Soundbites
If the shoe fits When Brian Scharfstein interviewed for a job in real estate his prospective boss asked to see his daytimer. He didn’t have one, so the boss waited while Scharfstein ran out to buy one. When he returned, the boss told him to open it up and mark down when he planned to take vacation. “I hadn’t even started work yet!” Scharfstein remembers thinking. Then the boss said, “I want you to block off time when you’re going to put away your pager and take a break, because if you don’t have something to work towards, you can’t work for me.” From that day on, Scharfstein paid attention to worklife balance. Today, as owner of Canadian Footwear, a leading shoe enterprise, he pays attention to the inner balance of his 100 employees.
Mark of ethics
Each year he takes time with each employee, off site, to talk about personal balance. “We don’t talk about their performance or their business day — it’s a personal conversation about life balance. How are things at home? When you get up in the morning, do you look forward to coming to work? Where do you want to be in five or 10 years?” He believes it’s important for owners to meet with employees on an individual basis to understand if the quality of their life is matching the quality of their work. “Because we’re very focused on lifestyle and balance,” he says, “it is just as essential that our people believe we are the right fit for them as they are for us. When they go home at the end of the day, they need to feel good about where they’ve been.” (Winnipeg Free Press)
If you are not doing something substantial for the poor, you are not leading an ethical life. — Peter Stenger, Princeton ethicist
Social enterprise The power of social enterprise is gaining ground in Canada, writes Simon Avery in the Globe & Mail Report on Business. “MBA schools are minting a new class of graduates who want to use their business acumen to address social issues,” he writes. “A new type of investor is looking for both a return on capital and impact on society’s progress. And both large corporations and traditional charities are re-thinking their strategies around the idea.” Avery describes social en-
terprises as “organizations that make money and deliver social or environmental benefits. They may be not-for-profits engaging in for-profit activity to supplement the donations they receive, or profit-making companies pursuing not-forprofit community or environmental work.”
Bag lady For 15 years she bagged groceries in the same store. But she was more than an ordinary bagger. As the groceries slid down the counter to her she made a point to pray for each customer, and often inquired about their well-being. She saw her six feet of counter space as her personal mission field. Shoppers came to appreciate the extra attention she gave them, and sometimes her aisle became clogged because customers made a point of choosing her checkout line. When she died, shortly after retiring, her funeral was jammed with people, many of whom told stories of how she had touched their lives. This woman had made a commitment to bring her faith to work. She said, “I’m going to claim the six feet that God has given me in my life. I’m going to reclaim those six feet for Jesus Christ and I’m going to incarnate his ministry right here.” — Businessman Don Flow, quoted in Why Business Matters to God by Jeff Van Duzer
Time off On one of my trips I bought a travel alarm clock for a few nights in the bush. I didn’t shop around much, thinking clock technology had advanced quite far in the last several centuries. I was wrong, The Marketplace January February 2011
20
