In the bustling offices of today’s corporate giants, a dangerous void often lurks beneath the surface. Amid high-stakes meetings, quarterly earnings calls, and strategic pivots, a question simmers in the hearts of many: What’s the point of all this?

For too many CEOs and business leaders, the relentless pursuit of profits and shareholder value has blinded them to the broader role their enterprises are meant to play in society. The symptoms are clear: fractured workplace cultures, disillusioned employees, and a growing skepticism among the public — especially young people — about capitalism itself.

The Root of the Crisis

Modern capitalism, with its laser focus on maximizing shareholder value, has lost its way. What began as a system designed to harness human ingenuity and create widespread prosperity has become a source of toxicity to wellness. Businesses, once integral to the fabric of thriving communities, are increasingly seen as faceless, profiteering entities.

This corrosion of capitalism’s moral core has profound implications. A generation disillusioned by corporate greed and systemic failures is gravitating toward socialism, lured by false promises of security and fairness. Meanwhile, the American Experiment — the idea that free enterprise, hard work, and individual liberty can lift societies to unprecedented heights — hangs in the balance.

The Call for a Commonwealth Capitalism

A fundamental shift in the way we do business is needed. We must reclaim capitalism’s original intent: to elevate the common good and contribute to the commonwealth of all people. This vision transcends popular buzzwords of “stakeholder capitalism” and “ESG goals.” It roots itself deeply in a tradition of stewardship, service, and purpose — values often found in Christian principles prioritize love, law, and responsibility.

Commonwealth capitalism recognizes that corporations are not merely economic entities but social institutions with a responsibility to align personal and organizational purpose. This alignment fosters an esprit de corps among team members, shareholders, and stakeholders alike, creating cultures where work becomes an act of service rather than a soulless chore. It restores the dignity of labor and renews the social contract between business and society.

Toward a Better Capitalism

Business leaders bewail the shallow talent pool and resulting turnover. They would be wise to look into that pool to see their reflection as complicit to the problem rather than victims of it. The answer to capitalism’s many crises lies not in abandoning it for socialism but in restoring its moral foundation. By embracing a model of commonwealth capitalism, businesses can:

• Engage Purpose: Align their purpose with the common good, ensuring team members’ work makes a meaningful contribution to the whole.
• Cultivate Community: Foster a workplace culture where collaboration, service, and shared values thrive.
• Redefine Success: Measure achievements not only by profits but also by the positive impact on employees, customers, and communities.
• Set Standards: Have a societal role as an efficient and effective means to produce goods and services to higher standards.

It is because of, not in spite of, competition that capitalism remains the most viable economic system for raising a society’s standard of living. At best, socialism spawns mediocrity because it goes against people’s innate desire for freedom and improvement, whereas this is the strength of capitalism. The positive results are lower costs, improved quality, faster speed, abounding innovation, and variety.

This approach requires humility, boldness, and a willingness to reimagine what business can be while avoiding falling into the temptations of greed at the cost of people and the planet. It challenges leaders to move beyond pure capitalism to embrace a modified version rooted in a common good responsibility.

The Precipice and the Promise

We stand at a pivotal moment. The allure of socialism grows as the failures of unbridled capitalism outweigh its advantages. Yet the answer lies not in government control but in a return to the principles that made free enterprise a force for good: stewardship-leadership and the pursuit of the common good — all rooted in purpose.

By embracing commonwealth capitalism, let’s renew the promise of the American Dream 3.0 and inspire a new generation of leaders to see business not as an end in itself but as a means to a higher and nobler calling. The first step forward begins with purpose, guided by principles that elevate the human spirit to build a better world so we’re all on-purpose persons in creation.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is proven to be a divisive and dangerous dogma. Giving the benefit of the doubt to DEI advocates, these corporate policies and programs may have started with honorable intentions to right wrongs, but they are devolving into insidious administrative weapons of mass derision, exclusion, and intolerance. What DEI espouses to remedy for one people group it creates for another group. The ironic consequences are less diversity, equity, and inclusion coupled with rising chastisement and tension. These are not the marks of good policy. 

I propose DEI be replaced by DEI 2.0: Dignity, Equality, Integrity:

• Dignity is worth and respect for one’s self and others.
• Equality is the state of being equals in status, rights, and opportunity. 
• Integrity is one’s strong conduct adhering to moral principles. 

DEI 2.0 is based on the premise that values can be legislated but not readily adjudicated. Rather, they can be taught, caught, and lived in the inspiring context and challenge to become a better person today than yesterday — the essence of personal leadership development. DEI 2.0 realistically acknowledges our aspirations, failures, and lessons that refine us. It reminds to utilize The Golden Rule to seek reconciliation, offer appreciation, and extend love and forgiveness. Putting aside pride is a tough shift.  

What Can You Do to Advance DEI 2.0: Dignity, Equality, and Integrity?

1. Read the definition of each word in DEI 2.0. Dig into your online dictionary to discover the nuances of each word and reflect on where you fail and succeed in your life. 
2. Read The Prayer Attributed to St. Francis for the next 3 days or longer (see the graphic). Let it soak into your being. How might it right relationships at home, at work, or with those of differing political parties?
3. Review your 2-word purpose. Purpose precedes values in order of impact and importance. Your 2-word purpose is your personal point to take rest and reflection. It is the unique expression of your unfathomable spiritual purity and deepest connection to God, Self, and Others. When you feel undignified, unequal, or disintegrated, return to your purpose for healing, restoration, and recharge. 
4. Recast DEI into the positives of DEI 2.0 of Dignity, Equality, and Integrity. Regardless of whether you are the company CEO, team leader, or head of a household, instilling these values will do far more to advance the human condition and common wealth than the current DEI terms. 
5. See and treat others through the lens of them having a purpose. The color of their skin, gender, orientation, ethnicity, religion, or whatever identifier they were born with or choose to use to brand themselves are distant seconds to their God-gifted purpose.

We all long for a reason for being, significance, belonging, and making a difference. DEI policies thrust labels upon us and push us into camps regardless of whether we like it or not, whereas the values of DEI 2.0 — Dignity, Equality, and Integrity — are foundational values that focus on our commonalities to unite us into one.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

This is the third in a series of four “Daring to Ask” posts related to the state of business, capitalism, and CEO leadership (or lack thereof).

• Post 1: Daring to Ask: Why Are People NOT a CEO’s Greatest Asset?
• Post 2: Daring to Ask: What Is the Purpose of Business
  

The answer to the title question for this post is the fourth word of this graduate degree: Masters of Business Administration. Why aren’t B-schools producing Masters of Business Leadership? An MBL is in sync with the needs of today and for tomorrow. 

Leadership contains administration, whereas administration does not include leadership.Yet this month, B-schools are graduating hordes of freshly minted MBAs who are ill-prepared to lead because their education is incomplete. Their deans and faculty, who fiercely champion innovation and design thinking, are guilty of perpetuating an educational ecosystem mired in a dehumanizing Industrial Age philosophy based on the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor (see Daring to Ask: Why Are People NOT a CEO’s Greatest Asset?). 

Unfortunately, graduating MBAs who enter the workforce look to CEOs as their role models.Their indoctrination into the heartless rule of management science continues. For all the good the CEO system of management created, its narrow definition of success as financial returns is corrupting far too many souls occupying or aspiring to be in the C-suites of Corporate America with a “get mine” attitude of avarice. Worse, these same managers use public relations ploys like Environment, Sustainability, and Governance (ESG) to hide or self-deceive their personal agendas of greed. They say one thing in public, but act another way behind closed doors. These elitist managerial mindsets and actions are efficiently and effectively perverting the high and noble purpose of business and depressing our standards of living as they enrich themselves. 

The dictionary in Apple products reveals a fascinating historical whitewashing of the word management (see screenshot). Management is an archaic word for “trickery; deceit.” Could it be that in the early years of the Industrial Revolution when labor and ownership were embattled that workers referred to their manipulative bosses as “management” as an insulting pejorative? Over the decades, the term stuck and gained “respectability” for those charged with “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people.” Today, managers control as executives execute at an even higher level of trickery and deceit.Would you sooner be controlled and executed or led and inspired? Chief Leadership Officer: Increasing Wealth so Everyone Profits makes the case for a corner office business reform. Since the release of the book, however, I’ve learned most CEOs are too busy and too wed to their business traditions and are unlikely to rise to becoming CLOs. The majority of academics are risk-averse theorists subject to backward-looking peer review publishing pressure to earn their tenure or remain comfortable in their chairs. We can’t count on them to step up and revise their curriculum and rename their degrees.

I’m daring the MBA Class of 2024 to reframe their degrees and mindsets to become and behave as MBLs and CLOs. Your elders are failing you. Forge your leadership mettle and reverse the decline of our business ethics and society. The future is yours. There is a better way!

Let the Business Reformation Begin!

Kevin

Tip: Know a graduating MBA? Gift them Chief Leadership Officer:
Print Version • Audio

The purpose of business is NOT to make money. Yet, ask the average adult about the purpose of business, and experience tells me over half of them will incorrectly answer, “To make money.” Within the sciences of economics and accounting, financial profit remains a measure of performance, but not the purpose of business. Purpose precedes profit; otherwise, corruption of souls will soon follow.

Business first exists as a societal construct to serve the common good, not the greater good. Think of the common good as enlarging a pie so more get to eat versus taking more of a set sized pie. Those invoking the “greater good” are invariably tyrants advancing their agenda at the expense of others.

Business exists in the private sector. Therefore, by definition, business has no standing in socialism or communism whereby a central agency controls the production and distribution of goods, aka the greater good approach.

Capitalism remains the only system of economics repeatedly shown to benefit the common good. Thanks to the competitive nature of capitalism, quality improves, speed of delivery increases, prices are lowered, and options increase. These value-adding benefits raise the societal standard of living. The promise of prosperity by capitalism, however, relies on a moral and just people — the flaw in the system.

Unfortunately, the CEO-system of management that served the world so well for most of the 20th century is increasingly corrupted because of the decay in our judicial, political, social, and spiritual mores. The ugliness of greed, lust, and ego are increasingly unchecked and even celebrated with pagan ritual. Making money is the golden calf of our day. “Human Resources” are too readily sacrificed on the altar of “it’s just business” as “I get what’s mine.”

Chief Leadership Officer, my iconoclastic manifesto written as an easy-reading narrative, invites a much needed business reformation where people are no longer treated as assets and human capital. Instead, readers and leaders of businesses are invited to embrace their charge to be creators and increasers of wealth.

Wealth is the state of weal — a largely forgotten word that translates best to our modern ears as wellbeing. So wealth is a concept grounded in the whole person and the whole society. Business is therefore a group of people inspired by a common purpose to serve the common good in such a way that everyone profits. This is an economic understanding of, “All ships rise with an incoming tide” versus a zero-sum game.

Are you a business owner who is unsure what the purpose is for your team? Borrow “Increasing Wealth.” This generalized 2-word purpose sets a proper tone and direction until a company-specific purpose is determined.

There’s no need to reject the CEO methods. Rather, the CLO-system of leadership elevates and rehabilitates it so you’re no longer doing business incompletely right. Do you dare reconsider what is the purpose of business and make the change? I pray you do.

Let the Business Reformation Begin!

Kevin