Growing up as a devout Catholic, the concept of afterlife, and the possibilities of heaven, hell and purgatory that await one there, had loomed large in my young consciousness. The naive assumption, naturally, was that I would be going to heaven, where existence, in whatever form it took, would extend forever, to perpetuity. Interestingly I recall finding the idea of perpetual existence unsettling, even if it were filled with constant and unbounded happiness, feeling as though one would in effect be trapped in such an unending and inescapable existence. In my pre-teen imagination, there was a strange sense of comfort in the irreversible finality of life, should it end with death in this world. As an adult with a family that relies on my enduring, and, incidentally, no longer a practitioner of any religious faith, I do not share the same “comfort” with “finality of life” of my younger self. Still the sense that I am in this world on borrowed time is as formidable as it ever was, and the inevitability of death has a near-constant presence in my mind.
The fact that our time in this world is limited and one day we will perish is understood by everyone. This is why, despite some counterexamples, most of us do not conduct our lives as though we will live forever. Reminders of death and the fragility of human life prompt us periodically to re-examine our values and reassess our priorities, reinvigorating the existential clarity that helps us discern what is truly important and what isn’t. Unable to make calculated assumptions about the timing of our demise, we make contingent plans for posterity, using means such as life insurance, estate planning, legacy-building, and possibly, even the very act of procreation and raising a family. One might even claim the entire human enterprise is governed by the knowledge that death is an inescapable end point in all of our lives. Perhaps less critically, we also understand the potency of other people’s deaths, the power of a death to alter the courses of many lives around it. We anticipate and plan for death, both ours and of those around us.
The same understanding of finiteness of existence is not, however, found among corporations, even though they are entities made up of human beings. A corporation, of course, can outlive any human being that makes up its existence, across multiple generations. But empirically, most companies do not exist forever. Corporate “death” abounds, whether it’s a result of bankruptcy, mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs or break-ups. Yet most companies act as if they have no awareness of the possibility their existence could end one day. This is particularly true of the largest and most successful of companies, for which either their demise or being on the receiving end of an existence-altering corporate action seems far out of reach.
I’m certain that Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page all fully recognize each of their lives will end some day and have put in place significant plans for that inevitability. Yet Apple, Facebook and Google appear to act as if they are stuck – and expect to be stuck in perpetuity – in the adolescent years, characterized above all else by an insatiable appetite for growth and the inability to contemplate with any evidence of aim what comes after it. I do acknowledge it may be unfair to pin the narrow and obsessive nature of the desire for growth entirely on the managements of these companies – as publicly traded companies they have shareholders, and shareholders have expectations of increase in shareholder value; they expect the stock price to go up, which typically is not possible, certainly in a sustained manner, unless the company is growing its revenue and profit.
But the simple observable fact is that despite their enormous success to date and almost incomprehensible scales they have reached, these companies behave as if they exist only for the sole purpose of continuing to grow, seemingly, at all cost. Thus Apple puts a new chip in a four-year old iPhone design and advertises it, almost grotesquely, as shiny new tech; Facebook continues promoting and amplifying divisive and potentially destructive messages in an echo-chamber designed and manipulated to keep people hooked; and YouTube keeps stuffing an ever-increasing amount of advertisements inside video content on its platform – doubling up ads before a video starts, covering up portions of the video with banner ads, and even putting ads at the end of the video after constantly interrupting the user experience with a barrage of ads throughout.
Having achieved so much success against all odds, these companies are the ultimate winners of the corporate world. Yet at stages of their “lives” where they could afford to put other values – honor, integrity, corporate citizenship, social justice – at the very forefront, they instead choose to prioritize incessantly financial growth above all else. This, I would posit, is because they operate under the principle that they exist in perpetuity and will “live forever” – and thus, they behave as if they have no awareness of the very concept of their lifespans, where they are in the arc of a company’s existence. But what if this were not the case, if companies operated under the awareness and the understanding that at some point, they, too, like us humans, will perish? Further, what if there were a way for companies to prepare for and carry out planned, peaceful deaths?
I fully recognize nothing even remotely resembling “planned, peaceful death” for corporations exists today, and it certainly is not an easy concept given all sorts of practical implications. What about the shareholders? Or the employees? The economic consequences for other stakeholders such as local communities, vendors, and customers? I don’t have good answers. But could we perhaps start to imagine, at least, the possibility that companies are able to make graceful exits out of their existence? I believe this to be a particularly pertinent question for mission-driven companies, of which we have many examples today, particularly in Silicon Valley.
Take Facebook, for example. Its mission was to connect the world, and it turns out to have been a resounding success, with the mission, by and large, accomplished. One may think the logical thing to do next is to maintain what has been built so it doesn’t degrade, and make incremental improvements where applicable. Yet “maintaining” implies no growth, and the lack of growth is unacceptable. It must keep growing, increase its revenue wherever possible and squeeze out as much profit as it can. It could, also plausibly, formulate a new mission, and reorient the company thus. Yet the odds of the lightning striking twice are extremely low, and to replicate the financial success of the original mission would be a herculean task, practically impossible. So it’s left with no alternatives but to keep pushing on the mission that was already accomplished to extract ever-more financial reward, even if that ultimately leads to corruption and even perversion of the original mission.
It is, of course, far from clear whether the lack of an avenue for “graceful exit” for companies alone is the reason why they behave as if they will live forever. Even if such an option existed, it is entirely possible no company would voluntarily go for it and the corporate behaviors would not deviate from the status quo. While the decision makers at large corporations are human beings, for every seasoned CEO ready to recede into the history books there is a younger version ready to take the center stage, assert ambitions yet unfulfilled. But the mere fact that a “voluntarily accepted death” is a genuine possibility may start to induce companies to heighten the awareness that their existence is finite, and to duly alter their behaviors. It may prompt them periodically to re-examine their values and reassess their priorities, reinvigorating the existential clarity that helps them discern what is truly important and what isn’t.