies.

As you get closer, you will get more value. But the value’s not contained. There isn’t a moat, so no one’s “in” or “out” – they’re only nearer or further from the good stuff.

PULL OR PUSH?

These two ways of defining what an organization is lead to two ways of understanding what the organization does:

Remember, in “The Shaping of Things to Come,” these pictures represent ideas of church. In the left picture, God’s inside the moat. The church’s job, therefore, is to grab people (also maybe breath mints?) that are outside and pull them in, too.

So they’ll have what we have.

The book calls this kind of work attractional.

In the right picture, there’s no moat. God could be anywhere. The church still has some value to provide – but no one needs to come inside to get it. There is no “inside.”

The value can just go to them.

The book calls this kind of work incarnational, because the value at the center of the organization can incarnate – it can take on a new body, a new shape.

WHO CHANGES?

Now imagine you’re an X.

You are a person interacting with the organizations in these pictures, and you want what they can give. You want the value, the green stuff.

The way you get that value will depend on how the organization views itself.

If it’s a castle with a moat, then value flows in. To receive that value, you need to become an insider. You need to go from being someone who does not have God to someone who does have God. You need to traverse the moat.

But if the organization is a lighthouse, value’s flowing out. There’s no moat. You don’t need to get inside to get the value. God’s with you already.

In the first picture, you must change to get the good stuff.

In the second, the good stuff changes to get you.

I’m not just talking about churches any more.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BUSINESS?

Does Uber prioritize the interests of riders and drivers – or does it leverage them to benefit stockholders?

Does Meta create a healthier society – or does it leverage social interactions to create more profit?

Is Google caring for the planet? Did Theranos care for the sick?

Your answer today might be different from the one you would have given a few years ago. But I have yet to see an organization with the view “what matters is what’s in here, not what’s out there” that didn’t, sooner or later, exploit or diminish or abuse the people outside the moat.

Because those people aren’t what matters. They’re not who the organization exists to serve.

They’re not where God is.

If profits and stockholder value are the company’s ultimate good – its God – then everyone who’s not an owner is outside the moat. It’s strange that this has become society’s default view of business, but here we are.

As long as the primary goal of business is to bring value inside the moat, then that’s what business is going to do.

And that’s a problem for those of us who live on a planet, in a society or as part of a larger economy – because those things are never inside any individual business’s moat.

THE OPPOSITE COULD BE TRUE

In 1970, Milton Friedman published this piece for the New York Times. Like most thought projects, the self-declared “Friedman Doctrine” is more nuanced than the summaries and hot takes that would follow.

Still.

In practice, Friedman’s argument boiled down to this:

➡️ A business should seek profit for its owners, and nothing else.

Friedman was arguing for the picture on the left – the bounded set. A business, he believed, should create value for the ones inside the box. The stockholders.

Value flows in.

And if you’re outside the box? You are a resource, something for the business to extract value from in the form of profit.

Don’t expect to see that value for yourself unless you buy stock. Unless you become an insider. Unless you convert.

This was the dominant view of business for 50 years. It came to be known as shareholder capitalism, and if nothing strikes you as iffy about it then you’ve probably subscribed to the wrong newsletter by mistake.

But what I want to point out here is simply this: It is a viewpoint.

And if one view of business can be held, a different view can be held too.

Which leads to different actions.

People have been working for a long time on those other views. They’ve tried out names like stakeholder capitalism and value creation and the triple bottom line. Other views of business are possible.

I think they would be better.

CHANGING THE WORLD

Us founders love to say we’re going to do that.

But the truth is: No one’s ever lived who didn’t change the world for someone, somewhere.

What we really ought to ask is: Change it how?

An organization has the power to change the world as individuals cannot. I’ve given examples of this before; I will again.

But change has a direction. Change benefits someone.

And in my experience, organizations that benefit more someones are those that locate purpose (meaning? God?) in more places.

Not in here, but out there.

If you think what matters is out there, you’ll push the value out. You’ll spread and share the good stuff. Your MO will be, more value for more people.

If you don’t, it won’t.

Want to determine if your organization’s likely to do justice or injustice? Ask yourself where, practically, it sees the purpose of its work.

Where is your company finding meaning?

Where is God?

This matters, because the thing you’re building will shift value toward whatever you think matters most. That shift will move the world toward justice.

Or injustice.

Where your treasure is, your heart will be as well.

I think a founder said that, too.