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A FINAL WORD
It seems appropriate to end this book with a blog post. A blog post that I wrote as I left the BBC after working there for twenty-one years. A blog post in which I talk about love – the force that makes everything hang together.
A Word or Two on Love
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2006 AT 4:12PM
Some time back David Weinberger wrote that the motivating force behind the internet was love. It was the basic human desire to connect that made it all hang together. At the time I admired his idealism and indeed bravery at being so open about something we have all been trained to dismiss as at best personal and at worst a sign of weakness.
In contrast I have just finished reading Joel Balkan’s The Corporation in which he exposes the fact that corporations are legally bound to do just one thing – maximise shareholder value and that in fact to be motivated by higher ideals, or indeed love, could be considered detrimental to that overriding purpose if it impacts the bottom line in anything but a positive way.
Where did all this come from, where did the idea that the most powerfully motivating force in the world had nothing to do with business? We spend most of our adult lives in the workplace and at work we bring about the most important and long lasting changes to our society and our planet – and yet we are not encouraged to talk in terms of love. OK we just about get away with “loving our job” or “loving success” but start talking about loving colleagues or loving customers and you’ll ...
