Reflecting on Social Business during a visit to Sewanee, Tennessee

January 5th, 2024

This past holiday season my wife and I hiked to the Bridal Veil Falls in Sewanee, Tennessee. These falls are fed by mountain springs and rainwater from the Cumberland plateau.  While we were there, I took this photo and found that it spoke to my experience of creating and managing social businesses.  It also reminded me of key insights that I had just gleaned from two books that I was reading while on this trip.  The first of these was Sarah Horowitz ‘s book entitled Mutualism.  The second was Mohammed Yunus’s A World of Three Zeros.

This photo of the bridal veil falls captures important components of a social business. The tree on the right that is growing out of the rock symbolizes the virtues of grit and persistence. It represents the social business’s sustainable delivery of products and services.  The tree trunk speaks to the social business’s longevity and rootedness in the community that it serves.

The rocks represent the solid base from which the social business operates.  They point to its foundations which lie in its bylaws and vision statements, and its rootedness in the community from whence it sprung and which is serves.  The rocks are a visible reminder that while they are disciplined institutions, that social businesses never forget to put people first. 

The flowing water represents value and change. These include the maturation and turnover of people and work generations, changes in how its systems operate, who it serves, how it serves them, and with what it serves them.  The impact of change is represented by the grooves that the water is wearing into the rocks, and of the tension between traditional practices an emerging needs and trends that the social business needs to respond to.

The water that flows down the Bridal Veil Falls disappears into a cavern before emerging much further down the valley. This is a reminder that social businesses need to have a long-term focus and that the change that its leaders and people desire and make, are often initially imperceptible and that they only emerge much later.

The rocks and the water represent the tension that is found in all social businesses, the tension between their business model and their social mission. But social businesses that persist are energized, rather than defeated, by this tension. Together they sustain the organization just like the tree leverages the stability and nutrients that the rocks provide, along with the water’s life-giving properties.  Together, they allow the tree and social business to grow and deliver value.

#socialbusiness #mutualism #socialenterprise #change