I was thinking about about data-driven business and how pervasive it is, because it gives clear feedback on impact. However, as anyone who works professionally knows, often the indicator often ends up becoming the goal, with especially management looking to reach the indicator numbers, even if it isn't representative of performance. This also happens at the individual level, where for example a study that said that elderly people who could get up off the floor without using their hands was indicative of a longer life, a lot of older people practiced getting up off the floor - getting up off the floor wasn't the important part, it was all of the past lifestyle decisions that led up to still being able to do it.
Over the last couple of years of my last job, I questioned this quite heavily, because it seemed that what we valued (making money) and what we were doing to enable it, weren't aligned. More time and energy was spent on areas that didn't have impact on what was necessary to improve the areas necessary. We kept hitting the indicative metrics, but missing our practical goals. If what we value isn't aligned with what we are measuring, the metrics aren't going to help get us to where we want to be.
Our values are being captured.
As those that read some of my posts, I believe that the economy is geared toward the metric of making money, as if it equates to wellbeing. However, this isn't the case and instead, our wellbeing and quality of life is decreasing, even as there is more money being generated. This is largely because the measures used don't represent wellbeing at all, even if they average wealth out amongst the population, like GDP does. If one person is extremely rich, the average across a large group indicates that all are rich - but the rest could be starving. It is the average wealth of a billionaire on a bus full of homeless people.
Below is a basic list of things that individuals tend to value. It doesn't get into specifics and there is likely some cultural differences, but all in all, it generally fits to all of us to a large degree.
- Health and Wellbeing
- Relationships
- Security and Stability
- Personal Growth
- Happiness and Fulfilment
- Freedom and Autonomy
- Respect and Recognition
- Community and Belonging
- Morality and Ethics
- Experiences and Memories
- Work-Life Balance
- Altruism and Generosity
- Creativity and Expression
- Spirituality and Religion
- Environmental Sustainability
How much of this list is supported by the current business environment and the economic practices of corporations and governments? How much of those business and government practices are diametrically opposed, or at least barriers to meeting our values?
And this is my point.
Profit shouldn't come from activities that go against our core values as humanity, yet they often do. Instead, the fastest and easiest way to become wealthy, should be by supporting the core human values. Business and government practices shouldn't be able to operate too far outside of the core values, let alone be able to influence us to change our values through marketing and manipulation. For instance, If the core value is Environmental Sustainability, we shouldn't support fast fashion. Yet, we do, because of all of the mechanisms and marketing tricks they use to influence us, as well as the economic policies that keep the majority poor, and the micro minority increasingly wealthy.
Business incentives, and therefore the metrics that we use to evaluate business goals, should align with what we want as a society as a whole. The "free market" doesn't exist as we imagine it to, because not only are legislations still in place, but the manipulation of our values is taking place, so we aren't able to align our consumer activity to what we actually want.
For instance, Relationships is number two on the list above, but we have largely dropped away from building quality relationships, and instead embraced hookup culture through monetized apps that incentivize volume and low commitment. Not only this, the market is flooded with unrealistic expectations of relationship activity through various forms of porn, that influence what individuals think a relationship should be like, from the looks to the actions.
Business aims at the opposite of supporting our values, and it likely does this because of the metrics they use to maximize their profits. Healthy people spend less. Not just on health, but across the many value points, because health isn't just physical, it is also mental, emotional, financial, spiritual - Someone who was healthy across the board, uses less resources than someone who is unhealthy in any of those areas, because they not only need less, they are also content with less.
Business looks to make us constantly discontent.
And because we are constantly discontent, we might use metrics to represent our values, but we end up chasing after the metrics instead. For instance, respect and recognition requires nothing material - yet we equate it to getting something like a pay rise, an award, or a gift. Altruism and generosity can be performed at any time, yet we only tend to think about it when we have enough money to give - without considering all the other ways we can be generous and altruistic.
We need less than we are convinced we need.
And we are convinced to want more, because generating profit is the ultimate metric of whether a business is doing well or not, or whether a government is doing well or not. They are the wrong numbers for wellbeing, but we keep on working toward those numbers, making the wealthy wealthier, while taking the rest of us further away from what we actually value - once all the market conditioning for profit is removed.
If we were to revaluate economic metrics and align them with wellbeing, we would quite quickly see a change in business activity, because there would be a shift in what is the best way to generate wealth. Currently, the best way is to undermine human values - but that way was always going to lead to causing far more problems than it solves, to the point that the entire system collapses, and takes many of us down with it.
People should remember that business should be there for us, not us for it. And this definitely goes for governments. The business activities and the government legislation should never be driven by profit metrics, unless they also align with wellbeing metrics. Right now we can use the simple metric of the increase in illness across so many different areas, as an indicator of poor economic-value alignment. We can also look at the geopolitical situation which is making the world a more violent and dangerous place, as another indicator of poor value alignment.
And I use these broad areas because at an individual level, we all have the ability to change, but if not enough individuals act in the "right" way, everyone is going to suffer regardless.
Looking at the list above, do you think you are living up to your values, or do you feel that you have been dragged from them in some way, without even realising it?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]