Over the Christ­mas break, I read Umair Haque’s new book, Bet­ter­ness. It’s one of the most clear artic­u­la­tions of the way I believe eco­nom­ics and all organ­i­sa­tions should func­tion that I’ve come across. Avail­able only as an ebook, just 64 pages in length and at less than US$3, it’s a bar­gain avail­able through Ama­zon and direct from HBR.

Not an anti-​​business screed, Haque is per­fectly happy for us all to make money. But what else is there? Where is the real, tan­gi­ble, actual good for human­ity in the way we do things?

He pro­poses we take a eudai­monic approach to our busi­nesses, seek­ing to add to a Com­mon Wealth where our work pro­duces the epony­mous bet­ter­ness in what we do. He artic­u­lates how this change can be wrought by argu­ing pow­er­fully, with con­crete exam­ples of how busi­nesses and organ­i­sa­tions go “… from busi­ness to bet­ter­ness means going from vision, mis­sion, strat­egy, and objec­tives to ambi­tion, inten­tion, con­straints, and imperatives.”

He wants our organ­i­sa­tions to evolve such that “… the orga­ni­za­tional mind make[s] an evo­lu­tion­ary leap: ambi­tion, inten­tion, con­straints, and imper­a­tives sup­plant vision, mis­sion, strat­egy, and objec­tives as the cog­ni­tive build­ing blocks that judge, weigh, and guide human effort.”

Bet­ter­ness and Haque’s vision of changed busi­ness have made me sit down and artic­u­late how acid­labs will behave in a world where we con­duct “bet­ter­ness” instead. So too, I will eval­u­ate who I do busi­ness with based on their (inten­tional or oth­er­wise) moves to betterness.

The video below shows an inter­view between Umair Haque and Dylan Rati­gan on MSNBC. It’s worth watching.

How are you doing “betterness”?