#sustyreads

Whew!  I finally finished Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia.  It took me awhile to get through this book because, honestly, it’s not a page-turner.  I was excited to read it - it jumped ahead of about 25 books I Amazon Premium’d that sit accumulating in a pile, still unread - but found the format too much like an undergrad honor’s thesis: In Part II, for instance, here’s a breakdown of your stakeholders, in case you forgot.  I guess it’s valuable information but maybe a little dry?

Mackey and Sisodia use this book to explain their new business philosophy, in which running a business can and should incorporate four tenets: higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management.  The idea is that companies that strive towards these tenets produce the best returns for all of their stakeholders, including their shareholders.  Conscious capitalism shows that companies that integrate purpose and sustainability don’t have to sacrifice profit.

The Forbes.com review called the book “a true guide to the future”, and it’s not wrong.  Out of the CC philosophy and book grew an organization and community, and I agree that it's important to think differently about capitalism, the role of business, and the value of being stakeholder- rather than shareholder-oriented.  But for me, this book was missing clarity.

I am a big Whole Foods fan, always finding reasons to go there when I’m in the US, and I wanted to learn more about its story.  But this book couldn’t really decide if it was a biography of John Mackey and Whole Foods or an explanation of conscious capitalism, of which Whole Food is one of many examples.  This ambivalence was frustrating because I wanted to know more about Whole Foods but couldn’t see the clear connection between it and the other companies featured, like Tata or the Container Store.  The profiled companies played second fiddle to Whole Foods, and I wasn’t quite convinced that they were all great examples.

The most interesting part for me came after I finished the book: In June, Amazon, a company the book praises as a model of conscious capitalism but that has seen its share of criticism (many many times), bought Whole Foods, the company founded and run by author John Mackey, for $13.7 billion.  What could this mean for the future of both businesses?  What does this say about the integrity of Whole Foods and conscious capitalism?  What will be the impact on independent grocers and smaller chains - and what does that say about conscious capitalism?  So many questions; only time has the answers.

As a mom of nearly one-year-old twins (ah!) I’ve fallen behind in my reading, but I’m hoping the slower pace of summer will give me a chance to catch up.  Here’s my list for the next few months; what’s yours?

Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey & Raj Sisodia (technically I’ve been reading this one since January - just haven’t finished yet!)

21st Century Corporate Citizenship by Dave Stangis & Katherine Smith

Earth, Inc. by Gregory Unruh

Green Giants by E. Freya Williams

The Age of Sustainable Development by Jeffrey Sachs (ambitious, I know, but I’m hoping the MOOC I’m taking will keep me going!)

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (everyone’s been raving about this!)

Leo Raudys’s “Cheap Guide” is exactly what it says it is, no more – i.e. no proselytizing – no less: It’s a guide to the key influencers in sustainability and CSR.  It provides lists of organizations, conferences, people, and vocab that are relevant if you’re working in the sector or if you’re running any kind of business – something in here is bound to come up sometime.

I read this book in December 2016 and found it fairly comprehensive, especially given its size – only 78 pages!  I thought it was good as a reference but also as guideposts: A lot of the names and organizations listed were familiar to me, which means I'm headed in the right direction (at least the established direction). Many names and organizations were new, too, which gave me a chance to Google and learn more about those resources that touch my niche interests (international development, clean energy, health, and women, for anyone who’s asking). This is important for students or other CSR/sustainability newcomers like myself, but also for old-timers who are really in the weeds and want to keep a tab on who’s who and what’s what.

I have two critiques that I think are pretty obvious: First, the CSR/sustainability landscape is constantly evolving.  It’s true that there are big, established players who have been making gains and setting the stage for the rest of us – and these are all here; but there are new players and disrupters coming onto the scene all the time, and this guide may have missed them.  This is a predictable predicament for a print book, though, that sets Raudys up for a subsequent edition, I’d estimate in 3-5 years.

Second, any future edition should include more international/European resources.  This is an important oversight from the first edition because the US is not the only CSR/sustainability playing field out there, and, from what I’ve seen, American CSR/sustainability partners are in fact often behind the curve, especially compared to Europe.  I don’t know if the decision to include only US-based influencers was an editorial choice or if it was due to a concern about being able to be thorough enough or something else entirely.  Regardless, I’m definitely looking forward to more international/European references in a future edition.