It’s Just Business

“It’s just business, Alan. Don’t take it personally.”

It was 20 years ago. My client, a founding CEO, was informing me that he was rejecting my advice on a merger he was contemplating. He was prepared to ignore the people issues I had uncovered in due diligence and follow the investment banker’s counsel:

“You can deal with the soft issues later. Let’s get this deal done!”

I don’t really have a clear bright line between my business and personal point of view. I have followed my passion to do what I do, my business is wrapped up in who I am. I once explained as much to this client and he said,

“Wow. You must be miserable a lot of the time. I keep my beliefs, likes and dislikes completely separate from what I do to make money.”

I was privately horrified, but kept my piece. I find this sentiment to be quite common in business.

Peter Block, a teacher and colleague in the field of organizational development, once said in one of his training sessions that I attended:

“Business. It’s such an interesting word. As a noun, there is a lot to like about it – ‘we do business together’ – something a bit more than a transaction, a relationship, or ‘getting down to business’ – taking action on what’s really important.

“But when business is used as an adjective something unfortunate happens. Take ‘it’s a business decision’ – that means ‘we know we’re screwing you, but the money made us do it.’”

“It’s just business” is all too frequently used as a justification for taking short-term profit-focused action in the face of long-term damage to the firm, its customers, employees, or the community at large. It can be a license to ignore looking for unintended consequences. “It’s just business” can be a shortcut for not seeking the right solution to a problem, one that doesn’t just affect a symptom of the problem but rather than the underlying root cause.

I once sold off-the-shelf training programs in Pittsburgh. A large bank, our client, had acquired a large Philadelphia bank. Integration wasn’t going well, mostly because the Philadelphia bank had been told that this was a merger of equals when the acquiring CEO truly believed it was an acquisition –no – conquest. “When I said that we’d pick the best IT systems, I meant OUR SYSTEMS!”

The training manager had called us in to talk about using one of our training programs with the two bank integration team. The program Influence Management taught ‘how to get things done when you don’t have direct authority.’ I attended the meeting with my boss. The training manager was interested, but I kept asking questions, when I should have been closing the sale.

The training manager began to see that this training program would be window dressing at best and might throw gasoline on a smoldering fire.

We left the meeting. My boss was livid. “You actually talked yourself out of a sale!” She said.

“It wouldn’t solve the problem.” I responded, just a tad too defensively.

“Alan, this is business. Not everything works. It probably wouldn’t hurt.”

“But what if it did?”

“That isn’t your problem. And we would have had a sale for 35 books and instructor services.”

The steel industry in Pittsburgh was dying (though we didn’t know it at the time) and my training sales were declining. I later left that firm and went to work for a consulting firm that actually wanted to find true solutions to problems. It turned out to be a good move.

I have continued over the course of the more than 30 years since to do business according to what I believed to be right. In the 3 large consulting firms I worked for during that time it sometimes meant conflict with others in the firms. Now, working for myself, and with my chosen colleagues in the Results-Alliance, those conflicts are substantially less.

Last week I wrote about what I learned from Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, “Born to Run.” Bruce’s first manager, Mike Appel, signed him to an onerous contract that (according to Bruce) pretty much had him being Mike’s employee. Mike had gotten Bruce his first record deal by talking his way into John Hammond’s office. After Bruce’s first hit album, Born to Run, began to earn money, the contract was up for renewal. There was a lot of money on the table, but Bruce was, according to the terms of the contract, entitled to very little of it. Mike made resigning with him a condition of paying Bruce a more equitable settlement because Bruce might be a one-hit wonder.

Mike has written a book too, which I haven’t read yet, but in it I’m sure there is a different point of view that involves the clash between ego and gratitude or loyalty. But according to Bruce’s account, Bruce left Mike Appel because Mike made the “business decision” of taking the money today rather than demonstrate his belief in Bruce for the long term. Bruce then signed with Jon Landau because of “passion” and “heart.” To date Bruce has made over 20 more albums not counting boxed sets.

Most of the work of my career has been with large publically held companies, the kind who are sometimes driven to do the wrong things for employees, customers, or community in order to maximize shareholder value. That isn’t absolutely always the case, some executives I’ve worked for keep these constituencies in mind and some of my best projects have been working for those kind of leaders.

Recently I’ve become interested in B-corporations and Benefit Corporations. Some give a portion of profits away to charity; others have had a 35 year track record providing employee benefits like on-site child care.

I wonder, do people who work for B-corporations view a separation between business and personal as a virtue?