A brief intellectual history of the trump era interviewed by New York Times book review editor, paul. Watch book tv this weekend on cspan2. It is great to be back as we kick off our fall season and our inaugural speaker as you mentioned is ted freeman, professor of Business Administration atthe Darden School at uva. His latest book which is still relevant youre in the current discourse that is going on in our nation is called the word and. The most powerful word in our language. So lets find out why the power of and is responsible for this without tradeoffs. Thank you very much for having me. Its a real treat to be back even if only virtually. At fordham. Many years ago in a fit of youthful idealism, as dave had mentioned, i got a phd in philosophy. And that was great. My father was always terrific and he said well, youll never have to worry about a job because just opened a bunch ofphilosophy factories outside the interstate. Youll be fine. I got very lucky with sort of a postdoc war. Ive always taught at Business Schools but i wanted to capture today if i can that sense of optimism and idealism in the shadows of this awful pandemic. And the really devastation that has occurred. In the world. In many communities. I still remain incredibly optimistic that we are going to find ourway out of this. That were going to find our way to Racial Justice and that were going to build a better world which is what all of us i think would like to do. I want to focus on the debate which exists about ethics and capitalism. Theres an old story about business thats deeply rooted all over the world, not just in the us. And you know the old story, tell us about the money. Its about profits. Lastly week was the 50th anniversary of the very famous paper by Milton Friedman at the only task of managers is to make asmuch money as possible. For shareholders. That old story may have been useful at some point, i dont really know. But its not very useful anymore. The idea that making money and profits is all that matters and the idea that shareholders are all that matters, the idea that businesses are about people trying to do each other in common that people only worry about theirshortterm economic selfinterest , and when i tell somebody i teach ethics people have to strike a laugh or make jokes or whatever its an oxymoron, it must be a short course didnt know business had any or theoretical subjects. If youve got a new one, put them in the chat so i can use them. So ever since the Global Financial crisis, weve seen an increase in the sort of clarion call for can we think about business for capitalism different. Im going to usethose two terms interchangeably. Im kind of a modern day adam smith fan. Smith never used the word capitalism. He did write a lot about ethics. That most people dont read. So in the aftermath of the Global Financial crisis, an increase in the sort of calm for reform, i want to juxtapose that with several problems. First of all i recall the 70 percent problem. 70 percent problem comes from the study that looked at engagement. How much are people engaged in their work. The 70 percent number was found in the us and its higher in many places in the world, lower in a few places like angola and others and at 770 percent of people are unengaged or actively unengaged in their jobs. If your unengaged, you just dont care. If youre actively unengaged, i guess you would show up every day and take the place down so thats a real problem i think. A real practical problem. Ive asked many ceos what are those numbers in their organizations . They all like to think its better, but some will say well, weve got to work on that. Theres a standard issue about thats been there for a long time about trust in business. Trust in business, and Business Executives is fairly low. Youve seen studies around 20 percent. People trust business less than they trust doctors, less than they trust lawyers which hurts to some of us. The only group thats least in terms of trust is politicians and ill let you decidewhether thats a victory or not. It seems not to me. We are still dealing with the aftermath of a Global Financial crisis, along comes the covid pandemic and along comes the movement catalyzed by black lives matter and the search for Racial Justice. Business isnt immune to any of these things. It has a part to play inall of them. We are not going to solve these problems with more of the wrong things. Were not going to solve these problems by trying harder to maximize shareholder values. Were not going to solve these problems by seeing business as just a bunch of greedy pastors trying to do each other in. Always acting in the shortterm self interest. What we need is a new narrative, and his three of business. A new way to think about business. We need a new conceptualization in business. The good news and i painted that as a fairly dark beginning, the good news is this is happening in the world. And its easy to forgetabout it. To think about the incredible interest, it started in the 60s but weve seen incredible interest in proper responsibility. In sustainability as janine said. To seen social entrepreneurship come to the four but organizations like just capital, like inclusive capitalism. Like richard brands group whose name i always forget. Like the gri and the impact of investing and Conscious Capitalism and social responsible investing and stakeholder capitalism. All of these movements and theyre all founded on Real Companies out doing business in a different way. I was at a meeting at the white house in the waning days of the Obama Administration and the point of the meeting was to try to figure out whats the right place to look at good government, in particular with labor, what could they do to encourage this movement . But whats the right brand . How does this get branded . Wouldnt it be better if we all pull together under one brand . After sitting there while i began to think that maybe its the wrong question or a different question. Maybe a better question is to think about what are the four or five absolutely necessary things that whatever the brand turns out to be, this new story of business, this new story of capitalism has to be a rift so we decided to write, bobby parmer , Christian Martin who is the professor of notre dame, we decided to write the power, the power of and, successful business without tradeoffs suggest there are five key principles, five key ideas and maybe there are six or seven. We focus on these five and they are connected. They give us a way out of thinking about business in the old story, but they do require a fair amount of imagination. I want to briefly talk about these five to get in the q and a and focus on any of them that they want to. The first one that says look, we need to think about the idea, they get the idea of purpose wrong. It says the purpose of business is to make as much money as you can. I do like myself to live but its not that the purpose in my life is to make red blood cells. Even when i might have to focus on making red blood cells, i had oneweekend a few years ago i got my hip replaced. And i had to focus on making red blood cells. That certainly wasnt the purpose of my life. Does this must have progress. The idea that problems or bad or profits are evil, its like red blood cellsare evil. Youve got to have them to live. Im a little bit of a musician and we have a saying, everybodys got to get paid. It doesnt matter whether your forprofit or notforprofit, weve got to get paid and invest in the future so profits are necessary but thats not the purpose of the business. Thats not why entrepreneurs started a business. I dont say i start something because im going to make a lot of money, i say may get a job because you got a better chance of making money getting a job than you do starting something but why entrepreneurs start a business . They have a purpose, they want to bring something into being. Purpose is what activates business and ideas. Rockets follow from purpose. And theyre not themselves the purpose of business. They are an outcome. Its a little bit like some of you may know these people who spend a lot of their time focusing on being happy. Everything theydo is about being happy , youve got to be happy. These are the most miserable people on the planet. Because they dont understand that happiness is an outcome. Its an outcome of what your relationships are, what youre doing with your life, what your purpose is, etc. Profits are the same way. Profits are an outcome of how you make your purpose real. What are the ways that you create value for your stakeholders so we need purpose and profits, not just profits. So the second point that its no surprise to any of you that are familiar with business, since the late 70s ive written about this idea of stakeholders and how i thought thats justthe way business worked. Even on a dirt farm in georgia we knew you had to deal with folks who affect you and you could affect. Thats things like just complete common sense to me. Always has, ive never understood why people thought that was a radical idea for quite honestly even an interesting idea. I thought there were some interesting ideas in a book i wrote called Strategic Management of stakeholders and i didnt think the stakeholder idea was the most interesting one. I didnt realize how embedded the whole story was in our mind, how much what mike would say, where in the grip of that old story and its a great that we need to break. Any business as always and will always create and sometimes destroy value for customers and buyers and employees and communities. And the people with the money. Building and leading a business means getting these things going in the same direction. Even if youre the most staunch freeman height in the world, and all you care about is shareholder value, how are you going to do it . You have great products, customers, supplies and want to make them better, youre going to have employees who engage, communities want to do that and if yourelucky you might make some money. So these stakeholders versus shareholders is a complete mistake. These are interdependent and you cant look at them as one versus another. The second thing to notice here is that thinking about stakeholders is a fundamentally different way than most people want to think about business because you have to think about them in relational terms. You have to think about stakeholder relationships. A relationship is very different than a transaction. Transactions are one off things that might be repeated , but relationships and or overtime. And youdexpect them to continue. And at least in our personal relationships we have tradeoffs. My wife and i have been married for 34 years, she was moving to grad schooland i followed her along. And i know if i went to another room in our house where we are and i said you know honey, ive been keeping score and i think you only three. Im very certain of what the outcome of that would be. Since shes a seconddegree black belt in tae kwon do. In relationships you dont have to keep score. Which push comes to shove, you help each other but thats how business works. Its not just this transactional. There are some parts of business and life that are like that but for the most part to build a Great Company youbuild a better relationship. So its purpose and profit. Stakeholders and shareholders. Is this doesnt exist, business doesnt exist in this world managed by economy. Its this story where theres only perfect competition, their only market forces. All information is contained in the price, etc. You know how that story goes. Business in the real world is connected. With other societal institutions. And we are as actors with big businesses, we are at once consumers,sometimes employees. It is in, parents, partners , patients and its very hard to separate out what institution from another. We need to see business as connected in society with these other institutions and to try and understand business and partner with them if you like to improve our styles. This is also true if we think about business embedded transparency, business is embedded in the physicalworld. You cant, one of the things we know is we cant forget about not only are intangible resources but are tangible resources. So thinking about what sustainability means, how business can be connected, there are lots of other societal institutions is a problem. Its a problem especially today in the us and other places in the world because of crony capitalism. Because of some businesses in cahoots with people in government to make special deals forthemselves. Here it is a case of not letting markets work enough and not seeing business as a part of society, but rather look, im doing this just to make as much money as i can. We need if were going to solve problems like global warming, we really need people to start businesses and use their creative imagination. Fourth is a principal called human complexity principle and the idea behind the complexity principle is that where not onedimensional maximizers. There are people like that. We call them sociopaths. And for the most part, we elect them to politicaloffice. I just want to say thats a completely nonpartisan statement. Human beings, what are human beings . We can be selfish of course. And we can be incrediblyother regarding. Anybody whos ever been a month or anyone whos ever had a child knows that this idea of focusing on our rational self is just a logic mistake,thats not what human beings are. Ive often said what a human being is could be illustrated by this iphone that i have here. Think of the vocabularies that we had to literally invent to get the iphone. To literally invent the terms of the problems and issues. We had to invent a vocabulary about glass, we had to invent the physics but what a human being is is a set of a creature who can invent vocabularies to solve problems or to actually realize those solutions. Thats what business does and its time that we recognize that. Business works because we cant Work Together to create something that no one of us can create alone. Its not an urge to compete that is so important to capitalism. Its the urge to create. To be a part of themselves, to Work Together in relationship with others. Thats what makes capitalism work. And its high time that we recognize that. As david said, there are lots of examples of companies that are doing this and dont take this as this is eds wish list of the way the world is. Or the way the worldshould be. Its rather what im trying to talk to you as this is actually happening in the world but where such in the great of grip of the old story thatsometimes we dont see it. That final issue is weve got to put business and ethics together. Most people dont keep their promises shouldnt work, we have a crisis in society that we cant talk about this stuff anymore because you cant talk about race or gender or you cant talk about religion. These things are too sensitive. Etc. And that honestly is the death knell of a Democratic Society. If we cant figure out how to talk critically about the things that affect all of us, where a less Democratic Society think is not here for very long so let me summarize and say purpose and profits, stakeholders and shareholders , business as a societal institution and a market institution. People with full humanity and economic interest. And ethics in business and if we put those five things together, i think we get a different view of business and a different view of the world. We need moral leadership. We need people who lead critical conversations, not righteous ones. No lectures on morality. We have to take people where they are and lead them to where they need to be. This requires i believe incredible emotional intelligence. Itrequires humility. And i think its best done with a good dose of humor. If we cant address our own values, our own authenticity and contribute to others, where not going to have a reallygood future. But in the end ill say two things. Theres the take away, the one take away is are you willing to see the result of your conversations in the newspaper and people always say the New York Times, washington post. As good as those papers are, they dont herald Daily Progress because if they did the test would be are there at least five factual errors. Is the captain under the picture correct. Theres a big idea that you read this two days before somewhere else so the newspapers system doesnt work for us sowe had to invent a new one. The new catch is something i would call can i go home at the end of the day and say to ben and molly let me tell you what i did today that im proud of and that you will learn from. Because if were not making our organizations, our companies, our synagogues and mosques and community centers, educational institutions, if where not trying to make them places for our children to live in, weve got the bar too low. The second thing is comes from one of my favorite guitar players by the name of lauren hayes. Warren hayes is one of the great guitarists, a leader of government mule, the allman brothers, etc. And im trying to learn to play slide guitar but i wasnt warren hayes on video. I said to play slide guitar sounds like youre basically killinga cat. And that youre doing to cause the most pain possible. Its the way it sounds. So im struggling with this and Warren Haynes says when you play the blues, itdoesnt really matter how many notes you play. Youve got to mean the notes that you play. My challenge to all of you is to figure out what are the notes that you mean to play because in todays world theres a lotcoming at you. Theres an awful lot that we dont know. Listening to someone like mark hayes or bb king play that one note claw, theres more humanity in that one note then in the hundred others that people can play. Its i think a rule that would do us well. Let me stop there and try to back over to david s that was great. We are raffling off 50 copies ofyour book. And in your book you give a number of concrete examples of companies that are playing great notes to use your analogy. Can you share with us a couple of examples and why you chose some of thecompany that you chose . Sure, there are lots of them. There are some that get a lot of press like whole foods. Weve also done led by bobby parmer and kenny a film called fishing with dynamite and fishing with dynamite is about a 17 minute film on the shareholder stakeholder idea with lot