Ted Malloch
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Roosevelt Group, a strategy and thought leadership company.
In the new conditions created by the global economy, the information revolution and the growth of smart technologies, it is more necessary than ever for all companies to be guided by their rich spiritual inheritance, as spiritual enterprises.
The business virtue par excellence is honesty—without it markets can’t long survive.
Adam Smith’s image of competition in the marketplace was intended as an adjunct to his detailed description of human motivation in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which the pursuit of profit is tempered at every juncture by sympathy and benevolence, and by the posture of the “impartial spectator” which is forced on us by our moral nature.
Profit doesn’t appear as the goal but as a side effect of pursuing motivating principles.
The laws of economic life are subject to the eternal laws of spiritual capital.
Myth: There’s conflict between selfish free markets and a benevolent world of human sympathy.
Courage… is not a selfish attribute: it is only possible if you are pursuing a wider and more worthy goal.
Long-term success depends upon trust.
The moral sentiments that constrain economic life also promote it.
Leadership, in other words, is a matter of character, not goals.
One runs a business ultimately to do well so you can do good for everyone.