What makes your business 'good'?

In a recent group conversation with fellow freelancers, who are all part of the Freelancing For Good community, someone asked me:

"Are there any types of clients or work you would turn down on ethical grounds?"

In the moment, I said "no" - partly because my circumstances as the sole unpaid sandwich carer to several immediate family members means I have no recourse to support for myself, and so less capacity to take on work than my counterparts, so I need to try and take anything  I may be offered. But also because as I answered, I realised that I've never been in a position where I've been offered work that I'd had to seriously consider taking on ethical grounds.

This then prompted me to briefly widen the conversation as to what constitutes our respective businesses being 'good' or 'ethical', in order to work out just where the line was where I might start to say 'no' to types of work I'm asked to support:

- is it the type of work you do?

- is it the clients and customers you work with?

- is it your business model?

Your business model and form doesn't automatically make you 'good'

And this last prompt in particular may be more contentions than you think; for example, we generally hold co-ops and mutuals to be intrinsically 'good', but what if the product they offer may be seen as dubious to some (i.e. alcohol production, or support to sex workers)?

Perhaps we should look to 'badges' and accreditations? - but this too can throw up more complications. For example, Belu Water has won various public accolades from Social Enterprise UK, and yet it's market offer (botted water) is recognised as being one of the most environmentally damaging products in the marketplace.

What counts as being 'good'?

But I think there's also a wider challenge to setting the criteria for what counts as 'good'. Namely, to be 'ethical' means being socially acceptable, but what's socially acceptable changes over time (I'm of the generation which initially never knew or thought about the importance of recycling, or had any awareness that tuna was being fished in a way that killed dolphins - and yet within less than my lifetime I've seen significant changes on these, and other ethical/social issues).

And there's also the lesson that the brilliant TV show The Good Place highlighted: it suggested that in order to get into 'the good place' after you die, you needed to amass enough 'good points' during your time here on planet earth. But as our heroes came to learn, it had been centuries since anyone had been able to amass enough such points (and so 'the bad place' was creaking at the seams) - not because people were becoming more 'evil' but because of the curse of unintended consequences and the ever more complex supply chains that permeate our daily lives. For example, 200 years ago you could walk to visit your mother (plus points for family visit), and pick flowers as a gift on the way (more plus points). But today you'd drive (which involves mining of metals and fuels to create and power the car, often by people in precarious and dangerous working conditions = minus points), and buying flowers from a shop (again, grown and picked by people in other countries, necessitating CO2 production to fly them to said shop = even more negative points).

Even if it seems impossible, it's still important to try 

So if trying to live a good life is now so complex, and we can't help but compromise our ideals in trying to do good in how we run our businesses, should we even bother?

I think so, yes. Because for me it's the effort that's important - not what we do, but how we try and do it that defines us*; and this hopefully inspires and encourages others that although something may be hard, we should still try.

And we should also try and be kind to ourselves, on the occasions where we realise and have to accept that there is no 'ethical' choice to be had - we live in an imperfect world; but through our intentions and efforts we can try and shift this, even if only an infinitesimal amount. Because ultimately, it's when lots and lots of very small things get together to work in harmony, that the big things start to change and happen.

Does AI think my business is 'good'?

Finally, as this is my 20th year in business, you may have seen that I've been trying to look at things through this porcelain lens. Part of this has been writing 'Flushed!' as a retrospective of these first 2 decades from my own perspective, but I've also been asking AI what it thinks the main footprints of my business' activities to date have also been.

In keeping with the idea and questions of this post, I read what it thought through the question of "how good" has everything I've done so far actually been (after all, good intentions and commitments are important, but if you don't actually follow through on them...). What it returned was surprising and encouraging in equal measure - as I outline above, my core focus to 'doing good' has been about how I manage my business, not what I do, but AI highlighted:

"His portfolio includes socially challenging and “mission-driven” assignments — in-prison rehabilitation enterprise, incubation for homeless entrepreneurs, community-facing incubation or workspace models, etc. That shows not just business savvy, but a commitment to social justice and inclusion."

All of which leads me to conclude that your business is actually already doing more good that you might realise...!

* see my annual impact reports for examples of my efforts in this regard: 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1o7M70ttK7My-ieTuBRi-gGeR9VOUfYxl?usp=sharing