Interesting

[Hennie]

http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2010/ ... again.html


Now why wasn't I surprised?

[skydove]

Brilliant Hennie,
thanks for posting!

[Jalking]

excellent!! Just as I always have said at work . I have forwarded it to my boss - now I just hope she get the hint

[Badger Bob]

Hmmm, people get more from job satisfaction than being given huge sums of money?

It'll never catch on if you can't put a number in the annual report...

[Jalking]

Would it be possible to imagine a company with the same philosophy? The company earn enough to keep prospering, but then focuses on other goals then the bottom line? I'm sure it won't be a company with any sort of stockholders though - most of those are a greedy lot.

Such a company could in fact be very innovative, but have to define itself on other goals then money - and that can be hard.

wishful thinking maybe - but I sure would like to work there.

[seabhac star]

This was a great vid. While the science/ philosophy is great, The Corporation can't help but find ways to maximise prophets. The motivation for this change would not only have to be better production but also liberation of the human spirit. While this philosophy is in the employ of the Corporation , it would ultimately seek to control the individual. Corporation is anti-individual and more than potentially fascistic. While this science / philosphy is great on the street among the little guy , it could, in the hands of some twisted think tank, become another way to enslave. The best slaves do not know they are slaves. Great vid, sorry to be such a downer, just an opinion.

[FoxPhantom]

that was interesting, really interesting. Thanks for bringing this up Hennie. ^_^

[Andeg Myeengun]

Such a company could in fact be very innovative, but have to define itself on other goals then money - and that can be hard.

and also illegal

[Dathi]

Thanks Hennie, Shared with a bunch of people that needed to see that!

CFN,

Dathi

[wolf560]

Hello Hennie,

That was a very interesting video, thank you for posting it.

I spent three years in Pakistan and Afghanistan and can speak to the strange behavior that normal success & reward models elicited.

Our final answer was to give our workers the autonomy to initiate, direct (somewhat), and conclude their daily tasks. The monetary reward system simply failed to work no matter how many times we modified it. We had to constantly oversee the work in progress and modify our leadership methodology, but we did eventually complete our tasks.

/|\ Mark

P.S. I delivered medical, sustenance, and cold-weather supplies to the United Nations for the Pakistan Earthquake in 2005.

[Oneonine]

John Lewis

They don't have staff, they have assosciates who are all part of a profit sharing scheme and who get to have a say on how the company is run. For years they ran an employee suggested opening hours, where they were closed Sundays and Mondays, so staff still got a weekend. Sadly, with more Sunday opening that had to go. Trying to get a job with them is hard, lot of people want to be a part of that company.

[Kullervo]

Such a company could in fact be very innovative, but have to define itself on other goals then money - and that can be hard.

and also illegal

Not at all. The problem is in thinking of "company" only as "publicly traded corporation." In any kind of corporation (at least under US law) the officers and directors owe a fiduciary duty to the shareholders (which, like it or not, makes sense--they are doing business with someone else's money after all). When a company is publicly traded, "the shareholders" are possibly millions of anonymous human beings and entities, all of which have little personal interest or stake in the corporation. They are in it for their stock prioce to go up (again, like it or not, it makes sense--this includes peoples' retirement accounts, etc.). And increasingly, shares of publicly traded corporations are not owned by individuals at all but by hedge funds and investment companies, who in turn owe a fidicuary duty to the people whose money <i>they</i> are doing business with.

But we can set all of that aside. Of all the business entities out there, a relatively very few are traditional "corporations" like the one I described above. Most are older and prominent, and have high dollar values, and they often dominate their respective industries for various reasons that have nothing to do with the form of business entity.

There are a lot of other ways to make "a company" that easily get around the legal obligation to the bottom line. Even a corporation doesn;t have to be publicly traded: it can be closely-held, for example, in which case "the shareholders" are often the very people who run the company. If the officers and directors of the corporation are the only shareholders, then they are free to do other things with the corporation than mindlessly pursue the bottom line. They only owe a fiduciary duty to themselves as shareholders, so if they decide to not pursue profit at the expense of everything else, they can do it.

Partnerships, Limited Liability Companies, Limited Partnerships, there are a staggeringly large number of permutations on the business entity, and not all of them are beholden to shareholders or to the bottom line. And that's not even talking about charitable corporations or nonprofit enterprises.