607: Raj Sisodia on Conscious Capitalism and How Business Can Heal the World
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
From Bombay engineer to marketing professor
Raj Sisodia recounts his path from engineering in Bombay to a PhD at Columbia and early impressions of business education.
Raj Sisodia has spent his life asking one question: Can business make people's lives better instead of draining them?
He holds a PhD in Marketing and Business Policy from Columbia University, co-founded Conscious Capitalism with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods Market, and has advised global companies from Tata Group to AT&T. But his path started in a factory in Bombay, earning a hundred dollars a month, before he built one of the most influential ideas in modern business thinking.
"I didn't like biology, so I became an engineer. I didn't like finance, so I became a marketing professor. But business turned out to be about head and wallet — nothing about heart or spirit."
That realization led him to study companies that people love working for and trust buying from. The result became Conscious Capitalism — a way of running a business that joins purpose, profit, and care.
"Profit is the oxygen that keeps you alive. But no human lives just to make red blood cells. In the same way, no company should live just to make profit."
Raj's research showed that companies built on four simple pillars — Purpose, Stakeholders, Conscious Leadership, and Caring Culture — outperformed the S&P 500 by nine to one over a decade. They made more money precisely because they cared more.
When he met Bob Chapman, a manufacturing CEO from Missouri, Raj saw these ideas come alive. Chapman bought a failing plant, promised no layoffs, and told workers they would figure it out together. Men who had once been laid off without warning wept as they told Raj their lives had changed.
"I had sixty dollars in the bank and a new baby. That job saved my family."
From that came the book Everybody Matters. Chapman told him, "Leadership is the stewardship of the lives entrusted to us." Raj calls such companies healing organizations — places that reduce suffering and bring more joy into the world.
Now, with artificial intelligence reshaping work, Raj argues that AI will amplify our intentions:
"A knife in a surgeon's hand saves lives. The same knife in another hand can end one. AI is the same — it depends on who we are when we use it."
He believes the leaders who thrive will be those who bring consciousness to technology, not fear.
💡 Insights and Actions-
Define a higher purpose. Ask, "Why do we exist beyond making money?"
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Make everyone win. Measure success by how you touch the lives of people.
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Use AI with awareness. Let it amplify compassion, not just efficiency.
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Lead with care. "Leadership is stewardship of lives."
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Grow to serve, not to consume. "When business heals, people and profits both rise."
"You cannot have a healing organization without a leader who heals themselves first."
When capitalism grows a conscience, it outperforms the old model and gives people back their dignity at work.
Get Raj's book, Conscious Capitalism, here: https://tinyurl.com/yp2r8a2r
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