THINK ON BUSINESS
You may think on business and despair
See it’s ugly face of greed laid bare
How it chokes the seas and fouls the air
And the workers’ lot is never fair
But there’s another story being told
Of a smarter way and leaders bold
Of fresh purpose starting to unfold
And business breaking from the mould
It’s a tale of seeing with new eyes
And of commerce learning to be wise
Where there’s innovation on the rise
And trust beyond what money buys
For when business cares it regenerates
And changes what it risks and rates
It begins to give more than it takes
And reinvents the world it makes
When nature thrives and people grow
Returns for business start to flow
As those who reinvest will know
The future reaps the seeds we sow
You may think on business and take heart
For a better way is ours to chart
We all have our roles, we play our part
But there’s no time to lose, so make a start
Wayne Visser © 2021
Book
The Poetry of Business: A CEO’s Quest for Meaning
It was time to leave. A bitter-sweet time. The CEO felt sadness, but also contentment. The business he had conceived and birthed and nurtured was mature enough to stand on its own feet now; to live out its own life. Ironically, the way he saw it, the company was not the legacy he was leaving at all. The real value was in the way in which the business lived and breathed and kept its people engaged and passionate. That was the real gift he had given them. And that was why he was leaving behind his scruffy notebooks in the boardroom cabinet – those dog-eared, tea-stained pages on which, over the years, he had jotted down his ideas. Scrawled untidily were the lessons he had learned along the way: about how to make a business ‘fit for human beings’; about how to survive in commerce and still sleep soundly at night; about how to create a company that served society, instead of the other way around. So many thoughts … Buy the paper book.
