I have been reading some stuff lately about, and by, Anita Roddick – who founded the Body Shop and she has some interesting things to say about starting a business that have made me think.
Anita has taken a different approach to business than most people and my overall impression when reading what she writes is that she isn’t afraid of passion and emotion – and that is odd in a time when everybody seems to seek compromise and neutrality - she makes you feel like losing your rag and screaming your head off sometimes is OK.
Anita is fond of ‘soundbites’ and she puts these up around her business; one struck a chord: “We were searching for employees and people showed up”, and this echoes my own feeling that we often feel that we need extra-ordinary people to do the extra-ordinary things that our businesses need – but extra-ordinary people don’t exist. I have only ever met ordinary people – even the rich and famous people I have met have just been ordinary.
So we need to understand and believe that what we need is ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things because of the business and system in place – and then we can stop treating our people like employees, which often means treating people badly. Then we concentrate on what really matters which is the business and its system.
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