On Work, Improvement, and Doing things That Matter
Last month, our team at Whiteboard received the official thumbs-up from B-Labs that we had reached the threshold for B-corp Certification, indicating that we had met “the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability, and aspire to use the power of markets to solve social and environmental problems.”
As I’ve continued to consider the impacts such commitments have in business, I’ve also wrestled through the practicalities of these promises and what they mean for my day-to-day tasks. More concretely, does committing to specific standards (like b-corp), actually impact what I do.
Sometimes it honestly feels like my daily work is disconnected from that of loving my neighbor or caring for my community. For most Americans, I’d argue that charity and philanthropy are, more often than not, seen as a result of our day-to-day work than as an integral part of our operations. This of course begs the question of, “does it matter?”. Are there, in fact, benefits to recognizing our daily work as an act of philanthropy, and what are the ramifications of doing so? Though I feel like I’m just scratching the surface on the topic, I feel like I’ve found some solace in these words of Wendell Berry.
Wendell writes,
“Charity is a theological virtue and is prompted, no doubt, by a theological emotion, but it is also a practical virtue because it must be practiced. The requirements of this complex charity cannot be fulfilled by smiling in abstract beneficence on our neighbors and on the scenery. It must come to acts, which must come from skills. Real charity calls for the study of agriculture, soil husbandry, engineering, architecture, mining, manufacturing, transportation, the making of monuments and pictures, songs and stories. It calls not just for skills but for the study and criticism of skills, because in all of them a choice must be made: they can be used either charitably or uncharitably.”
Here, Wendell argues that charity, or a love of humankind, practically expresses itself through the acts of our work. For in everything we do, we must make the choice between work that is loving to our neighbor, and work that harms our neighbor. Certainly this is neither easy nor convenient. It requires us to step back, examine the intricate details of our work, and ask repeatedly, “does what we’re doing benefit humankind?”.
On the surface, I find it easy to take a quick glance around, note that I’m not immediately destroying our planet, employing someone against their will, or causing the spread of disease, and justify my work as good. But as Wendell points out above, a complex world calls for complex consideration. Is my work still good if three vendors down the supply chain pay their employees demeaning wages? To what degree am I responsible for such an issue? Again, complex.
A certain implication, therefore, emerges. If positive or negative charity has a presence in everything we do, then what we do matters. And if our work matters, than the quality at which we accomplish our work matters as well. For the degree to which we love our neighbor is applicable to the degree in which we complete our given task.
“The ability to be good is not the ability to do nothing. It is not negative or passive. It is the ability to do something well — to do good work for good reasons. In order to be good you have to know how — and this knowing is vast, complex, humble and humbling; it is of the mind and of the hands, of neither alone.”
And so, in order for our work to be charitable, beneficial, and good, we must be competent to complete our work to the highest degree for which we’re capable.
Pursuing B-corp recognition was more than a certification, at least for me. It was a practical charge to measure my work against my impact on my community. It challenges me to not only pursue beneficial work, but work well-done as well.
