Tag Archives: purpose

Purpose Has Transformative Power

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Wherever I go in the world to speak and advise organizations, I always get the same question: “How can I get people to listen to my ideas?” The truth is that no one wants to listen to your ideas unless they solve a problem that is meaningful to them. So many initiatives fail because leaders get so focused on their passion for an idea that they fail to communicate it effectively.

People already have enough going on in their lives with their own responsibilities, ambitions and dreams. They have families to take care of, friends that they want to spend time with and their own ideas that they want to pursue. The status quo always has inertia on its side and never yields its power gracefully.

The truth is that good ideas fail all the time. In the two decades I have been researching and advising leaders about transformation, what I have found is that few have trouble coming up with new concepts. The hard part is to get others to buy in and work together towards a common purpose. That can only be done in the context of shared sense of values and mission.

Why Occupy Not Only Failed, But Could Never Succeed

On September 17, 2011, #Occupy Wall Street took over Zuccotti Park, in the heart of the financial district in Lower Manhattan. Declaring, “We are the 99%,” they captured the attention of the nation and then the world, eventually growing to encompass protests in 951 cities across 82 countries.

The protesters were angry and rightly so. A global economic elite had bilked us out of trillions and then gotten off scot-free. However, despite all of the self-righteous indignation, they offered no alternate vision of how they wanted things to be. There were no proposals for legislation, alternative business models or anything else really, just anger and frustration.

As Joe Nocera noted in the New York Times, the Occupy movement “had plenty of grievances, aimed mainly at the ‘oppressive’ power of corporations,” but “never got beyond their own slogans.” It’s never enough to merely point out what you don’t like — you need to put forward a clear idea of what you want instead.

When General Stanley McChrystal sought to transform military operations in Iraq, his mantra was “it takes a network to defeat a network” and he built his strategy for change around that one basic principle. Lou Gerstner pulled off one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in history by refocusing his organization from its proprietary “stack” of products to its customers’ “stack” of business processes.

A sense of grievance is never enough to bring change about. You need to put forward an affirmative vision of tomorrow.

How the Mission Drives Your Strategy

We usually think of strategy as a rational, analytic activity, with teams of MBA’s poring over spreadsheets. We often forget that strategy has to have a purpose and that purpose is almost always personal and emotive. Great strategy starts, not with analysis, but from defining and committing to a mission.

Strategy is never created on an empty canvas. While we can make rational assessments about whether we want to pursue a strategy based on low costs, differentiation or an attractive niche. We can, through investments and divestments, fill in missing pieces on a PowerPoint chart, but the fate of a strategy ultimately hinges on personality and ambition.

The success of Apple can’t be separated from Steve Jobs’ ambition to weave technology and design into products that were “insanely great.” Southwest’s dominance in the travel industry is a direct consequence of Herb Kelleher’s mission of being “THE low cost airline,” which drove everything he did from the planes he bought to which routes he competed on.

As Adam Michnik, one of the key intellectual leaders behind the Solidarity movement in Poland, put it, “Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.”

Any vision for the future needs to be rooted in desire and desires are essentially personal. They are deeply entrenched in our sense of self.

The Value of Values

The 2008 financial crisis posed serious challenges for every business. With sales taking a nosedive, companies had to make painful cuts to rein in costs. In the vast majority of cases, that meant layoffs and millions lost their jobs. It’s one of those understandable misfortunes.e No one likes it, but few see alternatives.

The steel giant Nucor, however, had pledged never to lay off employees and it cost it dearly. In 2009, the company lost $294 million dollars. At the time, many saw the move as quixotic and impractical. Yet the results speak for themselves. Today the company is valued more than 30% higher than its closest rival ArcelorMittal S.A., with significantly higher profit margins and twice the return on equity.

In The Good Jobs Strategy MIT’s Zeynep Ton tells a similar story about Mercadona, Spain’s leading discount retailer, when it needed to cut costs in 2008. Rather than cut wages or reduce staff, it asked its employees to contribute ideas. The result was that it managed to reduce prices by 10% and increased its market share from 15% in 2008 to 20% in 2012.

Values are how an enterprise honors its purpose. Yet living up to them involves certain costs. You can’t say you value employees and then lay them off at the first sign of trouble, just like you can’t say you value innovation and obsess about quarterly earnings. You can’t commit to a purpose without making hard choices.

We Need to Start Asking Different Questions

When the Business Roundtable issued a statement in 2019 that discarded the old notion that the sole purpose of a business is to provide value to shareholders, many were dismayed. Some thought it was just another example of misguided altruism by “elites.” Others saw it as a cynical and disingenuous ploy.

The truth is that the whole idea of shareholder capitalism was a cop-out. It gave leaders an excuse for not making choices because it implied that whatever the stock market valued was somehow more relevant than human agency. The anonymous collective of the market was primary, while individual choice was considered to be less consequential.

The ascendant concept of “stakeholder capitalism,” unfortunately, isn’t much better. Surely we can’t value all stakeholders equally. So which communities should we choose to serve? Which consumers do we value over others? Which partners do we choose to get in bed with? What standards should we insist that our suppliers meet?

None of these are easy questions. If for instance, we stop working with suppliers who don’t meet certain environmental or governance standards, we take away jobs from certain communities and run the risk of diminishing our ability to serve our customers. So we need to be thoughtful and offer intelligent standards making tough and uncertain choices

The reason so many organizations find themselves unable to pursue a purpose isn’t because they don’t want to, but because it is hard. Purpose doesn’t begin with a single step, but with a diverging path. We must choose one direction at the expense of another, or stay mired and lost, unable to move forward.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Dall-E

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Focus your Emotional Energy Purposefully

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Focus your Emotional Energy Purposefully

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

When I exited my corporate career more than thirty-five years ago, I was privileged to be regarded and respected as the Fashion Direction Manager for the Grace Bros Department Store group, one of Australia’s most senior women in retail management. This launched my global reputation as a fashion and lifestyle marketing innovator. In this exciting role, I was responsible for designing and implementing a company-wide fashion information system for apparel, accessories, homeware, merchandising, and advertising. This required me to focus my emotional energy on researching, analyzing, and conceptualizing global fashion and lifestyle trends and adapting them to suit the Australian consumer lifestyle.

It was a dream role before the invention of the Internet, the implosion of the mass media, and the dominance of fast fashion. It required our team to focus their emotional energy on intensively researching different global and diverse media sources, including yarn, textile, couture, designer, ready-to-wear shows, trade journals, magazines, and seasonal sales data.

Generating creative thinking

Creativity is about connecting things, and in the fashion world, the best designers make the most unlikely connections to produce novel and wondrous creations. As my professional background included graphic and fashion design and marketing, I could further hone my associative (lateral and connective) thinking skills to think creatively and critically in this role. To focus my emotional energy and attention on guiding my intuition, values, and decisions on the needs and wants of buyers, merchandisers, marketers, and customers. To emerge, diverge and converge the key connections and patterns occurring globally in the fashion world and external complex fashion systems. I also learned the importance of being customer-focused and the value and role of being empathic with customers, manufacturers’ value chains and fashion information system users.

It was an incredibly emotional, physical, and stressful role, which required me to travel overseas four times a year to stay current on the different global fashion streams.

This caused my life to melt into being at work, the gym, or the airport.

Stress-induced exhaustion and burnout

This resulted in my first profound encounter with stress-induced exhaustion and burnout, which hit me right in the face one morning when my body refused to move, and I was unable to get out of bed.

I have also noticed that many of my global coaching clients have faced a similar challenge: stress-induced exhaustion and burnout. Fortunately, they can use the coaching partnership to unearth their particular pattern and unresourceful ways of being and learn how to focus their emotional energy to disrupt, dispute, and deviate from it into a more resourceful way of being and acting. However, it has shifted the coach’s role as a healer, making it even more critical in our current environment.

Focusing emotional energy on pursuing mattering, meaning and purposeful work

This ultimately manifests as a crisis and becomes a defining moment. In my case, I made a fundamental choice to focus emotional energy on pursuing meaning, mattering, and purposeful work, which still focuses my full attention and drives me today.

It created a “crack, “or an opening and threshold for making two fundamental choices: to embark on a healing journey to become the kind of person I wanted to be and to find a way to focus my emotional energy on making the difference I wanted to make in the world.

This enabled me to use my knowledge, experience, and skills to establish Australia’s first design management consultancy.

What is emotional energy?

Emotional energy is the catalyst that fuels creativity, invention, and innovation.

Understanding and harnessing this energy inspires and motivates individuals to explore and embrace creative and critical thinking strategies, now in partnership with AI.

When a person’s emotional energy has contracted, it results in constrained, negative, pessimistic, and even catastrophic thinking habits, which have a toxic impact on the person’s identity and emotional and physical well-being.

This means there is no space, doorway, or threshold to take on anything new, novel, or different. Nor can they imagine what might be possible to evolve, advance, or transform their personal or professional lives in an uncertain future.

Emotional energy catalyses and directs your intrinsic motivation, conviction, hope, positivity, and optimism to approach your world purposefully, meaningfully, and differently.

When you are true to your calling or purpose, you will make extra efforts to be healthier, positively impact your well-being, and improve your resilience.

How does this apply to leadership in uncertain times?

“I think leaders need to remember that they are in the energy management business,” says Halsey. “Their role is to keep people focused, energized, and positive about themselves and their work. They may be unable to change external circumstances, but they can create a safe, nurturing, and empowering work environment. By setting clear goals, diagnosing individual needs, and providing the right leadership style, leaders can help their teams thrive—even in uncertain times.”

People want work to be less of a job and more of a calling.

According to Martin Seligman and Gabriella Rosen Kellerman in their book Tomorrowmind, a US-based research study that included two thousand employees of all ages, industries, tenures, and incomes, revealed that people craved more meaning at work regardless of sector or position. Everyone wanted work to be less of a job and more of a calling and gave their current jobs a rating of 49, which suggests that their “meaning cups” are only half full.

This search for meaning, mattering, and being of service to humanity in a different and value-adding way enables innovators, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to cultivate the emotional energy and develop the agility required to drive their creativity, invention and innovation endeavors.

It is the most critical ingredient that motivates, empowers, enables, fuels and sustains innovators, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs to adapt, survive and thrive on the innovation roller coaster.

Channeling emotional energy meaningfully and purposefully

From my leadership training and coaching experience, I have learned that most people desperately want their lives to make sense and be meaningful and to know that who they are and what they do matters. It is possible to link meaning and mattering to being intentionally motivated and directed by your core values to make a difference and a contribution that provides value and significance to someone, a community, or society.

Being purposeful

Being purposeful focuses your emotional energy, guides your life decisions influences your behaviors, shapes your goals, offers a sense of direction, and creates meaning. Rather than engaging in shallow, empty, or pointless activities, it gives you agency.

In our uncertain, volatile and disruptive world, it is crucial to think about your “purpose in life.” Be like an Entrepreneur and link your purpose as a guidepost to help you deal with uncertainty, navigate it better, mitigate the damaging effects of long-term stress, and become psychologically resilient.

People with a strong sense of purpose direct and focus their emotional energy on what really matters to them. They tend to be more agile and adaptive, hardier and resilient, and more able to refocus and recover quickly from adverse and catastrophic events.

According to McKinsey & Co.’s article “Igniting individual purpose in times of crisis,” purposeful people also live longer and healthier lives and are essential to employee experience. This results in higher levels of employee engagement, more substantial organizational commitment, and increased feelings of well-being. Like many entrepreneurs, people who find their purpose congruent with their jobs tend to get more meaning from their roles, making them more productive and more likely to outperform their peers.

How can you add more meaning, mattering and purpose?

Meaning is an outcome of purpose, and many people, due to their experience of the pandemic and hybrid workplace in a chaotic and uncertain world, are seeking to re-engage with their work and workplaces by focusing their emotional energy on improving their well-being and creating more purposeful, balanced, and meaningful lives.

This is a short section from our new book, “Conscious Innovation – Activating the Heart, Mind and Soul of Innovation”, which will be published in 2025.

Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack. It is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalized innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks. It can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also up-skill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Purpose Matters Because …

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GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Yet the primacy of shareholder value is hardly a well-established economic principle. The concept does not appear even once in Adam Smith’s seminal treatise, The Wealth of Nations. In fact, it is a relatively recent idea and when the economist Milton Friedman first proposed it in 1970, it was considered radical, even subversive, certainly not to be taken as gospel.

It has also been tremendously unsuccessful. Since Friedman’s essay we have become less productive, not more. One reason for the poor results is that Friedman and others like him failed to recognize that our economy is made up of people, not inanimate pieces of data that make up economic charts, and these people search for meaning and purpose in their lives.

Failed Cartesians

Often regarded as the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes was obsessed with human fallibility. Cursed with imperfect senses and emotions that can warp logic, he sought to build a new intellectual foundation based on cool, rational thought. “I think, therefore I am,” he wrote, proving that at least one thing could be known without referring to the use of the senses.

Descartes’ ideas led to the Rationalist school of philosophy as others tried to build on his work. The idea that, through pure reason, we could see truths with greater clarity held enormous attraction for intellectual giants such as Gottfried Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. Unfortunately, other than in the field of mathematics, little was achieved.

That didn’t stop others from trying though. In the early 20th century, the Vienna Circle arose in response to the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and others in order to create a logical system to guide human affairs. Wittgenstein himself would later disown it and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems would eventually expose the whole exercise as a failure.

Undeterred by centuries of failure, business consultants have tried to sell the same idea to executives. Yet despite fancy names like scientific management, financial engineering and six sigma, these didn’t fare any better. One study found that of 58 large companies that announced Six Sigma programs, 91 percent trailed the S&P 500 in stock performance.

Still, many remain undeterred. The idea of an infallible technocracy is just too tempting for many to resist.

The End Of History And The Washington Consensus

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published The End of History to great acclaim. The Cold War had ended and capitalism was triumphant. Communism was shown to be a corrupt system bereft of any real legitimacy. It seemed that, as many philosophers had predicted, we had reached an end point in which human sociocultural evolution was complete.

A new ideology took hold, often referred to as the “Washington Consensus,” that preached fiscal discipline, free trade, privatization and deregulation. The world was going to be remade in capitalism’s image. Countries that hit hard times would be offered aid from multilateral institutions like the IMF and the World Bank in return for favored policy reforms.

Many pointed out that international bureaucrats were mandating policies for developing nations that citizens in their own countries would never accept. Strict austerity programs led to human costs that were both significant and real. In a sense, the Soviet error was being repeated. Ideology was being put before people.

Yet Fukuyama’s message had been misunderstood. His book was not meant as a prophecy, but as a warning. He pointed to the ancient Greek concept of thymos, a spirited blend of dignity and pride, to caution against rationalist explanations for human behavior. Given a choice between a well trod path and one less certain, he predicted that many will “set their eyes on a new and more distant journey.”

The Silicon Valley Myth

I was working on Wall Street in 1995 when the Netscape IPO hit like a bombshell. It was the first big Internet stock and, although originally priced at $14 per share, it opened at double that amount and quickly zoomed to $75. By the end of the day, it had settled back at $58.25 and, just like that, a tiny company with no profits was worth $2.9 billion.

It seemed crazy, but economists soon explained that certain conditions, such as negligible marginal costs and network effects, would lead to “winner take all markets” and increasing returns to investment. Venture capitalists who bet on this logic would, in many cases, become rich beyond their wildest dreams.

The conditions for increasing returns, however, only apply to a narrow swath of businesses, mostly limited to software and electronic gadgets. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs and their investors became convinced that they could apply the Silicon Valley model anywhere, leading to high profile failures like WeWork and Theranos.

That’s the Silicon Valley myth, that the rational logic of code can be applied to any problem. It’s the same fantasy that has been repeated throughout history, handed from Cartesians to logical positivists to “scientific” managers and now to the software engineers, puffed up with stock options who can’t seem to understand why everyone else doesn’t “get it.”

The costs have been substantial. Evidence suggests that the billions wantonly plowed into massive failures are crowding out real businesses. Productivity has been depressed for half a century. The Facebook papers revealed a culture that has lost its way, so single-mindedly focused on optimizing engagement it lost sight of the humanity it was supposed to engage.

Identity, Dignity And Purpose

If you believe in a rational Cartesian universe, a business is little more than a set of transactions. The nature of the firm, in this view, is simply to minimize transaction costs and skilled managers should focus on maximizing bargaining power among stakeholders in order to build a sustainable competitive advantage. Yet the world doesn’t actually work that way.

Consider the ultimatum game. One player is given a dollar and needs to propose how to split it with another player. If it is accepted, both players get the agreed upon shares. If it is not accepted, neither player gets anything. If the world was completely rational, the second player would accept even a single penny. After all, a penny is better than nothing.

Yet decades of experiments across different cultures show that most people do not accept a penny. In fact, offers of less than 30 cents are routinely rejected as unfair. It offends people’s dignity and sense of self. For many of the same reasons, there is increasing evidence that financial targets don’t motivate employees. No one wants to be a cog in someone else’s wheel.

That is the value of purpose. It bolsters, rather than undermines, our identity. When people feel that they are part of a common project, they feel a sense of ownership, that they are ends in themselves rather than means to an end. It uplifts, rather than demeans, us. It fortifies, rather than undermines, our spirit.

What separates great leaders from mediocre managers is that the leaders do more than calculate, they provide meaning to an endeavor that makes it more than merely a common enterprise. It becomes a collective mission.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Unsplash

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Six Key Habits of Great Leaders

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Six Key Habits of Great Leaders

GUEST POST from David Burkus

In a world of growing complexity and seemingly constant crisis, we need great leaders more than ever. But when you look at the stories in the press or check the staggering numbers of burnout and disengagement in surveys, it seems like fewer and fewer leaders are rising to the challenge. It starts to seem like becoming a great leader is too complicated and nearly impossible.

But when you survey people on what makes them appreciate and follow leaders, it turns out there are just a few simple habits that set great leaders apart. Simple, but not necessarily easy.

In this article, we will explore what great leaders do across six key habits that make them influential and their teams successful.

1. Promote Purpose

The first habit great leaders do is to promote purpose. Great leaders understand the importance of connecting the larger organizational purpose to specific projects and tasks. They are able to do more than regurgitate the mission statement of the organization. They can draw a connection between the organizational purpose and the work of their specific team. In doing so, they inspire their team members to see the bigger picture and understand how their contributions align with the overall goals. Furthermore, great leaders shift the conversation towards “who” benefits from the work and promote pro-social purpose. This helps team members feel a sense of fulfillment and motivation in their work, knowing that they are making a positive impact.

2. Clarify Vision

The second habit great leaders do is to clarify vision. A clear vision is crucial for the success of any organization, and great leaders excel at explaining what success looks like and where the organization is heading. They are able to paint a vivid picture of the world or the specific people the organization serves and what it will look like when the vision is achieved. Even when plans change, great leaders provide a clear vision of what a good job looks like. They use the concept of “commander’s intent” to communicate the vision of a successful mission, ensuring that even in constant turmoil, everyone understands the desired outcome and can align their efforts accordingly.

3. Create Accountability

The third habit great leaders do is to create accountability. Great leaders understand the importance of holding people accountable to their jobs and calling them up to a higher standard. They ensure that individuals are held accountable to the result, not just the tasks. By providing the necessary resources for individuals to achieve their goals, great leaders empower their team members to take ownership of their work and deliver exceptional results. Leaders provide autonomy to team members, allowing them to decide how the work gets done. But they’re also reminding everyone on the team that autonomy means greater accountability to the team, not less. They are leaders who hold their team to a higher standard and encourage them to perform even greater.

4. Provide Fair Feedback

The fourth habit great leaders do is provide fair feedback. Feedback is a crucial tool for growth and development, and great leaders excel at providing fair feedback. They tailor their feedback to the individual’s situation, skills, resources, and accountability goals. Great leaders give feedback that is in equal proportion of positive to negative, focusing on building upon the great things. Poor leaders often spend most of their coaching time on constructive criticism—which can be demotivating and decrease performance. Instead, great leaders create a balance between appreciation and constructive criticism to motivate and improve performance, ensuring that team members feel valued and supported in their professional growth.

5. Build Safety

The fifth habit great leaders do is to build safety, as in psychological safety. A psychologically safe environment is essential for fostering innovation and growth, and great leaders understand this. They provide feedback in a way that does not blame individuals for things outside of their control, encouraging transparent and honest conversations about failures to extract lessons and improve. By establishing a culture of safety, great leaders create an atmosphere where team members feel comfortable taking risks and learning from their mistakes. This leads to increased creativity, collaboration, and ultimately, success.

6. Develop Oneself

The final habit great leaders do is to develop themselves. Great leaders recognize the importance of continuous learning and self-improvement. They take responsibility for developing themselves as well as others. With a growth mindset, they actively seek out new information and skills, constantly striving to become better leaders. Great leaders understand that they need to develop themselves in the areas that their team needs in order to be better leaders. By investing in their own growth, they set an example for their team members and inspire them to also pursue personal and professional development.

The habits discussed in this article are what make great leaders worth following. They’re simple, but not necessarily easy. And they need to be done on a regular basis. But great leaders understand the importance of these habits and strive to incorporate them into their leadership style. By promoting purpose, clarifying vision, creating accountability, providing fair feedback, building safety, and developing oneself, leaders can inspire their teams to do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pixabay

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on August 21, 2023

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Five Secrets to Being a Great Team Player

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Five Secrets to Being a Great Team Player

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Our world requires collaboration. Just about every job now requires collaborating on teams and every employee’s calendar is full of evidence of collaboration. In one study, up to 85% of participants’ work weeks were spent working in direct collaboration or a result of collaboration with a team.

But it can be difficult to collaborate with people whose perspectives, preferences, and personalities are different from our own. Still, getting what you want from your work and career requires being a great team player. And if you want to be a leader, you’ll need to be a great team player first. (And really…that will never stop…even leaders often lead in teams.)

In this article, we’ll outline the five (5) essential qualities needed to become a great team player—and offer a few ways to develop those qualities and get them noticed.

1. Capable

The first quality is that great team players are capable. This is a fundamental quality of anyone working, really. You must have the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the tasks being asked of you. But on teams, it’s just as important to be seen as capable by the other members of your team. The team needs to know they can rely on you—and that when you say you’ll have something completed it will be completed on time and as you said.

Working with teams, the way you demonstrate your capability is two-fold: Do what you say you’re going to do, and don’t say something you don’t know to be true. Over time, keeping these two commitments will demonstrate that you can be relied on—because you are capable.

2. Humble

The second quality is that great team players are humble. While great team players are capable, they also don’t think too highly of the skills and knowledge they have. Great team players don’t think little of themselves, they just understand that the needs of the team come before their own. Humble teammates aren’t fighting for their ideas to be heard all the time or seeking to dominate in debates. Instead, they use their voice to amplify others and contribute the bigger, team-wide wins.

Working with teams, humility is often inferred based on behavior in meetings, whether in-person or virtual. Humble teammates aren’t trying to be the lead role in the meeting, instead they’re often acting as a facilitator ensuring every teammate has a chance to speak. And when they do speak, it’s often to build upon others’ ideas instead of constantly insisting on their own.

3. Helpful

The third quality is that great team players are helpful. The best way to put capabilities and humility into practice is by helping others on the team—not constantly trying to convince others to help you. Great team players are the ones in meetings thinking about what they can contribute and how they can help others get unstuck. At the same time, it’s important to be careful not to over-help and lose the needed time to complete your own commitments.

Working with teams, the easiest way to assess your helpfulness is to audit your calendar. Look at everything scheduled on your calendar last week and compared the appointments that furthered your personal goals versus the appointments that helped others hit their goals. You don’t want helpful appointments to dominate, or even be half and half. But if 25 percent of your calendar is spent helping others, then it’s a safe assumption that they see you as helpful.

4. Flexible

The fourth quality is that great team players are flexible. As teams work to complete projects, changes will happen—pivots are required. All work requires flexibility. But often in the face of change many people respond by becoming more stubborn and insisting even more on their original ideas or plan of action. Great team players serve the team by reading the changes in the environment and helping the plan pivot quickly.

Working with teams, the most common changes that require flexibility often happen around priorities. New tasks get added to the team’s list, or environmental changes reshuffle what is urgent. When that happens, taking the lead to check-in with the team and discuss how changes affect priorities can keep the team more productive and keep you seen as a flexible, but high performer.

5. Purposeful

The fifth quality is that great team players are purposeful. All great teams have a sense of purpose behind their work—they know why their work matters and that keeps them bonded together and motivated to achieve more. Great team players amplify this purpose by becoming a source of supporting stories and constant reminders about that purpose. This includes not just talking about why the work that team does matters, but also how it fits into the larger mission or vision of the organization and why that matters.

Working with teams, the easiest way to reinforce purpose is to share gratitude on a regular basis. But not just any old thank you note. Purposeful gratitude expresses appreciation for the effort someone else put in, but also includes a reminder of how that effort helped serve the purpose of the team. Regularly done, it not only builds camaraderie amongst the team, but it also enhances motivation.

As you review this list, one or two qualities probably stood out as ones you already embodied—but one or two probably stood out as ones you need to work on. That’s true for nearly everyone, and it creates a great plan of action. Get started improving where you need to—and get started getting noticed where you already shine. That will help you not only raise your own performance, but help support everyone else on the team as they do their best work ever.

Image credit: Unsplash

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on April 10, 2023

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The Shareholder Value Myth

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The Shareholder Value Myth

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

The Business Roundtable, an influential group of almost 200 CEOs of America’s largest companies, a few years ago issued a statement that discarded the old notion that the sole purpose of a business is to provide value to shareholders. Instead, it advocated serving a diverse group of stakeholders including customers, employees, suppliers and communities.

The idea is not a new one. In fact, Jack Welch once called shareholder value the dumbest idea in the world. Nevertheless, The Wall Street Journal opinion page immediately pounced, suggesting that the move was just an attempt to “appease the socialists” and that it would undermine financial accountability.

It’s hard to see how acknowledging accountability to stakeholders other than investors would undermine accountability to investors. Shareholders, after all, have the power to fire CEOs. Even more importantly though, the notion that performance can be reduced down to a single metric is foolhardy and dangerous. Managing a business is simply tougher than that.

The Principal-Agent Problem

Every business seeks to make a profit. Ones that do not achieve that basic requirement do not stay in business for long. However, that doesn’t mean that the only reason a business exists is to make money. Clearly, in order to earn a profit over the long term, you need to provide value for others. Anybody who has ever run a business knows this.

Yet a large corporation is very different from an ordinary business in that there is what’s known as a principal-agent problem. The shareholders are a dispersed group that have relatively little information, while the managers of the business are a small group with an asymmetric informational advantage.

So you can see how the concept of shareholder value can be attractive. If you can reduce performance down to a single metric, such as stock performance, then the principal-agent problem is solved. Shareholders, as principal owners of the company, can hold managers, as their agents, accountable.

Yet this is a fantasy. There are many things that a manager can do, such as reducing investment or making a lot of sexy acquisitions, that can increase short-term financial performance, but hurt performance in the long run. So the concept of shareholder value has always been a murky one.

From Value Chains To Ecosystems

For decades, the dominant view of strategy was based on Michael Porter’s ideas about competitive advantage. In essence, he argued that the key to long-term success was to dominate the value chain by maximizing bargaining power among suppliers, customers, new market entrants and substitute goods.

Yet there was a fatal flaw in the notion that wasn’t always obvious. In an industrial economy, where technology is relatively static, value chains are stable. However, in a fast moving information economy, firms increasingly depend on ecosystems to compete. That drastically changes the game.

Ecosystems are nonlinear and complex. Power emanates from the center instead of at the top of a value chain. You move to the center by connecting out. So while an industry giant may possess significant bargaining power, exercising that bargaining power can be problematic, because it can weaken links to other nodes in the ecosystem.

So the increased emphasis on stakeholders is not merely some newfound socialistic altruism, but a realistic strategic shift. In a networked-driven world you need to continually widen and deepen links to other stakeholders within the ecosystem. That’s how you gain access to resources like talent, technology and information.
Building Power Through Gaining Trust

In a famous 1937 paper, Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase argued that the function of a firm was to minimize transaction costs, especially information costs. For example, it makes sense to keep employees on staff, even if you might not need them today, so that you don’t need to search for people tomorrow when a job comes in.

Another way to minimize transaction costs is through building trustful relationships. If the stakeholders within ecosystems that you operate trust you, you gain greater access to information and decrease the amount of resources you need to spend on enforcing formal and informal norms. In fact, a study from Accenture Strategy recently found that building trust with stakeholders is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage.

In The Good Jobs Strategy MIT’s Zeynep Ton found that investing more in well-trained employees can actually lower costs and drive sales in the low-cost retail industry. While the sector is often thought of as highly transactional, her research indicates that a dedicated and skilled workforce results in less turnover, better customer service and greater efficiency.

For example, when the recession hit in 2008, Mercadona, Spain’s leading discount retailer, needed to cut costs. But rather than cutting wages or reducing staff, it asked its employees to contribute ideas. The result was that it managed to reduce prices by 10% and increased its market share from 15% in 2008 to 20% in 2012.

In other cases, competitors collaborate to improve their industrial ecosystems for customers. So it is should not be surprising that firms are increasingly investing in structures that are focused on ecosystems, such as Internet of Things Consortium, Partnership on AI and the Manufacturing Institutes. Again, power in an ecosystem resides at the center, not at the top, so to compete you have to connect.

Clearly, it could be argued that by investing in these partnerships, business are increasing shareholder value. However, to do so would be to essentially argue that investing in stakeholder ecosystems and pursuing shareholder value are equivalent, which reduces the debate to one of semantics rather than substance.

Manage For Mission, Not For Metrics

Perhaps one of the most interesting lines in the Business Roundtable statement was the assertion that “each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose,” because it acknowledges that the notion of purpose can’t be reduced to a single concept or metric.

Historically, the lines between industries were fairly clear-cut. Ford competed with GM and Chrysler. Later, foreign competition became more important, but the basic logic of the industry remained fairly stable: you produced cars and sold them to the public through a network of dealers.

Today, however, industry lines have blurred considerably. A company like Amazon competes with Walmart in retail, Microsoft, IBM and Google in cloud computing, and Netflix and Warner Media in entertainment. The company itself is much more than simply a bundle of operations competing in different value chains, but a platform for accessing a variety of ecosystems of talent, technology and information.

In much the same way, automobile manufacturers are making investments to transform themselves into mobility companies. To do so, they are building ecosystems made up of technology giants, startups and others. They are not seeking to “maximize bargaining power,” but rather to prepare for a future that hasn’t taken shape yet.

That’s why today, business leaders need to manage for mission, not for metrics. Building trustful relationships among a diverse set of stakeholders may not be as simple or as clear cut as “maximizing shareholder value,” but it’s increasing what profit-seeking businesses need to do to compete.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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America is in Desperate Need of a Shared Purpose

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America is in Desperate Need of a Shared Purpose

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 1993, after being named IBM’s CEO as it was quickly careening toward insolvency, Lou Gerstner said, “There’s been a lot of speculation as to when I’m going to deliver a vision of IBM, and what I’d like to say to all of you is that the last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.” It was a peculiar thing to say, especially for an executive renown for his strategic acumen, and people took note.

What Gerstner meant was that IBM was broken internally. It had lost sight of itself and fallen into infighting. It no longer sought to serve the customer. Instead of collaborating, executives engaged in endless turf battles. Until IBM’s culture and values could be brought back into harmony with the market, it didn’t matter what the vision was.

Today, America has a similar plight. We are undergoing profound shifts in our racial makeup, urban concentration and generational demography in the midst of great geopolitical and technological disruption. We need to build a new social contract based on shared values that align with those shifts and, until we do that, any vision for the future will be irrelevant.

The Racial Divide

The recent incidents involving Amy Cooper and George Floyd outraged people across the world. In the former, a white woman leveraged her sense of privilege to threaten a black man in the most despicable way. In the latter, a black man was senselessly murdered at the hands of a police officer, while his colleagues sat back and watched.

What was notable about both incidents is that they were filmed and that the subjects involved knew they were being filmed but proceeded with their behavior anyway. How many times have they acted similarly off camera? There’s no way of knowing, but given the air of confidence they had in their actions, it’s hard to believe it was the first time for either.

At the same time, life expectancy for the white working class is actually declining, mostly because of “deaths of despair” due to drugs, alcohol and suicide. For those struggling and who see their friends and families undergoing similar travails, assertions of “white privilege” fall hollow. In fact, the very idea of “white privilege” intensifies the feeling that they are under attack.

The racial divide in America is wide and encompasses gaps in economic circumstances as well as values and attitudes. It doesn’t show signs of closing anytime soon. Yet until it does it’s hard to see how we can move forward as a nation.

The Urban-Rural Divide

In addition to the racial divide in America, we have a stark urban-rural divide that seems to keep widening. While having some gap between city and country dwellers is quite common all over the world, in America that gap is almost uniquely vast and encompasses a number of political and economic forces.

Politically, the fact that each state has two senators gives rural states with small populations an advantage in determining federal policy. On the other hand, because capitals tend to be in cities, those who work in government tend to be more liberal than their rural counterparts. Voting data has long shown that the urban and suburban areas tend to vote Democrat and exurban and rural areas tend to prefer Republicans.

On the economic side, cities wield enormous power. Most major corporations are headquartered in urban areas and large industries tend to agglomerate around specific cities, such as finance in New York, entertainment in Los Angeles and technology in San Francisco. Some observers have also noted that, as housing costs in key cities rise they are beginning to hemorrhage mid and low skill workers who tend to be less educated.

Much like the racial divide, the urban-rural divide is heavily rooted in values and attitudes. While city dwellers often dismiss rural areas as “fly-over country,” those who live in rural areas feel disrespected and unrecognized. They often complain that their communities are being dictated to by people in other places who live other kinds of lives, which leaves them angrily seeking political redress.

The Demographic Divide

In addition to the racial and urban-rural divides, we are also beginning to see a massive generational shift. Over the next decade, baby-boomers, many of whom came of age during the Reagan revolution, will be replaced by millennials, whose experiences with the Great Recession, debilitating student loan debt and rising healthcare costs, have very different priorities.

The main drivers of the Baby Boomer’s influence have been its size and economic prosperity. In America alone, 76 million people were born in between 1946 and 1964, and they came of age in the prosperous years of the 1960s. These factors gave them unprecedented political and economic clout that continues to this day.

Yet now, Millennials, who are more diverse and focused on issues such as the environment and tolerance, are beginning to outnumber Baby Boomers. Much like in the 1960s, their increasing influence is driving trends in politics, the economy and the workplace and their values often put them in conflict with the baby boomers.

However, unlike the Baby Boomers, Millennials are coming of age in an era where prosperity seems to be waning. With Baby Boomers retiring and putting further strains on the economy, especially with regard to healthcare costs, tensions are on the rise

A Problem of Identity and Dignity

In 1989, standing on Kosovo Polje, in a ceremony commemorating the Battle of Kosovo, in which the Serbian army was annihilated by the Ottomans in 1389, Slobodan Milošević told his followers, “No one should dare to beat you again!” Since then, we have seen a wide array of leaders, from Vladimir Putin to Donald Trump, leverage our innate need for recognition and collective identity to whip us into a frenzy.

Amy Cooper threatened a black man because he refused to recognize her privilege and she immediately called the police, with whom she obviously felt a shared identity. The Tea Party was driven, in large part, by older Americans who felt that younger Americans, who they did not feel a shared identity with, wanted to “freeload” off the country they worked their lives to build.

We can expect that as long as these divisions remain, there will be politicians and others who will seek to exploit them for personal gain. If we were still a white, Christian country in a simpler world, things would be easier, but we would lose all of the incalculable benefits that come with diversity, including more dynamism, innovation and culture. Much like IBM in the 90s, we cannot move forward until we heal our internal divisions.

Nothing about a multi-ethnic, multicultural society is simple. Building anything worthwhile takes work and no small amount of pain. Still, we need to try harder. We need to rebuild our society, culture and values based on a new basis of shared purpose. Until we do that, nothing else will really matter.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Driving Change Forward Requires a Shared Purpose

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Driving Change Forward Requires a Shared Purpose

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

On September 12, 1962, President Kennedy addressed the nation from Rice University. “We choose to go to the moon,” he said. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

The speech galvanized the country into one of the most vast collective efforts in history, involving politicians, scientists, engineers and the general public to achieve that goal. Perhaps even more importantly, it imbued the country with a sense of shared purpose that carried over into our business, personal and community life.

Today, that sense of shared purpose is much harder to achieve. Our societies are more diverse and we no longer expect to spend an entire career at a single company, or even a single industry. That’s why the most essential element of a leader’s job today isn’t so much to plan and direct action, but to inspire and empower belief in a common mission.

Start with Shared Identity

When Lou Gerstner first arrived at IBM, the company was going bankrupt. He quickly identified the root of the problem: Infighting. “Units competed with each other, hid things from each other,” he would later write. Huge staffs spent countless hours debating and managing transfer pricing terms between IBM units instead of facilitating a seamless transfer of products to customers.”

The problem is a common one. General Stanley McChrystal experienced something similar in Iraq. As he described in Team of Teams, his forces were split into competing tribes, such as Navy SEALS, Army Special Forces, Night Stalker helicopter pilots, and others, each competing with everyone else for resources.

We naturally tend to form groups based on identity. For example, in a study of adults that were randomly assigned to “leopards” and “tigers,” fMRI studies noted hostility to outgroup members. Similar results were found in a study involving five-year-old children and even in infants. So, to a certain extent, tribalism is unavoidable.

It can also be positive. Under Gerstner, his employees continued to take pride in their unit, just as under McChrystal commando teams continued to build an esprit de corps. Yet those leaders, and President Kennedy as well, expanded those tribes to include a second, larger identity as IBMers, warriors in the fight against terrorism and as Americans, respectively.

Anchor Shared Identity with Shared Values

Shared identity is the first step to building a true sense of shared purpose, but without shared values shared identity is meaningless. We can, as in the study mentioned above, designate ourselves “leopards” or “tigers,” but that is a fairly meaningless distinction. It may be enough to generate hostility to outsiders, but not enough to create a genuine team dynamic.

In the 1950s there were a number of groups opposed to Apartheid in South Africa. Even though they shared common goals, they were unable to work together effectively. That began to change with the Congress of the People, a multi-racial gathering which produced a statement of shared values that came to be known as the Freedom Charter.

Nelson Mandela would later say that the Freedom Charter would have been very different if his organization, the African National Congress (ANC) had written it by themselves, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful. It not only gave anti-Apartheid groups a basis for collective action, by being explicit values, it formed a foundation for those outside of South Africa, who shared the same values, to share the anti-Apartheid purpose.

Perhaps most importantly, the Freedom Charter imposed costs and constraints on the anti-Apartheid movement. By committing itself to a multi-racial movement the African National Congress lost some freedom of action. However, constraining itself in that way was in itself a powerful argument for the viability of a multi-racial society in South Africa.

One of the most powerful moments in our Transformation and Change Workshops is when people make the shift from differentiating values, such as the black nationalism that Mandela favored as a young man, to shared values, such as equal rights under the law that the Freedom Charter called for. Of course, you can be a black nationalist and also support equal rights, but it is through shared values that your change effort will grow.

Engaging in Shared Action

Shared identity and shared values are both essential elements of shared purpose, but they are still not sufficient. To create a true sense of a common mission, you need to instill bonds of trust and that can only be done through engaging in shared action. Consider a study done in the 1960s, called the Robbers Cave Experiment, which involved 22 boys of similar religious, racial and economic backgrounds invited to spend a few weeks at a summer camp.

In the first phase, they were separated into two groups of “Rattlers” and “Eagles” that had little contact with each other. As each group formed its own identity, they began to display hostility on the rare occasions when they were together. During the second phase, the two groups were given competitive tasks and tensions boiled over, with each group name calling, sabotaging each other’s efforts and violently attacking one another.

In the third phase, the researchers attempted to reduce tensions. At first, they merely brought them into friendly contact, with little effect. The boys just sneered at each other. However, when they were tricked into challenging tasks where they were forced to work together in order to be successful, the tenor changed quickly. By end of the camp the two groups had fallen into a friendly camaraderie.

In much the same way, President Kennedy’s Moonshot wasn’t some obscure project undertaken in a secret lab, but involved 400,000 people and was followed on TV by millions more. The Congress of the People wasn’t important just for the document that it produced, but because of the bonds forged in the process. General McChrystal didn’t just preach collaboration, but made it necessary by embedding his personnel in each other’s units.

Becoming a Transformational Leader

Times like these strain any organization. The Covid-19 crisis alone forces enterprises to change. Put racial and political tensions on top and you can quickly have a powder keg waiting to explode. On the other hand, much like the boys in the “Robbers Cave” experiment, common struggle can serve to build common bonds.

When President Kennedy gave his famous speech in 1962, the outlook didn’t look very bright. The launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957 had put America on its heels. Kennedy’s disastrously failed Bay of Pigs invasion was only compounded by his humiliation at the hands of Khrushchev in Vienna.

Yet instead of buckling under the pressure, Kennedy had the grit and imagination to conceive a new project that would “serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” He pledged that we would go to the moon before the decade was out and we did, putting America back on top of the world and imbuing the country with a sense of pride and ambition.

We can do the same. The Covid pandemic, while tragic, gives us the opportunity to reimagine healthcare and fix a broken system. The racial tensions that George Floyd’s murder exposed have the potential to help us build a new racial consciousness. Revolutions do not begin with a slogan, they begin with a cause.

That’s what makes transformational leaders different. Where others see calamity, they see potential for change.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Unsplash

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Creating a Purpose-Driven Workplace

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GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The modern workplace has evolved beyond mere transactions of labor for monetary compensation. Today, employees seek deeper fulfillment and a sense of purpose in their work. Cultivating a purpose-driven workplace can improve employee engagement, increase productivity, and boost organizational success. It’s about aligning work with a meaningful mission that resonates with both employees and customers.

Understanding Purpose-Driven Work

A purpose-driven workplace connects an organization’s mission to its core values and the work employees do daily. This sense of purpose goes beyond profits and can transform how employees perceive their roles, feel motivated, and achieve satisfaction in their contributions. Creating such an environment involves intentional efforts to redefine the organization’s identity and culture.

Steps to Cultivate a Purpose-Driven Environment

Organizations can take several steps to foster a purpose-driven workplace:

Define a Clear Mission: Establish a clear and compelling organizational mission that inspires both employees and stakeholders.
Align Values with Actions: Ensure that company values are evident in daily operations, decision-making, and interactions.
Engage Employees: Encourage employees to connect with the mission by involving them in decision-making and recognizing their contributions.
Measure Impact: Evaluate how aligned activities are with the purpose and identify areas for improvement.

Case Study 1: Patagonia

Patagonia, an outdoor apparel company, is a quintessential example of a purpose-driven organization. With the mission “We’re in business to save our home planet,” Patagonia has woven its environmental activism into its brand and operations. The company donates a significant portion of its revenue to environmental causes and encourages sustainable practices among its customers.

Patagonia’s commitment to sustainability resonates with its employees, who share the company’s environmental passion. This alignment creates a cohesive workplace culture where employees see their work as part of a larger, impactful mission. As a result, Patagonia enjoys high employee retention, loyalty, and advocacy.

Case Study 2: Warby Parker

Warby Parker, an eyewear retailer, integrates purpose with profit through its innovative “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair” program. For every pair of glasses sold, Warby Parker distributes another pair to someone in need through nonprofit partners. This model not only drives social impact but also instills a sense of purpose in its workforce.

Warby Parker employees are motivated by the tangible impact their daily work has on improving global vision health. The strong alignment with the company’s mission fosters an enthusiastic, innovative culture where employees are eager to contribute beyond their immediate roles. Their purpose-driven approach has garnered customer loyalty and propelled the company’s market success.

The Benefits of a Purpose-Driven Workplace

Organizations that successfully cultivate a purpose-driven workplace can realize several benefits:

Enhanced Employee Engagement: Employees who believe in their organization’s mission are more likely to be engaged and motivated.
Increased Productivity: Purpose-driven employees often exhibit increased focus and dedication, driving higher productivity.
Attracting Talent: Organizations with a clear and compelling purpose attract talent who seek more than just a paycheck.
Customer Loyalty: Consumers increasingly prefer brands that align with their values and contribute positively to society.

Conclusion

Creating a purpose-driven workplace is a strategic choice that can significantly affect an organization’s culture and success. By defining a meaningful mission, aligning it with daily actions, and engaging employees in the larger organizational purpose, companies can cultivate a thriving environment that benefits everyone involved. The examples of Patagonia and Warby Parker illustrate how purpose and profit can go hand-in-hand, creating not only financial success but also meaningful societal impact.

Extra Extra: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Unsplash

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The Future of Innovation Balances Profit and Purpose

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GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In today’s rapidly evolving world, organizations are tasked with the challenge of balancing profits with purpose. As consumers become more ethically aware and demand transparency, businesses are pushed to innovate not just for financial gain, but also for social and environmental impact. The future of innovation lies in this delicate balance, where success is measured not only by the bottom line but by the positive impact one has on society. Let us explore a couple of case studies that exemplify this approach.

Case Study 1: Patagonia – Environmental Stewardship as Core Business

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, is a pioneer in aligning profit with purpose. Founded with a clear mission to “build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis,” Patagonia actively integrates sustainability into its business model.

Innovations such as their Worn Wear program, encourage customers to buy used, repair existing gear or recycle, thereby extending the life of products and reducing environmental impact. Patagonia’s decision to donate 1% of sales to environmental causes further affirms its commitment to environmental stewardship.

Despite its upfront commitment to sustainability, Patagonia’s profitability has not suffered. On the contrary, their authenticity and transparency have fostered a loyal customer base, positioning them as market leaders. The Patagonia case illustrates that a strong commitment to purpose can drive financial success and customer loyalty.

Case Study 2: TOMS Shoes – One for One Commitment

TOMS Shoes revolutionized the corporate social responsibility landscape with their One for One business model. For every pair of shoes purchased, TOMS would donate a pair to a child in need. This model was an intrinsic part of their brand ethos and attracted consumers who were eager to make purchases that fostered social good.

Over time, TOMS expanded this model to include eyewear and water initiatives, further integrating charitable giving into its business operations. While the company experienced rapid growth and increased brand awareness, it also faced challenges in ensuring the sustained impact of its giving model and responding to critiques about the complexity of aid.

TOMS has since evolved its strategy by focusing on empowering the communities they serve, providing jobs, and supporting local efforts. This shift illustrates the dynamic nature of balancing purpose and profit, emphasizing the need for continuous adaptation and re-evaluation of impact strategies.

The Path Forward: Key Considerations

The road to balancing profit and purpose requires thoughtful integration of sustainability and responsibility at every level of the business. Here are critical considerations for organizations:

Embed Purpose into Core Strategy: Making purpose a central aspect of business strategy ensures long-term commitment and alignment across all operations.
Incorporate Stakeholder Voices: Engage with customers, employees, and communities to understand their needs and perspectives, fostering collaboration and trust.
Measure Impact Rigorously: Develop and implement measurement frameworks to assess the social and environmental effects of business activities.
Foster a Culture of Innovation: Encourage creative solutions that integrate business goals with societal needs, pushing the boundaries of conventional thinking.

In conclusion, the future of innovation is intricately linked with the pursuit of purpose alongside profit. As companies navigate these waters, they will continue to redefine success in ways that benefit people, the planet, and their bottom lines. Embracing this harmonious balance promises a world where business becomes a formidable force for positive change.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credit: Pixabay

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