Why SSE exists, Ian Marchant blog post dt 09/06/2009
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Feedback in response to Ian's Blog
Post Title - Why SSE exists
Date Posted - 30/04/2009
Name: Joseph George
Department: Technical Solutions
Location: Havant
Comments:
Ian,
Thank you so much for letting us have your speech. Your 10 Commandments (sorry Recommendations) touched a chord, particularly the (1st Commandment) statement: "We are not interested in getting people to use more of our product. It’s about selling them what they need – not what they can be persuaded they want." This reminded me of one of my enterprise architecture (internet peer group) forum conversations in Jan this year. I will reproduce some snippets of my comments from that conversation below:
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I don't agree that "business is about making money" only. A few months ago, I would have been hard pressed to explain this. Look at the financial hotch-potch around you. If making money is the sole reason for a business, that will eventually destroy the economy.
Business is about providing a service and realising a value for it, not all in monetary terms either, but much of it so. Making money is tangential. A business justifies its existence in the Food-Chain by value-adding, and not by removing some existing ones. I would challenge even those people who say that their only reason for living is to make money. They perhaps do not realise that they might want to be happy too, as also to want to safely spend that money they have made not by losing it on some other greedy (criminal?) money making business, destroying the economy, society and associated eco-systems.
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I do stand by my previous statement, as I have explained, and will happily explain again. However, I was not talking about a "green" company or a charity or some sort of voluntary organisation. If we look at the values or the mission statement of any commercial company worth its salt, we might notice that none of them put making money at the top of their list.
I would be happy to be proven wrong. Please don't get me wrong... I am not against making money, or have that as an objective. Money is important!
What am against is making money the sole objective or mission, as that leads to overiding any values or morals, which would otherwise be a decision making factor. It is not sustainable...
For this reason, I don't consider working for some industries... Perhaps that is my wishful thinking. But I don't wish to contribute to any nefarious business actively (overtly or covertly) going about destroying what people live for.
I believe your speech should be released to all our employees via their manager's team-brief, and let everyone digest these. I don't think every employee is able to read your blog.
Kind regards,
Joseph