A New Kind of Worker

Last spring, I came across a series of articles in Time Magazine called ‘The Future of Work.” The series stated that the coming decade will bring an end to the ‘climbing the corporate ladder’ trend that we’re all so familiar with.

The upcoming generation of workers, according to a consulting firm quoted in the Times series, will no longer be defining success by paycheck, rank, or seniority. Instead, people will begin to define success “‘by what matters to [them] on a personal level,’ whether that’s the chance to lead a new-product launch or being able to take winters off for snowboarding”(Fischer, “When Gen X Runs the Show”).

The series goes on to point out that workers are no longer as willing to commit themselves, body and soul, to their jobs and only their jobs. Balance in life is becoming a new and important priority.

A New Kind of Company?

My question is this: If money is no longer the primary determinant of success for individuals, how will this new trend affect the way our corporations and businesses measure success?

If this new generation of workers are defining success by how well they maintain a work/life balance and how often they’re able to achieve their personal goals, does that then mean that our companies will cease to operate only for money? Could there ever exist a future where entire businesses measure their success not by sales or clients but by their ability to attain certain goals while maintaining balance?

Being a bit of a realist and subscriber to free market philosophies, I’m not entirely convinced this could, indeed, be a feasible future.

However, it is interesting to note that there are already some companies who are seeking to define their success on these new, more balanced terms. The long-standing outdoor clothing company, Patagonia, Inc. is one of them.

Founded by climber and surfer, Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia has always been a little bit of an anomaly among businesses for a couple of reasons:

1. The goals of the management team and employees are closely related to the goals of the clients. Those goals are, predictably, enjoy the out-of-doors in comfortable out-of-door-wear. That’s how the company got started in the first place: Yvon Chouinard started making his own equipment for personal use.
2. The company’s long term success depends on the preservation of wild spaces.

So here we have a company run by people with personal goals of enjoying wild spaces with both a personal and corporate interest in the preservation of those wild spaces.

The end result? A company who, like the future generation of workers, measures it’s success in a new way.

As Yvon Chouinard writes in his book Let My People Go Surfing, Patagonia evaluates its success not on sales numbers but on the “number of [environmental] threats averted: old-growth forests that were not clear-cut, mines that were never dug in pristine areas, toxic pesticides that were not sprayed,” or conversely, on the positive results of dismantled dams, restored wild areas, and creation of parks and wildernesses (Chouinard, 78).

By those measures, Patagonia has been extremely successful. As of 2006, Patagonia’s 1% for the Planet program in which 1% of the company’s sales are donated to grassroots, environmental groups has caught on with over 400 other companies (Chouinard, XI). Since 1985, over $22 million has gone to environmental groups from Patagonia alone (Chouinard, 78).

A Hopeful Outlook

Every company has a mission statement. Patagonia’s is: “make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis” (Chouinard, 78). The company focuses not just on a profit or even solely on producing a product. It also brings into consideration somewhat loftier goals like avoiding inflicting unnecessary harm and seeking to sustain the environment.

Perhaps the corporations of the future will have mission statements of a similar nature that look at success from a broader, more open perspective and that make more of an effort to incorporate all three of the elements of the Triple Bottom Line (people, planet, profit) than they do today. Profit will always be an integral part of business, but perhaps, someday, people will view profit as something that ca be achieved not through the ‘rape and pillage of the earth’ but rather by doing the right thing (Chouinard).

Perhaps someday, corporate success will be defined not just by numbers in a bank but also by what good that company has done for humanity at large. Perhaps someday, the new business philosophy will be: Why stop with profit alone when your business can change the world?

I’ll close out with another quote from Let My People Go Surfing that really highlights the potential role that business can play in making our world a better place:

“A certain void exists now with the decline of so many good institutions that used to guide our lives, such as social clubs, religions, athletic teams, neighborhoods, and nuclear families, all of which had a unifying effect. They gave us a sense of belonging to a group, working toward a common goal. People still need an ethical center, a sense of their role in society. A company can help fill that void if it shows its employees and its customers that it understands its own ethical responsibilities and then can help them respond to their own.

Patagonia will never be completely socially responsible. it will never make a totally sustainable non-damaging product. But it is committed to trying” (Chouinard, 259).

*Chouinard, Yvon. Let My People Go Surfing. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.