Sustainable and Ethical Business Goals

When you wake up in the morning and instantly grab your mobile phone, that’s simply your first habit of the day. It has become mine, and I am in the process of changing it.

In recent times, many have studied and practised how to make habit works for our advantage. Make Time outlines specific tactics to “create time” by modifying our behaviour, and thus our habit, to make changes sustainable. Indistractable further encourages us to focus and overcome distractions with a model of actionable steps towards a habit-forming state.

These studies and models are an indication that the era of behaviour management has passed. The holy grail of behaviourism is in the forming of a desirable and personalized habit.

Personalisation is still a challenge for many, but a bigger challenge is in the definition of “desirable”. What desirable for one, may not be desirable for others or many.

Let’s take an example from the picture of a paper roll and unicorn above. There are many reasons why someone put the paper roll underneath a unicorn, some of them may include:

• The unicorn was a temporary convenient holder before the paper roll is put somewhere else, or
• The location of the unicorn in the middle of the room makes it easier for someone to do something with the paper roll later.

In the above, the action with its own related reasons and motivations may be desirable for the person who decided to do so, but may distract or obstruct others.

Sustainable and Ethical Business Goals

Relating the above anecdote with what I do professionally, I observe that one of the biggest challenges for businesses nowadays is how to achieve business goals sustainably and ethically.

With the advancement of personalised technology and a myriads of “burn money” (“bakar duit”) strategies, companies are now able to influence customers effectively from they wake up until they sleep, and sometimes during sleep as well.

Due to my expertise in User Experience (UX) and Product Strategy, I receive enquiries and think about the above on regular basis.

Surprisingly though, many businesses are still struggling to understand the bigger picture of how their products may have impacts towards a society beyond the four walls of their businesses. Many still focus solely on product’s business goals, because at the same time they are still learning to navigate a complex ecosystem where traditional competitive analysis and market research are no longer sufficient to map the dynamic nature of the ecosystem.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer for the above. That’s why I still earn a living ;-) I have however gathered some wisdoms, research and best practices over the years from around the world to be shared. Some of them have been shared with my clients. Some of them are yet to be shared. Some of them will be shared in my upcoming publications and client engagements.

For now, please enjoy your day and be a blessing for others in whatever you do to achieve sustainable and ethical business goals.