Good: Always In Style But Not Always Practiced

I was telling my friend at lunch this week about the Johnston family. I’ve been fortunate to get to know William Johnston and, to a lesser degree, his father Joe. In Gilbert, Arizona, where we live, Joe Johnston is well known. He and different partners own three restaurants in the town, and two of those bear Joe’s name: Joe’s Real BBQ and Joe’s Farm Grill. The third, Liberty Market, is where I first met William and his brother James.

We had moved to town not long after Liberty Market opened, and we dined there on a regular basis. (“Dined” sounds hoity-toity, but ate there sounds too pedestrian, so I’m sticking with dined.) All the food and all the people were good, and they had amazing bread pudding. My wife is a bread pudding aficionado, so when I say amazing I am telling it like it is.

Fast forward a dozen years and you will find me getting in touch with William to tell him I’m writing a book. You, dear reader, are hearing about it now. It is called Do Good U: How to change your life, your business – and maybe even the world – by doing good.

The central idea of the book is to tell the story of companies that do good to their customers, employees, vendors, and basically everyone they deal with. My very first phone call was to Johnston & Company, and they agreed to be in the book. (Other companies in the book include Scheels and Hobby Lobby. Writing it is a lot of fun!)

I was both thankful and excited to have Johnston & Co be my first interview. I sat down with William, no longer the GM at Liberty Market but now president of the company, and I asked him a question.

A better way

Thinking about our good experience with all of “Joe’s” restaurants, I asked, “I know your dad once had a coffee shop, then sold it and opened a restaurant, so was Johnston & Company always about food?”

“Not at all,” he replied. “It started with inventions.”

Taken by surprise I said something profound, like “Inventions???”

You’ll have to get the book when it is published to hear the whole story, but it begins with Joe’s grandfather, Herbert, who invented several things you know about. One invention of his that fascinates me is the first electric stand mixer.

It happened that he was in a commercial kitchen watching a baker mix a giant vat of dough by hand. Actually it took both hands and both arms and a lot of effort. They made biscuits for stores and restaurants, and it was a very tough job. Herbert Johnston looked at that and said to himself, “There has to be a better way.” And sure enough, the electric stand mixer was it. Bakeries and restaurants loved it!

Later they wondered if they could make a home version of that big mixer, so they went to work on it. After manufacturing a couple of units they took them to housewives to get their feedback. One of them said, having used hers for two weeks, “I don’t know what you call this thing, but it’s the best kitchen aid I’ve ever had.”

The name, as you probably guessed, became KitchenAid.

When it comes to your view of the world, are you like Herbert Johnston, who always asked the question, “Is there a better way to do this?” Or are you like all of those people in the world who look around and think, “That’s just the way things are” and never try to make a change?

As it turns out, when it comes to behavior and morality, “that’s just the way things are” is a very big problem.

No invention necessary

Herbert Johnston invented many things — he was granted 120 patents. Personally I don’t have any patents. But to do things differently than the world, especially when it comes to behavior and morality, there is no need for me to create a new standard. The best is already known: love God, love people.

In fact, the Bible says that it’s the evil people who are inventing stuff: check out this “Golly!” list from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome (the underlines are mine):

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Here is a very popular way of inventing some new way of doing evil and trying to make it look like good. Tell me if you’ve ever seen this….

A politician (from either party) does something clearly bad and defends it by saying, “My counterpart (in the other party) did something worse.”

That practice, carried out by teenagers and senators, by employees and CEOs, is known as “moral equivalence.” It is defending my bad actions by saying they are not as bad as someone else’s.

Morality, however, is not graded on a curve. Each one of us gets graded on our own. Sorry.

The good news

Doing good is not always easy, but it is always, well, good. Doing evil (see the list above for starters) is often very easy and very pleasing, but it is always — even if it is not quite as evil as someone else’s evil — evil.

Doers of good are the people we want to be around. It doesn’t matter if they’ve never had a social media account or listened to a podcast. They don’t have to be a sports star, a business star, or famous for fifteen minutes. We see their good, and we like it.

Hoodies may be hot now. Bell bottoms may once have been cool. Doing good? That’s always in style.

Do good. It’s in you!