Shareholders, inboxes, and birthday cards
Could we get rid of them, empty them, and send them again?
The first Undividing, here we go. As promised three thoughts on undividing.
Undividing the world: I was thinking about how shareholders, and the way they are used as an excuse by everyone in business, keep a lot of good people making knowingly bad decisions.
I’ve got a whole idea of what business would look like without them.
Undividing ourselves: Then there’s that damn inbox; mine is the bane of my existence. But I had a revelation that I wanted to share with you that prompted me into an inbox-zero mission. I feel a lot better about what I don’t find in there now.
Undividing extra: Birthday cards - let’s bring ‘em back. Cos honestly, who doesn’t love getting them!
But first, shareholders, let’s take a vote on them…
Is Getting Rid Of Shareholders The Thing That Will Undivide The Planet?
Before I begin, this is not going to be some anti-capitalist rant. Whatever your politics, religion, country, etc the one thing that we all can agree on, is that we need a functioning planet to stand on.
And I can’t really envision a planet that doesn’t run on the exchange between goods and services on one hand, and money or barter on the other. So this is me exploring an idea of business without shareholders that could be a solution we as a planet could pursue.
Because I don’t love the way business works these days. I don’t like the workplace, social, and environmental divisions that it’s causing globally.
So here goes.
In my advertising career, I’ve worked at the top levels of business around the world. As the Global Creative Director of several world famous brands, I’ve been face to face with the decisions that companies make and why. And it always comes down to one thing.
Keep the shareholders happy.
Which for most business leaders equates to, “make the company more money every quarter, or lose my job.” Blow up the quarterlies, or blow up the mortgage and the kids in private school.
This directive then trickles down to all of us—the employees, the ad agencies, the factories. I’ve done things in the name of keeping the shareholders happy that I hate myself for. Pushing products that do the very opposite of making people feel good about themselves. That damage the planet. That drive a wedge between haves and have nots.
That’s a lot of divisions. And all to meet the quarterlies of my client’s business, so that the company I work for can make the quarterlies for their shareholders.
Then someone bucked that system.
Patagonia. The business world’s punk band.
On September 14th 2022, when Patagonia gave 98% of its stock away to The Holdfast Collective, it was about the most radical thing I’ve ever heard of in business.
Overnight, all the profits that weren’t invested back into the Patagonia company, went into initiatives to save the planet—not the Chouinard family’s bank account. As Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia founder, former owner, and current board member said:
“Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source. We’re making Earth our only shareholder. I am dead serious about saving this planet.”
And he means it to the tune of 100 million dollars a year, give or take on the health of sales that year.
Now there are a few factors at play here that make this possible. Patagonia was a family owned company. It was established on the whole principle of responsibility for the planet. So, giving it away was a family decision that probably felt like a natural progression.
There was no board of shareholders that needed convincing. But that then made me look at the North Faces, Acteryxs, and Jack Wolfskins to examine how they were now falling short of what someone in their industry had just done.
Then my mind jumped to other industries. I’ve done a lot of auto, so it was the next mental stop. Could a BMW, Nissan, or Tata do the same thing? Could a business in every industry do the same thing?
Make the most good, not the most money.
Suspend disbelief for a moment, and let’s walk through what I think the results might be. Let’s imagine, a company that has no shareholders. So there’s no quarterlies. So there’s then no need to pursue innovation at all costs.
With the profit focus gone, how would the company then develop products? I’m guessing we’d never see another dieselgate from the auto industry, greenwashing from fashion, or the too soon release of a Big Pharma product that has nasty yet-to-be-discovered side effects.
What could this do then for DEI and innovations in company culture? Many C-Suite people currently won’t hear about new ways of doing business (circle back to the fear and mortgages of the intro) because they don’t want to risk that the new thing won’t work as well as the old way - even if they know the old way is super problematic.
With quarterlies gone, I could see the internal workings change completely. Why not pursue an idea of how to execute a project based on some new thinking? With no shareholders, no one’s head is on the block if something doesn’t work out.
Basically, no shareholders could mean the focus of business could turn from how to make the most profits, to how to do the most good. Both inside and outside the company.
So how might that work?
The global government-approved buyback
Back to Patagonia, all the shares are owned by the one family. Easy.
So let’s take for example, Nissan. What if all shares globally were put up for sale all at once? A market price was agreed. And then there was a site where any person could go and buy even fractions of the shares.
The conditions of sale are two:
The shares you buy grant ownership of them to an environmental group like The Holdfast Collective. You’re effectively donating the money.
There’s no taxes on Global Buyback share sales - the shareholders net out.
In a short space of time Nissan is owned by an environmental group. All the profits that don’t go back into business go into saving the environment. The ex shareholders walk away with the market value of their shares.
Imagine working for this version of Nissan. Imagine your own company if the shareholders were non-existent. Imagine if every company worked this way.
I know there’s an agonising level of details that are not worked out there. But that’s the thinking I have on this so far. I’d love to know what you think about it. Where could this idea work? How could it be improved?
Now, onto that damn inbox.
How To Put Out The Dumpster Fire That Is Your Inbox
Ah, the inbox. The steaming trash pile that is mine is something that I dread opening. It’s gotten so bad that I turned off all notifications to it a couple of months ago because I don’t need reminders of all the crap that just piles up in it.
I average 30 emails a day landing in there. Most of them from people I don’t ever remember signing up to.
If you remember my knee injury (that is improving by the day, thank you for all the well wishes) I haven’t bought anything online for it, and yet, somehow some knee-care emails have started to turn up from a bot-run physiotherapy site.
I have to give them credit, I don’t even know how they did it.
But it got me thinking, at some point the knee will be part of the past. So these emails from them will be irrelevant. And therefore the same is true of all the other things that I receive.
My inbox is a statue collection of all the people I thought I could be
I’m a hoarder.
I hoard all these ideas of people I was thinking I was going to be. I still get emails from three different language schools I’ve never attended. Jack’s Flight Club sends me discount air ticket offers for trips that I’ve never once taken.
And then there’s my conundrum with King Kong Kicks, a Berlin Gen-Z clubbing group, who update me with the latest nights they have - early 90’s hip hop, Brit indie pop etc. This is music I’d love to dance to, but I don’t want to be the one guy at the night that’s as old as their Dads. But maybe one night…
This is just three examples of ideas of myself I can’t let go of. I want to be the fluent German speaking, new city every month, indie club God. But this feels more like the guy I wanted to be in my late 40s when I first got here to Berlin.
So my inbox is just a museum, a dumping ground of statues - it’s an idea I had of me. Not actually me.
Going through my inbox has become an exercise in painfully remembering all the people I never became. But kidding myself that I might still be. One day.
All of which is a distraction from being the person I am, here in the present. It’s a battle that undivides me—who I am vs who I thought I’d be.
Which version of me can I kill off today?
Readers of my book How To Burn A Rainbow will remember the passage about tearing down past versions of yourself. I realise now that it’s something you have to keep doing at regular intervals.
So now when I open my inbox I have only one thing on my mind—what version of myself can I kill off today?
It’s a bit like a Marie Kondo exercise - does this email bring me joy? And then if it doesn’t, I unsubscribe. Plot spoiler: almost none do.
If I’m not sure, I also unsubscribe and see if I miss it.
I’ve been doing this for weeks and I have to say that I’m really pleased with what less a distraction my inbox has become. But it has curiously been replaced with a FOMO-fueled idea that I’m missing out on all the things that are going on. Whatever those might be.
But I’m hurdling that by filling my time with things like Undividing.
Three easy steps to clearing your inbox
Open the email and ask yourself, have I ever acted on anything I’ve ever received from these people? If not, dump it.
Let’s say you do interact with the content, ask yourself does it make me feel good? I was surprised by how many I’d click through to quietly torture myself with of a life I wasn’t living (yachtsales.com anyone?)
Unsubscribe faster - if I don’t interact after two emails, I’m not going to. Off it goes.
Speaking of emails and texts, these do not count as birthday presents…
Happy Birthday Card To You!
Forget texts, send cards. And really mean ones, if you like ;)
There were many casualties in my divorce. One that went unnamed was birthday cards. I used to be a voracious birthday card sender.
When I’d asked people for their address, they’d send me an email. That’s how out of practice we are these days with receiving these.
But I can tell you that the joy people get, when they get a card from you is amazing. A friend rerouted a trip to come and say hi after he received one. Another friend framed his (I kinda nailed it that year on his). One friend even called me to say that she didn’t know they still made these, but she was taking me out for a cocktail to say thanks.
Take a half day, and put all your friends’ birthdays into your cal. Make a calendar especially for them, with its own colour. Don’t forget to put the yearly repeat on!
Every first and third Monday see who’s is coming up that you want to buy cards for. This is a pure delight. I once sent a mate who is a rabid KISS fan, one that had the band as skeletons. That’s the framed one. Get inventive, get mean, get personal. Whatever makes them laugh when they open it.
2a. Buy cool ones in bookstores, it’s fin to get a card for someone who’s bday is 6 months away and store it up.
Deploy that love twice a month. You won’t believe how much love you give and receive from this small act.
I’ve been meaning to get sending again. Who wants to join me. BTW I’m August 23rd… just saying…
That’s all for this week. Thank you all for reading. And see you next week. Keep an eye out for the first Emotions Diary coming with week too.
Cheers,
Karl