People Over Profit

People Over Profit evaluates the four stages most companies go through as they mature, moving from honest over efficiency to deception and, if they’re lucky, redemption, unless they foster seven core beliefs and stay honest all the way to the end.

First of all, if you think some companies are inherently bad, Dale argues that that’s not true. Even Coca Cola, McDonalds and Goldman Sachs started out with very few people, and had to hustle hard to make ends meet in the beginning.

No company can afford to scam its first 1,000 customers or treat the first 10 employees like crap.

Dishonesty isn’t an attitude or company-inherent value from the start, it slowly grows over time, but only if corporations are forced into it.

When McDonald’s started, their motto was “Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value”. Yup, those burgers weren’t always stale! Quality was just the first factor that fell off their roadmap as the company got bigger and bigger and had to serve more burgers faster.

So remember: Even the worst companies were once small, honest businesses.

One of the seven values Dale describes that can help your business stay honest is transparency. We constantly talk about privacy and data security these days (in Germany people go crazy over this), but actually, you can double-check almost any statement within a matter of seconds.

People find dirt in leaders’ Twitter feeds, dig up old company reports and records and record their experiences on video more and more.

If your company sells shitty meat, it’s bound to come out somehow, some time. Even if you run the biggest hush-up campaign, transparency always wins. Great companies know this.

That’s why they embrace transparency right from the beginning. They’re an open book, fully transparent, all numbers for the world to see. Buffer is a great example.

What does your company or employer do? Can you encourage them to be more transparent?

Here’s the interesting part: Even if you don’t own a company, half of the honesty battle is yours to fight. Why? Because we as consumers vote with every dollar we spend. It’s easy to point the finger at Coca Cola for trying to sell more Coke to Indian kids, who don’t even have shoes, and then buy a 24-pack for $5 the next week when it’s on sale. If you want more sustainable products, demand more sustainable products. Check where your products come from, pay attention to the packaging and please, if something about a product stinks, tell the company. Imagine all of those $50,000 every American family spends on average each year went to honest companies. None of them would have to resort to deceitful tactics. The power is in your hand.…