Acting and leading with enlightened self-interest is becoming a business imperative in the twenty-first century for two key reasons.
First, the world has become so complex that a leader no longer has all the capabilities or the resources to create all the products and services that customers want. To be effective, leaders need to find partners. In a survey conducted by IBM in 2012 with seventeen hundred CEOs, 70 percent of them indicated that extensive partnerships are critical for the long-term success of their organization.11 Yet to orchestrate these partner networks effectively, leaders need to rein in some of their own self-interest. Indulging in competitive zero-sum games doesn’t work in an interdependent partner relationship: leaders must devise win-win strategies that create value to all of their partners as well.
Second, the values and expectations of a growing number of customers and employees are shifting: they prefer to buy products from and work for companies that are motivated by a purpose beyond financial gain. For instance, 70 percent of the consumers surveyed by the public relations company Burson-Marsteller indicated their willingness to pay a premium for products and services provided by socially responsible companies that invest, among other things, in environmental protection initiatives.12 Such socially responsible companies include the Tata Group, Whole Foods Market, Panera Bread, and Better World Books (featured in chapter 8), along with several hundred B Corporations (a new type of corporation that uses the power of business to create public benefit) and thousands of social enterprises, all of them using a noble purpose as their North Star to guide their businesses. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, the best-selling coauthors of Built to Last, found that organizations that are driven by a noble purpose outperformed the general market by fifteen to one and outperformed their industry peers by six to one.13 Collins believes that a noble purpose has “the power to ignite the passion and commitment” of a company’s employees, customers, and partners alike.14 In this chapter, we explore how smart leaders can shift their motivation beyond self-interest to serve this larger purpose.
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