Ghandi, Business Values, and Green IT at Susan Labandibar

Ghandi, Business Values, and Green IT

I attended (and spoke at) the Eleventh Annual Symposium on Spirituality and Business yesterday. I am not a religious person. But it was a great opportunity to step back and reflect. The highlight of the day was listening to Kevin Lynch, Executive Director of Rebuild Resources. He reminds himself daily of all of the advantages that he was born with that he has not earned. That he has suffered from drug and alcohol addiction, like those he serves. The people Kevin works with are not clients, but fellow human beings.

This is the concept of the servant leader that I spoke of earlier in the day. My speech was called: Satyagraha for the Business Leader:

What is Satyagraha, and what does it mean for business leaders?
Has the business world anything to learn from the philosophy that enabled Ghandi to lead a popular movement that freed India from British rule? The term Satyagraha was made from two Hindu words: Satya, or Truth, and Graha, which means Firmness. Satyagraha, therefore is Firmness in Truth. It is a way of creating change by embodying the truth. It’s a way of prevailing over others– not by force, but by force of example.

Now, compare the principle of Satyagraha to the principle of leadership given by this writer: “You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” It’s a quote from the #1 bestseller business book, Good to Great.

Good to Great is an analysis of how good companies become great companies. Jim Collins, the author of the book, said that the leaders of these companies achieved spectacular results by blending extreme personal humility with unwavering resolve to achieve their goals. Jim Collins originally called this leadership style “servant leadership” but later changed it to Level 5 leadership. Ghandi originally called his leadership style passive resistance. But the words “passive resistance” did not work for him just as the words “servant leader” didn’t work for Collins. Ghandi’s passive resistance wasn’t passive just as Collins’ leaders weren’t servants. So Ghandi actually had a contest to name the movement, and this was the way the term Satyagraha was adopted.

If you are just looking at what it takes to make a great leader, it would seem that both Ghandi and Collins are in agreement: A person who combines clear-sightedness with perfect self-mastery and enormous resolve, can do almost anything. That is the power of Satyagraha. But there is a point where the worlds of Ghandi and Collins diverge. And the crucial point of difference is values. Some of the companies that Collins called “great” were NOT great. Companies like Philip Morris and Kimberly-Clark generated a lot of money for their shareholders. But, when it comes to values, they fall short. Let me read you a quote from the interviews Mr. Collins conducted with executives from Philip Morris and Kimberly-Clark.

In wrapping up my interview with George Weissman of Philip Morris, I commented, “When you talk about your time at the company, it’s as if you are describing a love affair.” He chuckled and said, “Yes. Other than my marriage, it was the passionate love affair of my life. I don’t think many people would understand what I’m talking about, but I suspect my colleagues would. “ Similarly, Dick Appert of Kimberly-Clark said in his interview, “I never had anyone in Kimberly-Clark in all my forty-one years say anything unkind to me. I thank God the day I was hired because I’ve been associated with wonderful people. Good, good people who respected and admired each other.”

Okay, Kimberly-Clark is the number one driving force behind America’s love affair with soft and squishy bathroom tissue. They are the creators of the Mr. Whipple ad campaign: “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.” Do you know why Charmin is squishy? Because its made with virgin paper pulp. And Kimberly-Clark is–even to this day–proud to advertise on their website that Kleenex contains 100% virgin pulp. Most of this pulp comes from Canada, where they are clear-cutting ancient Boreal forests to make this stuff.

So this is the problem in the business world. We have great people with tremendous leadership skills. But what direction are they leading us in?

How do we know if we are–in fact–leading in the right direction? Ghandi devoted his life to the pursuit of Satya, or Truth. He wrote a biography called My Experiments with Truth. In this book, he said that all his life was devoted to a search for truth because Truth is God. So, Ghandi was a “seeker” in the classic sense of the word. But he was not content with merely seeking the truth. He was also a doer. He wanted to LIVE the truth. And, for him, this meant devoting his life to leading India back to the simplicity of her ancient civilization. Maybe under other circumstances, Ghandi would have been content to live his life as a seeker, as many Indian gurus and swamis have. But circumstances compelled him to become a leader of his people.

Today we are facing our own crisis. And it is not just the financial crisis. No, the crisis I am talking about is much worse. Our world is warming. Our oceans are rising. And we, for the moment, at least, stand powerless to stop it.

Not that we need a reminder of more bad news, but over the last two years, scientists from over 60 countries have participated in a research program called “The International Polar Year.” This $1.2 billion dollar program funded more than 160 multi-disciplinary research projects. The final report was released on February 25th. It says that ice over both poles is melting much faster than scientists had thought possible. And the rate of ice loss in Greenland is increasing as well.

Many of us urgently feel the need to stop global warming. But it’s easy to feel powerless when we think of the task ahead of us. How do you choose what to do every day when there is no path before you? How did Ghandi, for example, decide that he would march 240 miles from his ashram to the sea to defy the British salt tax by making his own salt? He thought the British would kill him for this, which would have ended his campaign.

This is the power of Satyagraha. It is the power of the will to live the truth, regardless of the consequences.

Now I’m going to tell you a personal story of something that did a lot to deepen my will. Although it had nothing to do with freeing India or stopping global warming, it taught me that everyday people like me and my Dad can summon the strength to fight these forces that are far greater than we are. Now notice I didn’t say “fight these forces and win.” Because we didn’t win.

Eight years ago, my dad was diagnosed with a very rare form of melanoma. It was growing, not on his skin, but in his sinus. And Dad and I fought that disease. Dad fought his disease in order not to leave my Mom and the rest of his family. And I fought it because he asked for my help. For the next three years, I went to medical libraries, pored through listings of clinical trials, wrote to doctors all over the country, and fought with insurance companies. I even created a website where I listed clinical trials and tracked my dad’s medical history. And I did this knowing that my Dad was not going to beat this disease.

How did I know this? Because, within three weeks of his diagnosis, I had found a retrospective study on melanoma of the sinus. A retrospective study is when a researcher goes back through the records of many hospitals to locate every recorded case of the disease. In the case of my dad’s disease, they hadn’t found even one patient who had survived for more than a few years.

So I knew he was going to die. And I was almost positive that nothing I could do would prolong his life. Actually, in some ways I made it worse because I’m sure Dad would have been a lot more comfortable, and he would have been in the hospital a lot less if he hadn’t gone through all those clinical trials.

But, for our family, what we did was right. They say that “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” But they’re wrong. Because, even though melanoma did kill my father, what he he endured to try to be there for his family was a shining act of bravery that will resonate forever for everyone that knew him.

One of the things that changed after my Dad died, was me. In 2003, when my Dad died, I was a successful entrepreneur. My eight-year old computer business was profitable and growing. But I wasn’t making a difference for any of the causes I cared about, like protecting the environment. In fact, I wasn’t clear why I had started the business in the first place. One day, I had picked up an old hippie book called Earning Money without a Job by Jay Conrad Levinson. The advice was basically to start several businesses at the same time and see what panned out. That’s how I started selling used computers to college students. It was such a rough and tumble affair, it seemed more like an adventure than a business to me. One day I was even held at gunpoint when I tried to repossess a computer.

Not really a credible beginning for a values-driven business. The truth is, I didn’t start Tech Networks with a social purpose. But after my dad died, I started to realize that I had the strength and courage to try to address real problems in this world. Even if, like when I fought my Dad’s cancer, I didn’t think we would win. So, over the last few years, I have changed my business.

My company still helps people use technology. But we are also trying to reduce the environmental impact of computing. This has proved to be more difficult than I thought. At first, we thought we would reduce computer energy use by making a more efficient computer. Our Earth PC was one of the first computers with a power supply that was more than 80% efficient. It was endorsed by the EnergyStar program and by utility companies who gave us a $5 rebate for every PC we sold. The media loved us. We even landed a front page article in the Boston Globe.

But how much energy did we save? Actually, very little, even though we were very successful at selling them. By recommending Earth PCs, we failed to take into account all of the other solutions that were actually more efficient. Sure, an Earth PC used less energy than one that was exactly the same except for a less efficient power supply. But what about buying a laptop instead of an EarthPC, or what about a thin-client solution? Maybe our customers shouldn’t buy anything new at all. If they just kept their existing computer and installed power management on it, so the computer goes to sleep when they are not using it, that would save more energy than anything else.

In fact, the deeper we dug into the issue, the more confused we became. Some of the data we have found says that 81 percent of the lifetime energy use of a PC is expended during the manufacturing process. So the very idea of replacing your computer to save energy becomes ridiculous. Not only does it take a lot of energy to make a new desktop computer, but it takes a lot of resources. In 2006 it took 528 lbs of fossil fuels, 38 lbs of chemicals and 400 gallons of water to make the average desktop computer. That’s the same resources as it take to build a mid-sized car! And when you dispose of these computers, you release toxic waste materials such as dioxins, mercury, lithium and lead.

So now we are asking people:

•    What problem are you trying to solve by purchasing new equipment? Is there any way to reconfigure existing equipment to achieve the same result?
•    Are you buying hardware or software from vendors that promote equipment obsolescence in order to sell more stuff?
•    If you don’t need your equipment anymore, who else can get some use out of it?
•    And, finally, what will happen to your equipment when it dies?

Sometimes, these questions are as counter-intuitive for us as they are for our clients. What is better? To spend $500 on a new computer or repair your old one? When you purchase a new computer, most of your money is sent to far-away companies that are polluting our planet . When you pay a technician to fix your computer problem, your money stays right here in the community, which sounds good, unless, of course, your repaired computer breaks again, and you throw it out the window.

So, how do I know if I am leading my company in the right direction? Obviously, I don’t. None of us ever do. As Al Gore said at the climate conference in Fiji last year: “Path walker: There is no path. You must make the path as you walk.” Ghandi was a great path walker. He made a path that led India out of British control towards self-rule. He did it not by telling others to change, but by BEING the change he wanted to see in the world. Making a new path is hard. But it’s the only way that we are going to get out of the blind alley we are in today.