Values vs. Money

Last night I attended a HRINZ event entitled ‘How successful managers think’ presented by Peter Withers from the University of Auckland Business School. Peter talked about the skills managers needed to perform in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world. The key theme was that business leaders needed to have a holistic view of the world whereby decisions are made with consideration for their far-reaching implications. This means operating with a global mindset rather than a New Zealand-centric view.

The presentation was interesting and informative on a number of different levels. However, I found the notion of NZ leaders taking on practices the rest of the world uses challenging. Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean we should. I don't disagree that, as a country, we should be competitive. But I do think we should do it without compromising our values.

Peter told the story of a NZ water bottler who was offered a distribution deal with Whole Foods stores in the US. It involved distributing their product across 400 stores in the States. The catch was that the bottle label had to be changed to show nutritional information. Like this:

Energy……..0

Fat………….0

Sugar………0

Etc.

The water bottler turned down the deal because he didn’t want to change the label. He missed out on becoming a multi-millionaire as a result. Stupid right?

But isn’t it also stupid to put a nutritional label on a bottle of water that has no ‘nutritional’ details? I say again, just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean it should be done.

Perhaps an extreme example, but who remembers the debacle of American Financial Institutions paying massive increases to their executives? And then they went under. People still made money of this.

I acknowledge that people suffered greatly from the demise of the Financials, water bottle labels are perhaps not an apt comparison and improving our business practices are important to the well-being of all New Zealanders. But where do you draw the line between values and money?

Apparently the rest of the world describes kiwis (NZers) as really nice people. We’re nice, and naïve and that’s pretty much it. It would be nice to be considered nice and rich but, if I had to choose, I’d rather be known as a good person than a rich person. Maybe the secret to our niceness is that we have really strong values. Is that a bad thing when you see all the troubles of the world on the news every night?

Money or values? Which would you choose?