A business is simply people creating something to make a difference in the world, says Sir Richard Branson
Sir Richard Branson
The Man: The maverick founder of the Virgin Group is fun and a very smart businessman. It is hard to believe that the man who signed Mike Oldfield for the Tubular Bells album that launched Virgin Records would expand his business into tough sectors such as aviation, telecom and financial services. He tells us how to make sure that a company stands for good.
The Oeuvre: Started Virgin Green Fund to finance renewable energy and sustainable product companies. Started the Virgin Earth Challenge—a $25 million prize to encourage a viable technology—to eliminate anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases.
X-Factor: Who says business has to be boring and shady? Not Sir Richard!
The Message: Do the right thing even if it hurts your company in the short term.
The Hypothesis
Not to do the right thing can be horribly unprofitable.
In the short term, you might make a little bit of extra money. But in the long term, you’ll damage your brand, your reputation, and that’s all you’ve got, so you just have to do the right thing, profitably, because the alternative is too horrible to consider.
So What?
When you hire people, assess how good they are at treating other people well. The biggest obstacle to people achieving what they want in life is often themselves and maybe their personality. How can you overcome that? If you’re not good at dealing with people you’ve just got to try to teach yourself to be good at dealing with people as best you can.
And you have to think, what is a business? A business is simply people creating something to make a difference in the world. Therefore, it’s not contradictory to think if you’ve created a business that’s going to make a difference in the world, that you can create a business where the people are also trying to tackle social problems.
I learnt the art of delegation very early on in life; therefore the family and I spend a lot of time together. I’ve always really worked from home, so my kids grew up around me and I’ve got a wonderful wife who’s very, very grounded and so the kids are well balanced, and Holly chose a very good husband. I suspect I spent more time with Holly and Sam than almost any father I know and it’s definitely been great for me.
(This story appears in the 25 May, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)