Life in full color : from CORE Business to CARE Business

Tears rolled down the cheeks of this man in his sixties, sitting in the middle of a huge garden: he was seeing colors for the first time in his life!

This was last week. This man told me he was color-blind and that, for a week now, he had been seeing the full range of colors. All his life, he'd seen the world in dull colors, and, suddenly, this blooming garden became a festival of colors. The richness and beauty of the world left him beatified.

I knew what was happening to him. He was wearing the “magical” glasses designed for colorblind people which enable them, for the first time in their lives, to move from a "flat" world to experiencing a full color one. Wonderful and so moving!

A few years ago, I was the one crying while watching "color for the colorblind", a short documentary which allows to "See what happens when colorblind people see color for the first time ever".

What interested me is that these glasses where developed by a Paint Company, Valspar, in partnership with EnChroma, an expert company in high performance glasses.

My question was: WHY would a paint company be interested in developing glasses? How did they think about that? I can hear the little voice in your head and the comment we so often hear from people: it is not their core business!

People, Planet, Profit…and then what? PURPOSE, of course!

It may not be their core Business. But their Purpose is to create colors.

So, when the people managing the VALSPAR Paint Company in Minnesota (USA) discovered that 300.000.000 people in the world were colorblind, they decided to do something about it.

They partnered with EnChroma to bring color to everyone.

That's what a Purpose can be: a meaningful orientation for Value-creation.

Instead of remaining prisoner of a definition of a core Business - manufacturing and selling paint - Valspar moved into the bigger space of a meaningful purpose: help people get more pleasure out of their Life by making it colorful.‍

They moved from CORE to CARE Business.

They teamed with experts in Physiology, Vision, glasses manufacturers and finally came up with those glass windows conceived in such a way that they would solve the problem in an affordable way. Since then, people working for Valspar know why they get up in the morning and are proud to go to work. They enjoy Corporate Pride! Their "care" business is closely related to their core Business. Yet with an additional dimension of "doing good to people". Even if they only reached 10% of the population concerned, this means they already would change the life of 30.000.000 people overnight!

From being the best in the world to being “the best for the world”

What this story illustrates is precious for us.

1. Core Business does not equal Value creation: in our professional practice, we keep on meeting with (and challenging them) leaders who remain much too focused on Value Capture, based on what they manufacture and sell - rather than on the Value creation. In other words, they are inwardly focused on their incomes (how much money they make) rather than on the outcomes (what difference they make in the life of real people)
2. The concept of Core Business may lead to corporate blindness: as a result, many of those Businesses are blind to the enormous opportunity space related to the possible positive impact they can make by creating goods and services that improve ordinary people’s lives. In an excellent Harvard Business review article in April 2017 which was titled “Meaningful work should not be a privilege of the Elite”, two authors stated “Prosperity in a society is the accumulation of solutions to human problems.”‍
3. The Purpose is a not a vague Slogan or a philosophical motto disconnected from Business; it is a deep commitment, a Big “yes” to the meaningful contribution an organization wants to make in people’s lives. It is a conscious orientation to Value Creation.‍
4. Purpose gives much more than “meaning” to a company. It also enlarges their opportunity space, their Innovation space, and most of the time, their profit space. They move from focusing on income to focusing on Outcomes, i.e. Purposeful Innovation and meaningful Value Creation for all stakeholders. They become best "For the world".

What would it give if you'd break free from the idea of best IN the world to being "the best FOR the world"?

Could you escape some sort of corporate blindness?

Could you open up new innovation space related to the creation of goods and services that improve ordinary people's lives?

How to eliminate Purpose-Blindness?

Focus on solving real-world problems rather than simply on otimizing those activities that maximize profit. Metaphorically, focus on collaborating to reduce the temperature rather than on "selling" thermometers. This is the Purpose imperative

Here are a few assumptions about Business we encourage anyone to challenge:

• The purpose of Business is to make Money.
• This is best done by exploiting a core Business
• Big issues are not our core Business
• Making the world a better place is for non-profit organisation and idealistic people
• Purpose and meaning are philosophical questions, not Business questions
• The Purpose is not a commitment but a statement we can use for communication “reasons”

Are you ready to consider that profit is the reward for the Value you create?

Are you ready to consider that your definition of yourCore Business might be a trap that prevents you from making real impact ?

Are you ready to consider that a higher Purpose might be the essence of your Business?

Look at the example above.

Or at the fantastic story of Aravind Eye care Hospital founded by Doctor V, an Indian Eye surgeon whose Purpose was to “eliminate needless Blindness among the poors” in his country. With such a purpose, there is no point in being locked in any“Business limits” such as “selling glasses” or “operating People”.

Driven by his higher purpose, Dr. V – whom we call in our book Shaper of an Eye-CareSystem with a Vision – founded Aravind Eye-Care Hospital in 1976. Started with11 beds, Aravind Hospital has since grown into the world’s largest provider of eye-care: ”Aravind Eye-Care System”, which is a model of efficiency, admired all over the world. It is not only a health success but also a financial success. Of course, embodying their purpose required first to focus on the outcome: provide high quality eye-care services at low price. It also required an “out-of-the-core-business” approach:training women in rural India for eye diagnosis, educating non-physicians to gather diagnostic data and counsel patients, creating telemedicine centres, creating a transportation service to bring people to the hospital, setting a glasses factory, etc.

Today, the Aravind system manages some2.5 million outpatient visits and 300,000 eye surgeries a year. (It has been calculated that Aravind does 60 percent as many eye surgeries as the UnitedKingdom’s National Health System per year, at one-hundredth of the cost). The majority of Aravind patients (55%) pays only a symbolic amount, or nothing at all. Aravind system makes enough on paid surgeries not only to cover the 55 %of patients who cannot pay the market rates, but also to generate a nearly 40 %gross operating margin.

But what really drives efficiency at Aravind is commitment to a higher purpose –eliminating avoidable blindness. Such efficiency has allowed millions of the world’s poorest citizens to have their sight restored.

As we can all see, there is a Purpose imperative. Smart organizations are fully aligned with the 4P Bottom line. They made Purpose their Bottom line. And their Bottom Line is healthier than ever. And yet, we still can see so many doubts, resistance, blindness, fears, greed, costing much to Society and to the organization interms of missed opportunities and of declining motivation from people looking for meaningful jobs.

We feel it is essential to remember that a Purpose is not a simple statement – or a bullshit slogan – to pin on a wall:it is a deep commitment to place at the core of your Business!

This big Yes to Meaningful value creation can make you shift from Core Business to Care Business!

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