In the world of business there is a never-ending debate revolving around the ultimate question, the heart and soul of any strategy, i.e. why are we doing this?
Every organization or business concern pursues a purpose by launching its products in the market or by offering various services to its clients. What is that purpose? The first answer that comes to one’s mind is: Profit. As a matter of fact, profit is the crucial factor that justifies investment of efforts and resources. And naturally, the outcome of those efforts should be attractive enough to the owners or investors to continue with whatever they are doing.
Profit may be one of the goals of any business concern or organization but not the sole purpose. If we study the history of huge companies or organizations, we would find that money alone was never the driving force behind them that helped them transform into great and unique and more than profitable concerns.
At the beginning of this month, Tim Cook, Apple CEO, demonstrated an example of what truly makes a company unique and special. During the company’s annual stockholder meeting, Cook, the otherwise cool and soft-spoken person lost his temper during the Q&A session of the event. A think tank known as the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) was pushing for a shareholder’s proposal that would have dictated Apple to disclose costs associated with its sustainability and green programs and to be transparent about its participation in what NCPPR called “certain trade associations and business organizations promoting the amorphous concept of environmental sustainability.”
During the session, the NCPPR representative challenged Apple’s sustainability projects, such as covering 100 percent of the company’s power needs using green sources, and questioned the effects of such programs on the company’s bottom line. What came next, according to many commentators, was a rare occasion of seeing Cook getting angry and losing his usual composed and quite manner in answering questions, “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the **** ROI (return on investment).”
Cook did not stop there; he directly looked at the representative and announced, “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”
It is not only money and return on investment that makes companies great, and Apple is definitely one of them. They have a purpose, a mission and responsibility toward the world they live in, a message that goes deep in their structures, instilled in everything they do, a soul that dictates their decisions and actions. That does not mean, in anyway, that pursuing profits and surpluses in the bottom lines is not on these big companies’ agendas but along their journeys to earn those profits, they have an eye on what goes beyond the financial statements.
One cannot help but wonder if there is any Saudi company that is operating under such beliefs and values. Of course, websites and annual reports of most Saudi companies are filled with all kinds of shiny mission statements and warmly written objectives, but when it comes to reality, when you go a little deeper into the way they manage their work and execute their strategies, the language of money is the language ruling the scene, dictating the show.
To take general examples, look at the strategies of most of the Saudi companies operating today. For a strong and expanding economy, you would assume that most of our companies are expanding, booming, acquiring, and catching up with the latest trends and business models, the reality is that most of them are on a cost-cutting mission and outsourcing their operations to cheap and lousy operators. That is all happening in the name of contributing to the bottom line, forgetting along the way the impact they are leaving behind because of those decisions; underdeveloped and unmotivated human resources, lousy customer services, low standards of productions and total disregard to the environment. The only concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) most of our companies are aware of is to hold seasonal charitable events and public affairs sponsorships!
One is yet to see a Saudi company that confronts the norms, coming up with an innovative or daring project in order to impact the world of its customers, or its environment, the way Apple or other great companies do. It is not strange for Tim Cook to say about Apple, “We want to leave the world better than we found it.” He was simply following same the path left by his predecessor, Steve Jobs, when he said, “We’re here to put a dent in the universe.”
That is how great companies operate … it is not all about the money!
