Doing well... by doing good - Interface

Leadership, change and a higher call.

Those involved with Mindshift have described our challenge using these kinds of words and ideas. How do you (we) change a complex industry, highly entrenched in outdated methods, habits and interests? For Ray Anderson it started with a personal challenge - and subsequent transformation. Kyle Davy shares some of this story in his book, Value Redesigned.

“In August 1994 Ray C. Anderson embarked on a journey that would transform him as well as the company he founded 20 years earlier. That company, Interface Inc., is the world’s largest producer of contract commercial carpet. Anderson’s wake-up call happened as he prepared to deliver a keynote address to an Interface task force charged with responding to customers who were asking what Interface was doing for the environment. At first he approached the question from a conventional manufacturer’s viewpoint that focused on compliance… However, in the midst of his preparation, he happened upon Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce. Reading the book “changed my life” he notes. :

The company conceived and began implementation of a new business model, which Anderson broadly described as, “We will do well…very well…by doing good.

Over the next decade, Anderson and Interface continued to pursue this mission, establishing a new web of relationships linking thought-leaders in the sustainability movement with industry participants (customers, builders, regulators). The company’s promotion of learning about sustainability issues and sharing ideas and best practices spread its influence significantly beyond the boundaries of its core business.

The collaboration with other leaders has lead to the company’s Pletsus Web site for gathering and sharing “Practices Leading Toward Sustainability.”