The Journey to HOW Online
Marc Gunther
Since leaving FORTUNE at the end of last year, I’ve thought a lot about how to spend my most precious asset — my time. Happily, I’ve had choices, and so as I sift through them, I’m looking for work that will (1) make a difference in the world (2) enable me to keep learning (3) be fun and (4) pay the bills and, ideally, replenish my downsized 401-k. I also want to work with people whose values I share. Yes, I know, that’s a lot to ask, especially in these dismal economic times.
Yet that’s what led me to HOW Online contributor Dov Seidman. Until recently, I’d never met Dov and I was only vaguely aware of his company, LRN. Thomas Friedman writes about Dov in “The World is Flat” and he has devoted a couple of columns to Dov’s 2007 book, “HOW: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything … In Business (And in Life).” This Friedman column, “Why How Matters,” explains why HOW is relevant to the financial meltdown:
Seidman basically argues that in our hyperconnected and transparent world, how you do things matters more than ever, because so many more people can now see how you do things, be affected by how you do things and tell others how you do things on the Internet anytime, for no cost and without restraint.
“In a connected world,” Seidman said to me, “countries, governments and companies also have character, and their character — how they do what they do, how they keep promises, how they make decisions, how things really happen inside, how they connect and collaborate, how they engender trust, how they relate to their customers, to the environment and to the communities in which they operate — is now their fate.”
Last year, LRN acquired sustainability consulting firm GreenOrder, whose CEO, Andrew Shapiro, is a friend. At Andrew’s suggestion, I met Dov last month in New York.
We hit it off right away. We share some fundamental beliefs — essentially, the idea that the most principled businesses are also the most profitable in the long term. That’s been at the core of my writing for nearly a decade. For his part, Dov started LRN in 1994 and turned it into a successful company that has helped millions of employees, managers and leaders do the right thing in the workplace.
“We apply philosophy, especially ethics, to the rough and tumble world of business,” Dov says. “In so doing, we help workers do the right thing.”
Philosophy? That’s not a word you hear a lot in corporate America. But the study of philosophy helped shape Dov, whose personal story is unusual. Dov was raised by a single mom in a bunch of places — San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Los Angeles — and for years he struggled in school.
“My high school transcript boasted A’s — two of them, in Phys Ed and auto shop,” he joked, when he gave the commencement address at the UCLA in 2002. His SAT scores never topped 1000. Only later did he realize that he was dyslexic.
But he wangled his way into UCLA, and then stumbled into a philosophy class because other courses were full. It was a good fit for a kid who didn’t like reading. “By rewarding me for the careful consideration of one idea instead of reading hundreds of pages of text, philosophy helped me conquer dyslexia,” he says.
Philosophy and ethics became his passion, and he went on to earn a B.A. and an M.A. in philosophy from UCLA, a B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford and a law degree from Harvard. Not too shabby.
Soon after leaving Harvard, Dov started LRN as a way to make legal research more widely (and democratically) available, to explode some of the mystique created by the guild of lawyers who like to over-complicate what they do.
Now, Dov wants to help companies “inspire principled performance.” He’s passionate and energetic about achieving that goal because he knows that companies with a sense of purpose and a great culture don’t have to worry about compliance because their people will be inspired to do the right thing.
Over time, Dov and I plan to develop HOW Online. Building off the title of Dov’s book, we’ll try to explore HOW to lead a great business, inspire people, make money and make the world a better place. My hope is to make HOW Online a place where people will regularly read relevant news stories, be exposed to fresh ideas and connect with others. We’re obviously going to need lots of help, so I will be calling on people I know in the corporate and NGO worlds to solicit advice, ideas and contributions. I’m going to try to make it easy and worthwhile for thoughtful, caring business people to contribute to the Web site and collaborate with us.
I’m going to keep blogging, writing, speaking and consulting, all of which I’m enjoying. But it’ll be a big commitment. And I am fully committed to making it a big success.
Last 5 posts by Marc Gunther
• Investing in Good Corporate Conduct - April 22nd, 2010
• Google Gets Tough on Values With China - January 20th, 2010
• Will the Crisis Launch an Investment Revolution? - November 4th, 2009
• The Story of AES: Business as Unusual - October 21st, 2009
• UPS Tries to Outgreen FedEx - September 23rd, 2009
