Values more important than profit

If the Kelley School of Business had a speaker talk about values over profit and personal joy over business growth, would Kelley students listen?

The answer, of course, is yes.

Friday, author and “social entrepreneur” Mark Albion spoke as part of the school’s IU Entrepreneurial Connection and as part of the Dye Speaker Series. The event, organized by MBA students, was designed to help create a supportive network for current and former Kelley students starting their own small businesses.

The talk was more philosophical than it was facts, figures and number crunching. Albion said he had studied the classics in college until his dad asked him what he was going to do with it. He then switched to economics.

He asked questions such as “Why we are here?” and “What does it mean to have a good life?”

His message: Never work. If it’s not fun; don’t do it. Careers are about what makes you come alive, he said.

He stressed values over skills. He said later in a panel discussion that it was easier to teach employees skills than it was to teach them values.

He talked about Ubuntu, a South African philosophy he said was opposite of Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” This philosophy says, “You are, therefore I am.” It’s the concept that makes people in villages come together and take care of each other.
Then he talked about British entrepreneur Anita Roddick and her successful company “The Body Shop,” which gives away most of its profits and doesn’t test on animals.

He said before he first met her, his collegues kind of rolled their eyes at what she could teach them. But he said he was struck by her passion for her business and her capacity to do good for the world and her community.

Most people who talked to her asked only what was her profit margin and what it was like to meet the queen, he said.

It is possible to do well in business and to do good for the community, Albion said. Find yourself in something that’s bigger than yourself and marry your values and your desires.

 “It’s no longer how to be the best in the world,” he said. “But, how to be best for the world.”