The Future of Adding Value in Business

Today, adding value is considered to be in monetary terms - tangible or intangible - but monetary nonetheless. For example, tangible value is adding extra features to a product which benefits the customer. Intangible is in terms of good customer service or the value gained by wearing a strong brand, like a designer dress. However, ultimately, adding value also adds to the price tag!

The future of adding value is entirely different. Money, new features or customer service cannot help add true value. We are realising increasingly that no matter how much money we spend on great well-branded useful products, we are still unhappy, the consumer is fundamentally dissatisfied with all products and services. This is because value is an internal property of a satisfied person, not an external one.

Today adding value is about playing to the human ego, human desire, human wants. Tomorrow adding value is about allowing a person to connect to their inner happiness, to liberate the human from desire, to show a human being pure compassion.

World leaders, governments and business tycoons will all fail tomorrow even if they thrive today, for tomorrow, an organisation without compassion and truth cannot survive. The greater recession underlying the economic recession is the recession of kindness and compassion - this is the true source of the economic recession. Compassion is the fundamental source of value.

In business, where control was the past and where lies are the present, the future is compassion. The thought today is "No, no! A business with too much compassion will fail because a business is about making profit". Tomorrow, the reverse will be true because the Universe and Mother Earth is full of compassion, and so an organisation which believes that compassion is too expensive will die out - cease to exist - since its working against the principles of nature. If we can agree as a premise that the lack of compassion is the source of the recession, then organisations giving compassion will naturally be in the greatest demand, due to the utter scarcity of compassion.

Thus comes the rise of compassionate business - a bit of an oxymoron today. A business which endures all the burden of cost in order to zero its negative impact on society and the world as best as it can, is the business which shall thrive tomorrow. Also, its not simply ethical business i.e. doing a few ethical things here and there because one "should" or "has to", but rather business which at all levels is honestly and fundamentally serving the world to make a positive difference without any greed, hatred or short-term thinking. Such an organisation lives by the laws of the Universe, never trying to survive, never cutting corners to save money, never acting selfishly - but rather making conscious holistic decisions that take into account all impacts on society, the world and even its competitors. These traits can today be seen in many voluntary organisations and Social Enterprises which fundamentally want to make a positive difference in people's lives and are full of compassion, and they are thriving!

A business culture and subculture always follows from the personality of those who lead it. So, a business leader or board of directors who understand and practice compassion can survive the times, anything short of this, and the business or organisation will ultimately fail.

Such a paradigm shift in business philosophy will be a renaissance - and business shall be born again in its original colour, purity and purpose for which it was created - as a vehicle to serve people with compassion, without greed or hatred towards anyone including other competitors. Unfortunately that means the end of a lot of businesses and even governments we might consider "good" today, but the organisations tomorrow will give us what we really need in a pure way, rather than what we've been manipulated into thinking we need.

Sat Naam.