Indeed, cynicism is so much a part of the way we view business that we don't even notice it until it is missing. No matter whether people hate business or love it, they share the same cynical assumptions about it. Then there's Anita Roddick.
Anita simply does not believe that companies need ever cross that threshold and start making decisions by the numbers. She finds it hard to understand why anyone would want to. "That whole goddamn sense of fun is lost, the whole sense of play, of derring-do, of 'Oh, God, we screwed that one up.' I see business as a renaissance concept, where the human spirit comes into play. How do you ennoble the spirit when you are selling moisture cream? It's everything we do before, during, and after we manufacture. It starts with how we look for ingredients. It's the initiative and the care and the excitement. It comes from education and breaking rules. And let me tell you, the spirit soars -- God, does it soar -- when you are making products that are life serving, that make people feel better and are done in an honorable way. I can even feel great about a moisture cream because of that."
Therein lies the most important lesson The Body Shop has to offer. Business does not have to be drudgery. It doesn't have to be the science of making money. It is something that people -- employees, customers, suppliers, franchisees -- can genuinely feel great about, but only on one condition: the company must never let itself become anything other than a human enterprise.
Oddly enough, that lesson is not a new one, as Anita often points out. There was a time when the world was filled with companies driven by a vision of improving the human condition. Many were started by Quakers and other people with deeply religious convictions. The managers who ran them were absolutely clear about their responsibilities to customers, to employees, to society as a whole. Some of these companies are still around today.
Along the way, however, something has been lost. "Businesses have forgotten that they are just buyers and sellers," says Anita. "We must never forget that. The whole value of this business lies in keeping it on the level where we know what we're trading. That's why I will never dilute the image of the shop. In our shops, we sell skin and hair care. Period. We know what the customer wants, and we fill those needs."
And that's really the point. It is trading, after all, that makes everything else possible, and yet that is precisely what she fears a traditional style of management would undermine. By establishing financial performance as the goal, it would throw the company off target. It would introduce powerful distractions. It would weaken The Body Shop's focus on the one thing that allowed it to succeed in the first place: its relationship with its customers.
In a sense, everything Anita does is designed to preserve that focus on trading. "What's imperative is the creation of a style that becomes a culture. It may be forced, it may be designed. But that real sense of change, that anarchy -- I tell Gordon we need a department of surprises. Whatever we do, we have to preserve that sense of being different. Otherwise, the time will come when everyone who works for us will say The Body Shop is just like every other company. It's big. It's monolithic. It's difficult. This is going to be such a huge company in a few years. We just have to make sure we don't wind up like an ordinary company."
To be sure, her success will depend on many people, not least her husband Gordon, who oversees the operational side of the business. It is a role he has played ever since he returned from his adventure in South America, teaching himself what he needed to learn as he went along. To him, as well as Anita, belongs the credit of demonstrating that a company can be both passionately idealistic and exceptionally well managed. He himself, however, has no doubt where his inspiration comes from. "Creatively, this is Anita's company entirely," he says. "She says what she wants, and we make all her dreams come true."
Meanwhile, the pressures to conform keep growing. They come from shareholders, who want to maximize their earnings. They come from franchisees, who push the company to expand faster than its resources will allow. They even come from some employees and managers, who might be willing to sacrifice a little derring-do for the stability and security they think financial planning would allow. But mostly they come from the world in which The Body Shop operates -- a world that doesn't care much about a company's social responsibility or its empowerment of employees if the benefits don't eventually show up on the bottom line.
But Anita has a vision. "I believe quite passionately that there is a better way," she says. "I think you can rewrite the book on business. I think you can trade ethically; be committed to social responsibility, global responsibility; empower your employees without being afraid of them. I think you can really rewrite the book. That is the vision, and the vision is absolutely clear."
And so she fights all the pressures. She fights them with language. She fights them with values. She fights them with education. And she fights them with her vision. "It's creating a new business paradigm," she says. "It's showing that business can have a human face, and God help us if we don't try. It's showing that empowering employees is the key to keeping them, and that you empower them by creating a better educational system. It's showing that you forsake your values at the cost of forsaking your work force. It's paying attention to the aesthetics of business. It's all that. It's trying in every way you can. You may not get there, but goddammit, you try to make the journey an honorable one."
After all, it matters. It all matters. For its own sake.
