Run it Like a Business??

by Ruth A. Sheets

It has been at least 25 years since I first heard the phrase “run it like a business.”  This was in reference to activities at my graduate school.  I assumed that the speaker meant that we should stay within our budget and be systematic about how things were done.

OK, I got that.  Than I heard it in relation to a church.  That seemed a bit odd because I don’t usually think of the two in the same  context.  I thought it meant the budget thing again, but then I learned it had something to do with contracts and investments too.    

OK, that makes sense.  Good investing makes it possible to do things you otherwise might not be able to do for your church and the community.

As the years have passed, I hear “run it like a business” in reference to so many aspects of life it has become a trivial phrase.  I am not so sure about the validity of “running” anything but a business “like a business.”

We have created a business myth in America that lets us think that the experience a person gains in running a company or working at high levels of commerce or finance qualifies them for almost any other position of power you can name. 

In the past couple of decades or so, businesses have not exactly covered themselves in glory.  Union busting, cutting wages, outsourcing jobs, overworking remaining employees, providing the cheapest medical benefits if any benefits at all, jeopardizing the livelihoods of American citizens by selling unaffordable mortgages, leverage buyouts, lowering quality of products and services.  Greed rules.  Particularly poor and working class folks have been duped into believing that someday if they work hard enough they will be among the wealthy.  You get the picture.

I am pretty sure that I don’t want anything I am directly associated with “run like a business.”  We Americans often find it pretty easy to swallow swill when it is clothed in phrases like “free market” and “opportunity.”

I am not saying that there is no value in the free market and of course, opportunity is essential, but lately, business has worked out that free market is only free to those who are rich enough to participate. The opportunity doesn’t reach to all citizens, especially those against whom the deck is always stacked.

Now, we are told that the best person to lead America is a businessman, Mitt Romney, just because of his business experience.  How does that qualify him for anything?  His brand of business is based on profiting on the misfortune of others. His brand of business involves avoiding the taxes that support everyone, setting himself apart from everyone else because they just didn’t work hard enough to get what Romney worked hard enough to get.

Besides being build on a lie, this approach to management is destructive, devisive and patronizing.  There is no respect or appreciation, only the smell of money and the shape of dollar signs.  I choose to believe we can do better.