THEOTECH

Soulful Enterprise began when Andrew Baughen studied for an Executive MBA at the same time as being the vicar of a church.

At the 'TheoTech' intersection of business and ethics I kept thinking 'yes but ...' Yes, companies need to make money, but what about their motivation to make a difference? Yes, competitive strategy is about creating and capturing value, but how are you defining value and how widely is that value shared? Yes all firms do what is legally required of them, but do they go beyond that? Soulful enterprises have a 'both and' attitude. They move from a distributive 'zero-sum' logic to a generative 'mutual-gain' logic. They don't think in trade-offs that split the pie - they grow the pie! The ambition of Soulful Enterprise is to help organisations become 'both and’ enterprises that generate all sorts of value for the customer, business and common good.

Soulful Enterprise is a generative mindset:
• intentional growth through good business that does good
• expansive strategies that look to add, extend and connect productively
• people shaped principles that root out dehumanised practices and silo thinking.

Soulful Enterprise develops organisations that:
• staff want to stay working for and customers make a positive choice to do business with
• reduce dissonance risk by acting with common vision and integrity
• generate greater societal impact that underpins longer term profitability.

Soulful Enterprise measures where a firm is currently generating value in a wide range of ways and highlights areas for growth and development. It will help soulful enterprises know why they do what they do and like doing more and more of it.

Soulful Enterprise is rooted in an abundance worldview. 

A worldview is the way we see reality and the story of who we are and how we fit in the world. It shapes values and vision and sets strategic orientation.

There are four distinct worldviews and each has a specific business orientation:

The Scarcity Worldview sees the world as a place of risk and loss and therefore looks after immediate needs and avoids the risk of losing what already have. It leads to an individualistic orientation consumed by my fears and desires. In this view the world revolves around the individual rather than the business she works for or the society he lives in. I extract value as I desire because I’m in it for me and I pivot between being the hero of my story to being frozen with fear.

The Advantage Worldview sees the world as a place of opportunity to gain more than we give. It leads to a competitive orientation driven by success at all costs, beating the competition and winning the business game. This view sees accumulation of cash as the goal and all activities are assessed as drain or gain on financial value. Purpose is boiled down to maximising shareholder value and identity is dependent on success.

The Compassion Worldview sees the world as a place of need and asks what we can do for others more than what we can gain for ourselves. It leads to a benevolent orientation that widens our perspective to the needs of others and sees how business can be a force for good in the world. It recognises that this will mean a trade-off of profit for purpose but is willing to do that for the greater good. This orientation is often seen in enterprises led by a social conscience.

The Abundance Worldview sees the world as a place of opportunity for fruitfulness and flourishing. It takes responsibility for promoting growth and increasing wellbeing. It leads to an opportunity orientation which is convinced you can do good and grow a healthy successful business. It is generative in thinking while being realistic about the factors work against grwoth. It makes choices centred on opportunities both to make an impact and to make a sustainable profit.

Soulful Enterprises have a generative view of business. 

Soul-less Business combines a toxic combination of expressive individualism and a fear of scarcity.
• The GREED view is all about please for self and conspicuous consumption
• The GUARD view is all about survival, guarding what we have and preventing others from taking it.

Business as usual sees a trade-off between grabbing and giving value:
• The GRAB view focuses on beating the competition and grabbing what you can for yourself.
• There is a trade-off between the GRAB view and the GIVE view which focuses on serving those in need and giving what you can to others. This strategic advantage view of business states that we create value (give) in order to capture value (grab).

When we take the generative approach of Soulful Enterprise we go from either-or to both-and:
• The GENERATE view sees a wider range of value that business has the potential to provide: all the good created as well as the cash gained in the process. Giving and gaining work together when value is generated rather than simply distributed.

The generative view breaks the zero-sum thinking which ends up making trade-off choices. It has a 'mutual-gain' logic where profitability is rooted in a deep ecosystem of value generation.

The theoretical basis for this generative view of value is found in an article by Andrew Baughen, Cliff Oswick & Rosie Oswick in the Journal of Change Management (2020). Rethinking ‘Organizational Effectiveness’ as a Core Premise of Organization Development: Beyond Narrow Organizational Interests and Towards Wider Soulful Interventions.

Soulful Enterprises follow nature’s generative processes 

There are three generative processes in the natural world.

ADD 
The world thrives because of the constant growth processes of nature. Our work contributes to these generative realities. Adding value gives us meaning and purpose while destroying value minimises us and reduces the worth we and others experience and enjoy.

EXTEND
Nature seeks to fill empty space and will look to ways of removing vacuums and barriers that resist growth. Our work also pioneers value and extends value into new markets and people groups as well as into new technologies that extend opportunities for flourishing and ingenuity to thrive.

INTENSIFY
Not all grow is additive in breadth of value – many times value is developed by intensifying the depth of impact and usefulness we provide. We intensify by a continual process of developing and enriching what we have and how we serve others.

There are three generative strategies in the natural world.

HUMANITY
The natural world operates through interdependence in ecosystems.  Silo thinking, conditional value, abuse of power and exploitation disrupt this natural order, break down healthy relationships, cause power struggles and sow distrust. Natural strategies connect and build up for mutual benefit.

A Soulful Enterprise: 
• values people, treats them with dignity, builds cooperative relationship and develops human potential
• releases from enslaving, demeaning and dehumanising practices
• relates to stakeholders with compassion, reconciliation, truth and justice.

Diagnostic question:
Imagine you take your parents into work for the day. What would they say about the way you treat staff, customers, staff and investors that you interact with?

CREATIVITY
Material absence leads to lack of form, disorder, atrophy and waste.  The term 'formless' means 'to be in a state of unreality'. Natural strategies form and create value.

A Soulful Enterprise:
• adds worth, form purpose, create order and release trapped potential
• solves real problems with lasting solutions
• meets genuine needs with empathy, ingenuity, efficiency and elegance.

Diagnostic question:
Imagine today is your very last day of work. Look back at all your firm has achieved and all you have spent your time doing over the years. What have you added to the world? What would you be most proud of and what would you reflect was rather a waste of time and energy?

GENEROSITY
The natural world thrives within abundance. Absence forms vacuums, void and empty space. Similarly in business ecosystems lack occurs when combative competition, aggressive acquisition and excessive consumption create scarcities and limit growth. Natural strategies fill and resolve lack.

A Soulful Enterprise: 
• fills voids and vacuums so life can expand
• pioneers markets, widens accessibility and focuses where need is greatest and supply is least
• cultivates clients by building relationship and treating them as you'd like to be treated. 

Diagnostic question:
Imagine your firm is given a cash windfall equivalent to an extra 50% revenue. The only stipulation is that you have to invest it all within the next 12 months. What would you spend it on and why?

Soulful Enterprise sees the potential to generate Whole Value

There are three lenses of whole value

The close-up view clarifies the value of our products and services to customers and users

The close-up view studies why we do what we do and whether it’s worth it. It zooms in on the value of what we produce and provide as individuals and by the organisations we work for. It enables us to answer the question ‘what do you do’ by giving more than a job title and instead giving a picture of value. So instead of, ‘I’m an engineer’, your answer might be ‘I build bridges that connect communities’; instead of ‘I’m a delivery driver,’ your answer might be ‘I get vital supplies to people’. Some professions such as medicine, teaching and manufacturing have more obvious outputs that have a value which is immediately clear. But it doesn’t have to be exclusive to some. Every worker can have the dignity of knowing what they do is of value and worth doing. Concentrating our view on what we produce takes a closer look at how the things we invest our lives in add value and make a lasting difference. It recognises that when we’re on our deathbed we want to be able to say those efforts and hard work were worth it for the value they gave to the world, not just for the value of the stock options we took.

The portrait view looks at the value we generate as business co-workers

In my research, I often ask people to give a  reason for describing an organisation as soul-less and the answer invariably relates to the way people are treated as cogs in a machine. People matter and the way an organisation treats people matters. Valuing people with dignity builds valuable organisations of integrity. The portrait lens brings people’s faces into the centre of the frame. People matter as individuals and also together. No worker is an island. We rely on many other people and on all sorts of systems to generate value. The portrait lens focuses on the value of working together with others and within a marketplace where different stakeholders contribute to overall value. It gives a valuable portrait of the team you work with.

The wide-angle view includes the wider community impact of what we do.

As we develop people we also develops the capacity to bring value to the world. Growth in value catalyses growth of impact. As a growing business delivers more and more value to users in communities, then that value goes on to have increasing impact in their communities, both in the present and into the future. The wide angle lens of value opens up the picture an organisation’s impact on the public good. It shows how value generated by an organisation continues to ripple out into business ecosystems, local communities and future generations.

There are six focal points of whole value

Research Papers

Soulful Enterprise Papers - downloads
Summary paper: Introducing Soulful Enterprise
Research paper 1: A Question of Value
Research paper 2: Business Worldviews
Theology paper 1: The theological foundations of humanity
Theology paper 2: Towards a theology of creativity
Theology paper 3: Generosity and business within Christian thought