Time has proven that Gordon Gekko’s speech “greed is good” in the 1987 movie Wall Street, is nothing more that a great movie scene.
The reality of the matter is that greed is the cause of every social problem known to man.
Greed causes companies to forsake their values and the true needs of employees and consumers for a buck. Greed causes Nationalistic corporations like countries to go to war.
Corporate corruption and government fraud waste and abuse is caused by greed. With so many negative images plaguing the business world, entrepreneurs today must rise above the lowly consciousness of greed and consider the highest need of employees and consumers…self-actualization.
Dr. Abraham Maslow first coined this term. And I think he explains it best in this quote:
“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This is the need we may call self-actualization … It refers to man’s desire for fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything that one is capable of becoming …”
I would suggest that companies that support their customers and employees in becoming one with their true talents and desires will be the companies that lead in the future.
Time has shown that it is not prudent to put the needs of the corporation over the needs of the people. After all, aren’t the company and the people the same? To not respect this fact is to divide ones house against itself in support of destruction.
