Philosophy
TRUTHS THAT GOVERN PENGUIN PERSPECTIVE’S OUTLOOK
The world is amazing.
At the root of everything, we should all be in a constant state of wonder at the natural world around us, at least periodically astounded by some aspect of its beauty and complexity. Nature offers an ongoing reminder of what is possible. Indeed, just within the realm of human achievement, there is an infinite well of inspiration.
Humanity is underperforming.
No matter how you slice it, humanity is a far cry from where it could be. The scale of suffering and inequality that we allow is staggering. While it's easy to brush off this line of thinking as dramatic, we all have moments when this truth is brought into focus — whether hearing of it from afar, or experiencing it first-hand.
The marketplace is our chance.
Much of our lives is spent at work producing products and services. Much of what’s left is spent buying products and services. We are not just active participants in the marketplace — we are the marketplace. Each of us is designing the world around us with every transaction. We need to demand more of our companies, of one another, and of ourselves.
Everything is connected.
We're coming to understand that everything is connected — that we are not separate from one another or from our planet. Just as we admire fellow citizens who add value to the community, we’re gravitating towards companies whose overall contribution to society is positive. After all, what is a company but a group of our fellow citizens?
Footprint first.
Many companies engage in seemingly laudable initiatives, all the while conducting themselves questionably in many aspects of their core business. This kind of selective nobility is, in some ways, the most disappointing. Companies should make their primary focus refining the way they carry out their core business, because that is always where they can have the most impact.
Excuses are getting old.
Standing in line at a coffee chain, you’re confronted by a wicker basket full of bottled water. Buy one and 10 cents will go to improve access to clean drinking water on the other side of the world, the sign says. But the good done by that ‘donation’ is outweighed by the plastic that’s just been added to the landfill stream. It’s the classic move where an already-shady tactic — in this case pushing bottled water as an impulse buy — is justified through a philanthropic gimmick. It’s up to the marketplace to see through such behaviour and hold companies to a higher standard.
We need to be honest with ourselves.
We lie to ourselves a lot. One example: The next time you see open-top public garbage and recycling bins, have a look inside. The contents are the same. We’re all complicit in a system where the recycling can’t be recycled because half the recycling’s not recyclable. Ah but it’s not even that simple. Even if the recycling stream were not contaminated, demand for it has fallen by 98%. Ah but it’s still not as simple as that. Even if those buyers were still buying, the transportation footprint alone would defeat the purpose. The simple truth that we tend to stop short of accepting is that we are consuming too much.
Some are naturally positioned to lead.
Some organizations have a natural opportunity to move us forward by virtue of their role in the marketplace. A large grocery chain has considerable room to maneuver in which products it gives prominence to. Sports stadiums usually have enough margin in their concessions to experiment with less wasteful packaging. A public broadcaster has the luxury of publishing more nuanced, less sensationalized headlines even if it means fewer clicks. Apple and Google have a near-monopoly on what constitutes news for hundreds of millions of their phone users.
We need visionaries.
Ultimately we need visionaries with unshakable resolve to pursue progress for the sake of progress and inspire people to come along for the ride. At the root of all of this is a quality that doesn't necessarily have a word in the English language: The resolve to do what's right, even when no one's looking. Even when it’s difficult. The inherent elegance to doing so is all the motivation a true leader needs — although increasingly this strategy makes sense even by the crudest financial measures. It is, in every sense, the most profitable path.
We’re not thinking big enough.
With a clear mission in hand, an organization should establish a scale of thinking that overcomes the inherent blinders we all carry with us. One way to do this is to review the most innovative activity in the field, as well as relevant activity in seemingly unrelated fields. Penguin avidly follows an evolving group of organizations that do certain things especially well, such as Airbnb, Arup, Google, Patagonia, Tesla and Volvo. It is not a blanket endorsement — but asking how they might approach a challenge is a powerful tool.
1+1=3.
An organization should aim to benefit as many stakeholders as possible. If there is a stakeholder that’s set to lose out, it’s worth asking how the strategy might be amended such that its loss might be turned into a win. There are even instances where the success of the competition is desirable and possible.
Design helps the pill go down.
If you think about the instances where a company does help us clear a societal hurdle, it’s often great design doing the heavy lifting. When music pirating through file sharing became rampant in the early 2000s, Apple managed to get people to pay for music again by designing a platform that made the process enjoyable. When electric vehicles were burdened by an image of inferiority in the 2010s, Tesla made them desirable by re-imagining not just the engine, but also the cabin interior and the retail experience.
Sincerity nurtures trust.
Companies often talk in way that would sound disingenuous coming from an individual. Clearly, as an organization grows, there’s a tendency for the collective voice to degrade. We must insist on a more candid dynamic between people and brands. One litmus test for any corporate message: Is it how a neighbour might talk to a neighbour?
Distillation nurtures curiosity.
By 2030, half of all Americans will be obese. This is only one fact, but it’s such a succinct distillation of one of society’s challenges that it triggers curiosity in the subject. Sometimes the most effective vehicle for important information is a concentrated version of itself. It can be the seed from which a tree of interest grows.
Resistance is standard.
The architect of IBM’s original computer, Howard Aiken, once declared, “Don’t worry about people stealing your idea — if it’s any good, you’ll have to ram it down their throats.” Indeed, history shows us that even great ideas are usually met with great resistance. Even after all the progress today’s society has witnessed, we often assume that the way things are is the way things have to be. And this makes sense — our animal nature makes us comfortable with the known, and threatened by the different. What’s important for visionaries to remember is that resistance comes standard, and should never be allowed to prevail over a truly great idea.
Cooperation is powerful.
Charles Darwin noted that we humans are not particularly strong. We're not especially fast. We don't have sharp fangs. What we do have is an astonishing capacity for empathy. In The Descent of Man, 'survival of the fittest' is mentioned twice, and 'love' 95 times. He was adamant that for us to reach our full potential, we would have to embrace the evolutionary strategy that we have been afforded: Cooperation.
