There is a question that is rarely asked of a business leader. Not how much the company is growing, not how much turnover is, and not how much value has been created for the owners. The question is much simpler: Are you proud of what the company is doing for the world?
Imagine a business leader who leaves his position after twenty years. The company is bigger than when the person started. Turnover has increased, the number of employees has increased, and the shareholders are satisfied. The annual report also contains extensive reports on climate, social responsibility, and other sustainability issues. In many ways, everything looks like a success story. But when the person goes home on the last day, there is one question that lingers. If someone asks what actually became better thanks to the twenty years, what does the business leader answer?
It is a question of something bigger than vision, mission, and strategy. It is more about pride, responsibility, and the inner meaning of the business idea. It is about who the company really exists for and what difference the business makes beyond its own profit and loss account.
From economics to responsibility
For a long time, the development of companies has been largely described through economic measures. Revenue, costs, margins, growth, capital and returns have served as the company’s main language. It has been logical. The economy shows whether the business is functioning and whether there are resources to continue.
Since then, the picture has gradually become more complex. Companies are no longer expected to report only what they earn, but also how their operations affect people and, above all, our environment. Sustainability has in many places gone from being an optional addition to becoming part of how companies must understand and describe their operations.
That is an important change. But perhaps that is not the end point. The next question could be whether we also need to bring back something that is more difficult to measure: responsibility for what you actually build and pride in what you leave behind. It is something other than formulating a beautiful vision. The vision can say where the company wants to go. The mission can describe why the organization exists. But pride and responsibility are about something more concrete. It is about how the leader perceives his mission.
Is the company primarily a financial object that needs to be optimized? Or is it a business that someone has entrusted you to manage, develop and pass on in better condition than you found it? That difference may seem philosophical. In practice, it can make a huge difference.
Who is the business leader really there for?
A business leader naturally works within a system of owners, board, financiers, employees, customers, legislation and the market. It would be naive to pretend that financial results are irrelevant. Without finances, there is often no long-term business.
But there is a big gap between saying that finances are necessary and saying that finances are the ultimate purpose of the company. This raises an interesting leadership question. If you are a business leader, who do you really feel responsible to when you make decisions? The board? The owners? The investors? The employees? Or the customer who actually uses what you and the organization have built? The people in the community around the company?
A business may of course have to answer to several of these at the same time. But the mental starting point matters. If the company is primarily seen as an instrument for financial returns, the customer easily becomes a means to an end. If, on the other hand, the company is seen as a business that creates real value for people, the economy can become more of a means to enable this value creation.
The head waiter as an example
Think of the head waiter at an old Italian family restaurant. He is there to make sure that the guests are comfortable and receive good service. When a waiter is overworked, the head waiter helps out. When a guest has to wait too long, he tries to resolve the situation and entertain the guest. When the workload becomes uneven between different parts of the restaurant, he makes sure that things work together.
The goal is not necessarily to maximize profits by opening fifteen restaurants. The goal is for the restaurant to function as well as possible, for the food to be really good and for people to want to come back. There is something almost old-fashioned in that attitude, but also something deeply modern. The head waiter sees the business and the customer as a responsibility.
And here is another dimension that is easy to miss. Satisfied guests do not leave the restaurant as neutral economic entities. They go back to their lives. They go to work, meet their families, solve problems, make decisions, take care of other people and build their own businesses. A person who has had a really good meal, been well treated and had a moment of peace may well go back to their place with more energy. A group that has had a successful dinner can have better relationships. A customer who feels seen can feel greater trust and generosity when they meet the next person. The value of the restaurant does not stop at the restaurant door. A chain of effects is created. The restaurant creates a good experience. People take that experience out into society. They can function better in their own contexts. This creates value that is never reflected in the restaurant’s accounting.
This is an important idea for companies in general. The real value of a business can be much greater than the value that arises in the financial transaction.
Giving back by doing your job really well
You can think of this as a form of social giving that does not have to look like charity. The company does not always have to give back by donating money. It can give back by doing its own work in a way that makes life better for others. A manufacturer who develops products that last longer gives something back by reducing resource waste. A healthcare provider who creates a better patient experience gives something back by making people feel safer. An educational company that helps people understand something difficult gives back by strengthening their ability to act in other contexts.
Similarly, a restaurant can give back by creating an environment where people feel energized, connected, and have a great experience. It’s not a romantic thought on the sidelines of the business. It can be the deepest meaning of the business idea itself. When people get something truly valuable from a business, they can in turn create value elsewhere. The company then becomes part of a larger system of human relationships, decisions, and activities.
Growth is not always the next step
The modern business landscape has a strong reflex. When something works, it should be scaled. A restaurant is doing well and opens ten new ones. A consulting business gets more customers and hires more. A product sells well and is launched in more markets.
In many contexts, this is natural and wise. But growth is not the same as development. And bigger is not automatically better. The interesting thing is that many leaders have been trained to see expansion as the natural proof of success. Therefore, it can be difficult to stay focused on the question: What are we really trying to get better at?
The head chef probably wouldn’t open a new restaurant until he knew someone else could take over the old one. It’s a simple but powerful principle. Don’t move forward just because you can. Move forward when the quality allows you to. This can mean that the most responsible business leader sometimes chooses not to expand. Maybe the next step is to improve the product. Maybe it’s to train the next generation. Maybe it’s to build a stronger organization. Maybe it’s to make the business more sustainable. Growth may be the right path, but it doesn’t have to be the only definition of development.
The business idea as a promise
This is where the business idea takes on a deeper meaning. A business idea is often described as a combination of what the company offers, to whom, and how it creates value. But it can also be seen as a promise. If a business says it will do something important for its customers, there is a responsibility to actually do it.
A bicycle repair shop that says it helps people keep their bikes working has a different mission than a company that primarily sees bikes as a product category. An accounting firm that sees its mission as helping small business owners understand their finances has a different relationship with its clients than a business that primarily sees each client as a recurring invoice.
It’s not the words that make the difference. It’s what happens when the words are met with a difficult decision.
What happens when quality costs more? What happens when the customer is wrong but still needs help? What happens when it would be more profitable to sell something else? What happens when the company has to choose between rapid expansion and maintaining the quality that made the business successful in the first place? That’s where the business idea becomes real.
Pride is not the same as prestige
Pride can sound like a dangerous word in the corporate world. It can be associated with ego, status, and prestige. But the pride that’s interesting here is almost the opposite.
- Prestige says: Look at what I’ve accomplished.
- Responsible pride says: Look at what we’ve built and what it means to others.
That’s a crucial difference. A business leader can be proud to have built a great company. But a deeper pride can be about thousands of people getting a better way to do something important, about people in a city having food, schooling and healthcare, about an industry becoming more sustainable, about employees developing, about customers getting something they actually needed, or about a problem that was long considered normal having disappeared. That kind of pride is not dependent on being first, biggest or richest. It is based on utility.
Can we have more responsible billionaires?
It is easy to think of very wealthy business builders as people who have managed to maximize their economic value. But what if a different kind of status could emerge?
What if it became prestigious to be the business leader who built the most sustainable product in its category. What if a billionaire could be proud of having made a previously expensive technology accessible to many people. What if business leaders competed on who could solve a social problem best, not just on who could create the largest company. That would not mean that money or profitability became unimportant. It would mean that they were placed in a larger context.
Economic value and social benefit do not have to be opposites. Many of the most interesting innovations arise precisely when a company succeeds in doing something that is both useful and economically sustainable. The problem arises when economic success becomes so disconnected from benefit that the organization eventually starts optimizing what can be measured rather than what was important to begin with.
When the leader becomes a steward
Here is also an important aspect of leadership over time. A leader who sees the company as his own project may want to leave behind a large monument. A leader who sees himself as a manager may want to leave behind a functioning business. The latter perspective changes the question of succession.
The interesting question is not just who can take over after you. It is: Have you built a business that can handle your departure? If the answer is no, you may have been very important to the business, but at the same time failed with a central part of leadership.
The head waiter at the restaurant understands this intuitively. If the entire restaurant collapses when the head waiter is absent, he has not built a strong business. He has built a system that depends on one person. The real achievement is therefore not to be indispensable. It is to make yourself redundant without losing what you have fought to build.
Handing over something you can be proud of
There is a special kind of joy in handing over something that works. Anyone who has built an organization over many years may feel that it is time to move on. Then the most important question may not be how much the company has grown during your time, but whether the next person will have something valuable to take over.
Is the culture still there? Is the competence there? Is the trust of the customers there? Is the ability to develop? Is there an understanding of why the company exists? Are there people who can continue the work without having to become copies of the previous leader?
It is a different view of leadership than the one based on putting your own name on development. It is more about succession than expansion. And perhaps there is a special connection here to pride. It is difficult to feel deep pride in something that must continue to bear your name in order to survive. It is easier to feel pride in something that has become bigger than yourself.
The role of creativity in a good company
This does not mean that we should romanticize the small family restaurant and reject innovation or growth. On the contrary. A business that wants to remain relevant needs to be creative. Customer needs change. Technology changes. The climate changes. Competitors change. Employee expectations change. A business idea that is really taken seriously must therefore be able to develop without losing its core.
This is perhaps where the future of corporate leadership becomes particularly interesting. The task is not just to create new products and new businesses. It is to determine what must change and what absolutely must not change. This requires creativity.
- A good restaurant may need to start working with new raw materials, new energy solutions and digital booking. But that does not have to mean that it stops caring about the food.
- A technology company can completely change its product but still stick to its promise to the customer.
- An organization can grow significantly without abandoning what made it valuable.
Creativity is then not just about inventing something new. It is also about finding new ways to preserve what is important.
Another way to think about success
We have long had an economic story about the company in which success can be described as a rising curve. More turnover, more customers, more markets, more employees and greater valuation. But perhaps we need a richer picture.
Instead, imagine the company as a garden. The economy is part of the ecosystem. It has to function for the business to survive. But it is not enough to fertilize a single part. If you just try to make the tree grow faster, you can also destroy the soil on which it depends. There are also relationships, knowledge, culture, customers, society, natural resources and trust.
A business leader who only asks how fast the business can grow risks missing the question of what the business depends on to remain strong. This is where responsibility becomes a strategic issue, not just a moral one.
The new business idea may need a new feeling
Maybe it’s time to think a little differently about the business idea. Not just: What do we sell? Not just: Who is the customer? Not just: How do we make money? But also: What do we want to be better in the world because our company exists?
And perhaps even more importantly: What would we be proud of if someone else wanted to continue doing exactly this after we left?
That question can change how you prioritize. It can affect which customers you choose, which products you develop, how you treat your employees, how much you grow, and what you choose not to do. It can also change the way you view innovation. Innovation then becomes not just a way to create the next product or the next revenue stream. It becomes a way to continue to fulfill your promise as the world changes.
Not having to leave behind a monument
Perhaps the finest leadership is therefore not to leave behind a monument with your own name. It is to be able to leave an organization and feel that it can continue to create value without you. Like the head waiter who, after many years, goes home from the restaurant and knows that the next person is standing there, can read the room, help the waiters, take care of the guests and understand why the food has to be really good. The restaurant may not need to become a chain. It may just need to continue to be the best restaurant in the village.
And perhaps that is an underestimated form of success. Creating something that is good enough that people want to preserve it, alive enough that it can change and meaningful enough that you can hand it over with pride.
Because it is only when you see the business as part of a larger context that the full meaning of responsibility becomes visible. The good restaurant does not only create satisfied customers. The satisfied customers go on and influence their families, workplaces, colleagues and contexts. The good product does not only make the customer happy. It can free up time, reduce anxiety, improve a job or make another innovation possible. The good organization does not only create financial value. It can build people who in turn create value somewhere else.
This means that a company’s true footprint can be much larger than its operations.
Perhaps that’s why we need to reintroduce pride and responsibility into the very idea of what a company is. Not as a replacement for finances, strategy or sustainability reporting, but as a layer on top of them. Finances tell us whether the business is viable. Sustainability tells us something about its consequences. But pride can ask perhaps the most important question of all:
Is this something worth passing on?
