by Miriam Garvi
I once read an article by professor Peter Pruzan where he makes this reflection:
“With the aid of our time’s alchemists - economists - money has been transmuted from a means to the end.”
Let me give you a little illustration of this point. As I was interviewing various people for my dissertation, I sat down with an investment manager at the Skandia Group, an international savings company. When asked what his team were all about, the answer was plain and simple; «We’re small and square - money for our pension beneficiaries, money for our pension beneficiaries, money for our pension beneficiaries…». Small and square? Now there’s an answer that’ll fit right into a business growth matrix or a market plan!
It is amazing how the ‘language of money’ narrows down possible options to one single end, namely maximizing profit - or to be more up-to-date these days, increasing shareholder value. This language makes no room for any reflections on whether +5% is the kind of fulfilment we’re looking for or if it is in fact merely a means for developing and sustaining what we are doing. If it is the latter, then the language of money is doing us the disservice of diverting focus away from the fundamental things in business and life alike, by reducing what we talk about and what we think counts to the measurable and simplistic.
A man with a vision once said: “Business is not about dollars and cents so much as about building for the future.” That future calls us to go beyond the measurable and simplistic and start thinking about the bigger picture.