I’ve asked this question tons of times.
It’s probably my favorite.
I asked a financial planner; she said rich white guys who act like the money belongs to them and not their clients.
I asked an IT company’s CEO; he told me roll-ups buy the local IT firms and soon nobody even knows their clients’ names.
A wedding planner told me how obsession with price made couples blind to value. A consultant said it’s the same people in the room at every company. A marketer griped about the “noise machine” his industry creates.
Executive coach: Many coaches don’t create change.
Exit planner: Many exit planners don’t grow value.
EOS implementer: People think it’s about running a good meeting. If you do that and they don’t connect, don’t love each other – there’s no point.
You see what all these business owners have in common, right?
You see how all their answers are the same?
Not one
has anything
to do
with them.
YOU SEE THE PROBLEM
In an unjust world, justice cannot be a negative trait.
In other words: Don’t say your company is “just” if all you mean by that is that you don’t deliberately exploit employees, lie to customers or break the law.
If all you mean when you say “just” is “we don’t make things worse,” then don’t say “just.” Because that isn’t justice.
Things are worse already.
So you have to make them better.
You need to have noticed where the world is out of joint and said, “I want to mend that.” You need to be picturing a better universe than what we’ve got.
More beautiful. More fair. More free.
And for more people.
Not just you.
When I ask owners what they hate about their industry, what they overwhelmingly tell me is that they already are picturing that.
We want a better world. We do crave justice.
Most of us have seen the business ecosystem we work in – and something about it has us pissed right off.
And if that’s you, the logical question is:
What are you going to do about it?
WHAT’S WRONG BABE?
When I ask, “what do you hate about your industry,” I get gripes like those above.
They’re all some version of the following:
The industry serves itself, not the client.
The “expert advisor” is a know-it-all who doesn’t listen to the client.
The process is placed above the people it’s supposed to help.
Everybody does and says the same (mostly useless) thing.
In fact, all this is really one complaint if you ask me:
The status quo is hurting people.
But we keep it anyway.
When you’ve seen that, the opportunity is to be a different kind of business – to be one that’s working to advance another approach.
The goal is for your business to be dangerous to an unjust status quo.
That’s what you want.
This isn’t me asking; you already told me it was what you want when I asked what you hate about your industry – and you replied with anything about anyone who isn’t you.
You told me you want justice.
But to get it, you will have to build a different kind of company.
You will have to show that there’s a different way of being successful, of thriving, of being happy. Yes – of making money. Show that, and others in your industry will want it too.
That’s how your business becomes dangerous to the status quo.
That’s the opportunity here.
And it’s the risk as well.
YOU’VE BARELY TOUCHED YOUR INDUSTRY
I don’t ask people what they hate about their industry to start a justice conversation.
I ask because it gets us a fast draft of their company’s strategic position.
Your response tells me:
What industry you think you’re in (your category)
How you hope to stand out in that industry (your differentiator)
Your go-to-market strategy lives in the push-and-pull between these two ideas. It is a combination of the ways you’re similar to others – and the ways you’re different from them.
You need the right mix.
If you’re too different, you will fail at business – people you are trying to serve won’t understand your offering or its value. You’ll confuse. You’ll lose.
If you’re too similar, you might also fail at business by not standing out.
Or maybe you’ll succeed at business – but still fail at change. You might become the exit planner who creates no value or the marketer who adds only noise. You might end up a rich white male financial planner who treats clients as if their money is his own.
You might get by on privilege and on leverage rather than by bringing a better way.
First-draft strategies are usually wrong because they err too far to one side or the other: They’re too idealistic or they’re too pragmatic.
In the middle, there is wisdom.
Wisdom’s how you move the world you have toward the world you want.
A LITTLE BIT DANGEROUS
This year I’ve been showing up at Boston’s Conscious Capitalism meetings.
We tour a business every quarter that’s committed to the movement’s principles – higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leadership and conscious culture – and we hear from their CEO on what that journey has been like.
These are companies hard at work to change the things they hate.
Companies like Butcherbox, which is building enough heft that it can insist on more ethical practices from meat suppliers. Or like Green City Growers, which is proving visibly that healthier food infrastructure is possible.
They’re dangerous to the status quo.
Do you know what these companies’ CEOs say?
➡️ “Consumers drive.”
➡️ “We have to use what works, not what we wish was real.”
➡️ “Be willing to hold your nose.”
It turns out that, to change your industry, you have to actually be in your industry.
And you still have to hate it, too.
INSIGHT FROM OUTSIDE
This tension between pragmatism and idealism, between category and difference, between how you fit and what you can’t accept – this is a tension a just business never finishes navigating.
And my own view is, you can’t navigate alone.
You might fall too in love with what works financially – or perhaps you’ll climb too far up on your high horse and lose sight of your P&L entirely.
Neither lets you fix the things you hate.
To walk the middle road of wisdom, to become the change you want to see, you need a few outside advisors.
You need people who are for your business but are not in your business, people who can say that’s not consistent with your values or we need to choose or have you tried it this way yet?
You need outside perspective and outside allegiance.
I have people who play this role for me, and I play it for others. It’s my favorite part.
Over the next year, my goal is to talk with 50 justice-oriented CEOs – people who hate something about their industry and are doing more than just complain about it.
These people might need my perspective. But I need theirs, too.
Because it’s easy for you to say what you hate and why you hope to change it.
But if I’m in constant conversation with people like you – I can help you find out how.
Know someone trying to be the change? I’m looking especially to meet innovators in finance, health or housing right now.
Share this post and introduce us.
