Truth. Growth. Repeat.

Chapter 8 the wrong way around the circle

Maybe I should start calling this The Other Way. It’s a big call to accuse 90 per cent of the world’s businesses of doing the wrong thing. A lot of them are very successful.

But hey, I’m passionate about this stuff and I think people are pretty much nuts for going the other way around our precious Circle. There’s nothing criminal about it; there’s often nothing even unethical or selfish. A lot of business owners go this way and are still good, honourable citizens.

The reason I call it wrong is because of what it leads to in the medium to long term. And that’s the seductive nature of going the wrong way: at no point will you ever feel like you’re making a big mistake. Everything will feel reasoned and logical. Responsible even. But, bit by bit, the cumulative knock-on effects build up to a big mistake.

It’s like pollution. Tipping the occasional barrel of industrial waste into the ocean doesn’t seem that bad — ’cos hey, the ocean is huge. And nature is resilient. And we’ve been doing it for centuries and so far not much has happened. Until one day, someone points to a floating mass of dead fish and proves that it wasn’t an act of God: they were starved of oxygen because of pollution. And then more studies are done and more people join the conversation. And before you know it the whole world is starting to realise it has to change its conventions because bit by unnoticeable bit it’s led to something being very wrong.

I believe conventional ...