About Unlearn Business Lab // 01
Imagine going to work with people you care for deeply, and who deeply care for you. Resting when you need it - for whatever reason - without having to justify yourself or suffer negative consequences. Sharing the wealth generated by the company justly amongst yourselves and those involved at every step of the supply chain in creating that wealth, which means prioritising those who have less - less time, less money, less capacity, less privilege. Imagine producing products and services with time and care, understanding where each component comes from, its environmental impact, and never extracting more than can be replenished. Imagine sharing resources, people and ideas between businesses - building networks rather than companies in competition and using your strengths and skills where they are needed most in that moment. Thriving. Imagine feeling safe enough to share when you feel afraid, alone, ashamed, and hearing from your colleagues that they do too. That they want to hold you in your fear, loneliness and shame and that you, too, can hold them. Imagine only doing work that feels good and true. Imagine feeling. Imagine the pride, the joy, the satisfaction you share. Imagine that your heart doesn’t race when you enter the room, your head doesn’t sink, that your hand is held. Imagine knowing the hearts of the people who grow your food, make your clothes, build your computers, knowing that they too are held, safe and free. Imagine the calm, the energy, the love, the buzz that would be set free, from knowing that you, too, are free. That we, too, are free.
Reading this paragraph over makes us feel intense joy and intense sadness at the same time. Sometimes it makes us feel afraid. Sometimes ashamed. How does it make you feel? We’d love to know.
Our Unlearn Journey
As an employee of a company it’s easy to think that you would do things differently, if only you were in charge, right? We thought the same: If we would just get to pull the shots, everybody would be happy, most of all us!
So we founded our own businesses. And not just any businesses, social businesses which were on a lofty mission to make the world a better place. We hustled, found funding, recruited teams, developed our products, came up with business models, sales strategies, marketed our services and ourselves, found some customers, built up revenues… always trying to do everything as fairly as possible but still being pragmatic. Because, after all, we wanted the business to be successful, right? And if you want to be successful, you have to make compromises.
What we experienced ourselves and observed in others was that real change was hard, if not impossible. When it came down to the fundamentals of our businesses, we often found ourselves reverting to what we knew, or - even when we thought that we were doing things differently - bringing about a familiar outcome. Burnout is a good example. Burnout in the social impact sector is endemic. But there are plenty more. The gender pay gap is exactly the same as in the private sector. Those who are born with additional privileges also earn more. Even fair supply chains compensate those in the Global North higher than those in the Global South. “Impact” investors expect the same financial returns as conventional investors. White males dominate leadership and ownership structures.
What we eventually realised were two things: that if we didn’t change ourselves on the inside, we wouldn’t change anything on the outside. And if we didn’t work together with others, that change would never be more than a drop in the ocean.
We realised that building a social business in our current system is like putting a bandaid on a broken leg. Even if we put loads of bandaids on it, it’s not going to fix it. To fix the system, we need to put those bandaids together, melt them down and build something new. What that new thing is, we don’t know yet. But we know that a bandaid isn’t the answer. And we know that we need to do it together.
Of course there are movements already out there which unite social and progressive companies. So what makes us different? We are trying to bridge some of the binaries and expose our interdependencies: business and humanity. Science and emotions. Research and practice. Social and ecological. We are putting connection at the heart of everything we do. One of our hypotheses is that many of our current (business) decisions, and discussions, are grounded in a place of fear, isolation, scarcity. And another one is that if we create a kind and sincere community grounded in solidarity and love, and if we act from this space, then we can build a spectacular new economy which serves us, rather than the other way around. We have worked to create and hold a space like this over the last year, while prototyping Unlearn Business Lab with just a few individuals and companies involved. Now we want to, quite literally, spread the love. We invite you to think, experiment, feel and do with us.
We’ll be diving into a bit more detail about what we have done so far and why in the next article, which we will publish soon.
If what you have read here already resonates, and you want to be informed when the next article is published and maybe even get involved, we’d love to hear from you in the meantime. Drop us your email address, and a quick note if you like, here.