Cia Lindgren Design

PURPOSE

THE FUEL OF THE NEW ECONOMY

CONSCIOUS SIMON SINEK AND HIS BOLD NEW PARADIGM FOR CAPITALISM

IS YOUR BUSINESS A PLACE OF HEALING?

HOW TO START A

CORPORATE REVOLUTION

22 TOP CONSCIOUS BUSINESS LEADERS OF 2019 LEADERSHIP | WORKPLACE | SUSTAINABILITY | ENTREPRENEURSHIP Summer 2019. Display until Sep 30, 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS Q3 / SUMMER 2019 | ISSUE 23

CASE STUDIES PURPOSE 101

14 DOES OUR ECONOMY RUN ON JUNK MEANING? LIKE IT OR NOT, EVERY COMPANY — AND OUR ECONOMY AS A WHOLE — IS IN THE MEANING BUSINESS.

18 PURPOSE: THE WHAT, WHY, & HOW CHIEF PURPOSOLOGIST HALEY RUSHING SHARES 19 LESSONS (AND ONE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET) FROM 20 YEARS IN THE ARENA.

22 HOW TO AVOID COMPASSION EXHAUSTION PURPOSE-DRIVEN BUSINESS LEADERS ARE NOT IMPERVIOUS TO BURNOUT. HERE ARE 4 WAYS TO COMBAT STRESS AND DEPRESSION.

24 MORE THAN A HANDBAG SEE HOW KATE SPADE NEW YORK’S SOLCIAL ENTERPRISE INITIATIVE IS RADICALLY TRANSFORMING AN ENTIRE COMMUNITY.

32 HOW TO START A CORPORATE REVOLUTION A GLOBAL PUBLIC COMPANY IN ONE OF THE WORLD’S DIRTIEST INDUSTRIES OVERHAULED ITS ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OVER THE COURSE OF A QUARTER-CENTURY. HERE’S A LOOK AT THE EARLY YEARS.

42 TOP 22 CONSCIOUS BUSINESS LEADERS OF 2019 THESE FORWARD-THINKERS ARE SAYING NO TO PROFIT AT ALL COSTS AND YES TO ADVANCING A NEW BUSINESS-AS-USUAL.

NEW IDEAS

59 WORK, REINVENTED WHAT’S STOPPING US FROM DOING THE BEST WORK OF OUR LIVES? AARON DIGNAN, AUTHOR OF “BRAVE NEW WORK” HAS THE ANSWER.

62 IS YOUR BUSINESS A PLACE OF HEALING? IN “THE HEALING ORGANIZATION,” RAJ SISODIA AND MICHAEL J. GELB SHARE HOW BUSINESS CAN ALLEVIATE SUFFERING AND ELEVATE JOY.

68 FOR THE GOOD OF THE GAME IN HIS NEW BOOK “THE INFINITE GAME,” LEADERSHIP GURU SIMON SINEK POSES A BOLD NEW PARADIGM FOR CAPITALISM.

FROM THE INSIDE OUT Hello, dear reader, and welcome to the Purpose Issue.

Dedicating an entire issue of Conscious Company magazine to purpose seems a bit redundant on the surface.

To be conscious of your actions in business — and of the effects those actions have on others — is, in essence, to proclaim a purpose of “caring about the welfare of people and the planet.” But we humans can get a little distracted by the broad strokes of that commitment, the goals we’re looking to achieve, and how we’re going to get there. Often, the meaning behind what we do becomes fuzzy and out of focus.

In his book “Start With Why,” our cover guy Simon Sinek presents a concept he calls The Golden Circle, represented by three superimposed layers: “what” is the outermost, “how” is in the middle, and “why” is at the center. In his blockbuster 2009 TED Talk, Sinek says, “Every single organization on the planet knows what they do. Some know how they do it, whether you call it your differentiating value proposition, your proprietary process, or your USP. But very few people or organizations know why they do what they do.

And by why I don’t mean to make a profit. That’s a result.

By why, I mean, ‘What’s your purpose — your cause, your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed every morning, and why should anyone care?’

As a result, the way we think, act, and communicate goes from the clearest thing [the what] to the fuzziest thing [the why]. Inspired leaders and organizations, regardless of their size and industry, all think, act, and communicate from the inside out.” With this approach, a company’s how and what can vary (and should, as markets and consumer demands change), but the why remains constant. Conscious Company is a good example; this issue is the last installment of our print magazine, but we continue with our why, to “redefine success in business in service of all life,” through other hows (co-founder and CEO Meghan French Dunbar explains this decision in more detail to follow).

But what if the why for most companies isn’t, well, very meaningful? That’s the question Brian Sherwin asks in the thought piece that kicks off this issue [page 14], along with the question, “Shouldn’t we assess an economy by the quality of meaning it produces?” When it comes to learning how to articulate your own meaningful why, who better to guide the way than The Purpose Institute’s Chief Purposologist, Haley Rushing? Check out her 19 lessons (and one dirty little secret) from 20 years in the arena [page 18].

This issue is packed with case studies of purpose-driven efforts: learn how Kate Spade New York’s social enterprise initiative is radically transforming the community of Masoro, Rwanda [page 24]; travel back in time to the seventh year of Interface’s successful 25-year quest to eliminate any

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negative impact the company may have on the environment [page 32]; and then check out the 22 superstars nominated by their communities for our Top Conscious Business Leaders of 2019 [page 42]. Let these two dozen stories act as roadmaps for aligning your why with your what and how, no matter your company’s size, industry, or previous practices.

A good reminder as you draft or revisit your purpose: you can’t create a healthy outer world without first cultivating a healthy inner world. Prepare your mind, body, and soul to weather the burnout, stress, and depression that inevitably come with purpose-driven work with Gia Duke’s four antidotes to compassion exhaustion [page 22] — lending another meaning to working from the “inside out.”

You will also find fortifying messages about the timeliness and importance of bringing forth your purpose here and now, breaking with the status quo. To quote Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them,” and the business dogmas of old are no different; for centuries, we’ve been conditioned to believe that business leaders must exercise strict authority over their employees. But, as Aaron Dignan poses in his book “Brave New Work,” it’s time businesses break free of bureaucracy, hierarchy, and a compliance mindset and recondition a new way of thinking — one that trades the illusion of control for something far better [page 59]. Speaking of “far better,” what if organizations strove to not only reduce harm, but to go so far as to heal their stakeholders? In our interview with “The Healing Organization” authors Raj Sisodia and Michael J. Gelb, we learn what it means for business to alleviate suffering and elevate joy [page 62]. And in his new book, “The Infinite Game,” Simon Sinek explains his bold new paradigm for capitalism — and how, despite the metaphor, there is no “winning” [page 68]. Sounds grim, but I promise it’ll light a fire within you (or stoke the one that’s already there).

On a personal note, you’ll notice that this issue has a particularly literary theme — an ode to the vehicle that led me to realize my own purpose at a young age: “to tell stories that move people.” I was eight years old when I became mesmerized by the power of the written word. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born — and the day you find out why.”

This quote, commonly attributed to Mark Twain, underscores the tone of the pages you’re about to enjoy.

Happy purposeful reading, Vanessa Childers, Editorial Director

CEO’S NOTE: OUR FINAL ISSUE

Hello, wonderful reader, This issue, our 23rd, will be our final issue of Conscious Company magazine. The focus of this issue is Purpose, which couldn’t be more apropos.

Conscious Company Media’s purpose as an organization is to redefine success in business in service of all life. One of the means of living our purpose is by telling the stories of businesses around the world that are doing business differently. In these pages we have spotlighted and celebrated these businesses — holding them up as examples for the rest of us to follow with the goal of one day making conscious business the new business-as-usual. Along the way, an incredible community of thought leaders gathered around us and lent their voices to this publication. For more than four years, we have successfully told the stories of hundreds of businesses and individuals around the world who exemplify what it means to be practicing conscious business.

Since our inception in March 2014 and our first issue in January 2015, we have persevered in doing everything in our power to get these stories to you in spite of the print publication industry’s enormous challenges. It has been our team’s purpose. Yet, no matter how great your purpose, if the business model isn’t there to support your work, there comes a time to call it quits. It is our time.

As co-founder and CEO, I have no words to express the pride that I feel when I think of Conscious Company magazine. We launched a print publication when no one thought we could. We sustained it for years when no one thought we could. But, most importantly, during that time we accomplished our primary objective of telling hundreds of the stories that needed to be told in order to inspire others about the promise of conscious business. We’ve had people start new companies, leave their jobs, implement new practices, find work at conscious companies featured in the magazine, and more —

all as a result of this little publication. If that isn’t time well spent, then I don’t know what would be.

It has been the joy of my life so far to hear from our community about the impact that our team’s work has had on their lives.

This doesn’t mean the end for Conscious Company Media. You’ll still find us telling these stories on our website, through our podcast, and in person at our many convenings throughout the year. Fortunately, we still get to live our purpose as a team of redefining success in business in service of all life — we just won’t be using as much paper going forward.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for your support. Thank you for all that you do in the world.

With love and gratitude, Meghan, Co-founder & CEO, Conscious Company Media

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CONSCIOUS COMPANY EDITORIAL TEAM

CONSCIOUS COMPANY MEDIA

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Vanessa Childers

CEO & CO-FOUNDER Meghan French Dunbar

ART DIRECTOR Cia Lindgren

COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP MANAGER Kate Hermann

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DIGITAL EDITOR Mary Mazzoni

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D OE S OU R ECO N O M Y R U N ON J U N K M E A N IN G? Like it or not, every company — and our economy as a whole — is in the meaning business

BY BRIAN SHERWIN

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ow should we judge the quality of an economy?

When it comes to satisfying our basic physiological needs (food, shelter, clothing, infrastructure), modern economies clearly provide an abundance of high-quality products. We could also give our modern economies high grades for the quality of technology and variety of entertainment.

But we humans also have a profound need for meaning and purpose, so shouldn’t we also assess an economy by the quality of meaning it produces?

Maybe you think this isn’t the job of an economy, but consider that most adults spend most of our waking hours and vital energy on economic production, i.e., work. Given that work takes up so much of our lives, what are we supposed to do if we aren’t able to satisfy our meaning needs at work?

Discussing meaning might seem like a luxury, especially for people who are struggling to make ends meet, but there are two critical reasons why meaning should be at the center of our economic discussions: 1. most of us (in all types of professions) are dissatisfied and disengaged with our work, and, 2. our frenetic, energy-gulping global economic activity is threatening the very biosphere we depend upon.

In other words, we’re driving, economically, towards the extinction of our species, and we’re bored doing it.

Some miraculous new technology may yet save us from global climate change, but that’s a big chance to take. Our more fundamental problem is the inability of our economic systems to produce rich, high-quality meaning that can satisfy our core psychological needs.

THE OTHER FOSSIL FUEL There is nothing more threatening to our global economic system than a satisfied soul — especially if that satisfied soul has disposable income.

Beyond the provisioning of our basic physiological needs, too much of the modern economic activity of the wealthy depends on humans staying in a perpetual state of psychological dissatisfaction, which is especially driven by the way we work.

Gallup has been tracking employee engagement for about 20 years and has shown that most of us are disengaged. In the US, only about 30 percent of the employees in a typical company are actually interested and engaged in their work. Globally, the number is even worse: just 13 percent engagement. Further, when we’re asked if our jobs make a meaningful contribution to the world, 50 percent of respondents replied “no” or “I’m not sure.”

Disengagement is estimated to cost the US economy up to $550 billion per year, but consider the human toll of spending most of your working (waking) hours doing something that isn’t emotionally meaningful. The psychological angst and the physical and psychic exhaustion many of us experience at work sets us up to be seduced by the consumption side of our economies.

Consumer spending drives a whopping 70 percent of modern economic activity, and much of this — in wealthier countries — includes buying lots of things we don’t really need. The US economy, the envy of much of the world, consumes 25 percent of the earth’s oil — and we’re only 5 percent of the population. The richest 7 percent of the globe’s population is estimated to be responsible for 50 percent of carbon emissions.

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It isn’t our growing global population that most threatens our survival; it is wealthy consumers who lack fulfilling meaning. A sizable portion of the modern economic activity of the wealthy involves the burning of fossil fuels in attempts to address unmet psychological needs. Psychological dissatisfaction is the more fundamental fossil fuel that drives our economy and we won’t solve climate change without addressing it.

make perfect intellectual sense (it fits our skills and experience, and we need the money to pay our bills, etc.), but if the experience of going to work each day lacks emotional meaning (i.e., the satisfaction of our psychological needs), then intellectual meaning isn’t enough to make up for it, and so we become disengaged.

MEANING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS

As Yuval Noah Harari notes in his bestselling book “Sapiens,” the greatest invention of our species is not technology like the wheel or the computer, it’s fiction: the stories we create and tell about our world that imbue it with meaning and allow us to trust others and create organizations, economic systems, and, ultimately, civilizations.

Some of the most basic components of our economies, like money, are pure fiction. If all of us agreed tomorrow that the US dollar had no value, it wouldn’t. We give basic economic concepts like “money,” “value,” and “investment” all the meaning they have.

While each of us is responsible for attempting to create emotionally rich meaning in our lives, as social beings we rely heavily on the meaning provided and supported by our cultures and institutions — especially the institutions where we spend most of our time. Compare the amount of time and energy we spend at work to the time we spend at church, with families, and in civic engagement.

Every day, employees at every company in the world are showing up with the hope that their need for emotional meaning will find some fulfillment at work. So, like it or not, every company — and our economy as a whole — is in the meaning business.

Recent studies have been establishing, in a scientific manner, something that Viktor Frankl (author of “Man’s Search for Meaning”) proposed long ago: that meaning is essential for human wellbeing. In fact, some researchers have demonstrated that people who have a strong sense of meaning live longer than those who do not. A strong sense of meaning is also connected with delayed onset of Alzheimer’s disease in seniors. And researchers have even shown, via fMRI scans, that meaning is better for our wellbeing than happiness.

So how, exactly, do we establish a strong sense of meaning in our lives? From a philosophical perspective, this is a deep and complicated question, but from a psychological perspective, there is a relatively simple theory that can help us cut through the noise and focus on what matters.

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is one of the most validated frameworks of human behavior and motivation.

According to this theory, humans are not passive beings seeking homeostasis, but are always actively seeking to fulfill three universal needs: 1) a coherent sense of self, “Autonomy,” 2) satisfying connections with other people, “Relatedness,” and 3) experiences of growth and development, “Competency.”

We’ll look at each of these needs in more depth, but for now, the important point is this: our psychological wellbeing and our sense of what is “meaningful” are inextricably linked. Think of it this way: satisfaction of our three universal needs causes us to experience psychological wellbeing, and activities that we find interesting and engaging are those activities which most effectively satisfy these needs.

For most of us this happens unconsciously — we just know that we enjoy certain activities and people more than others.

Conversely, when our satisfaction of these core needs is thwarted, we have unpleasant, unsatisfying psychological experiences. A common way we describe this is to say that an activity or a relationship has “lost its meaning.” Consider carefully what we are saying here. We’re not indicating that an activity or a relationship has no intellectual meaning; we are communicating that it has become emotionally unsatisfying.

For many people, work is an example of this: our job may

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ECONOMIC SYSTEMS ARE MEANING SYSTEMS

JUNK MEANING Simon Sinek [page 68] made a big splash with his idea that companies need to have a great “why” in order to give meaning and purpose to what they do. But what if the why for most companies isn’t, well, very meaningful? Apple’s why is supposedly being “rebellious” — but are practices like working employees to exhaustion and cleverly dodging taxes meaningfully rebellious activities? Are fancy little tweaks to iPhones, like facial recognition and new colors, driven by a deep and meaningful why?

Junk meaning is similar to junk food: both may give the appearance of nourishing us, but they actually leave us unhealthy and unsatisfied. In the case of junk meaning, it’s our hearts and souls that fail to get nourished.

Remember, we’re talking about emotionally rich meaning here. Solving tricky business problems like how to make an app more addictive or finding ways to sell more soda to kids may be intellectually interesting challenges, but feeding

our intellects and feeding our hearts and souls are different things.

Consider the meaning captured in the idea that the main purpose of a company is to “make a profit.” From an intellectual, financial perspective this might make some sense.

But by positioning profit as a supreme value, do companies create an atmosphere in which people can establish a strong sense of self, make emotionally satisfying connections, and experience deep personal growth? Based on our level of engagement, it doesn’t appear so.

In our economic system, we have come to accept the idea that human beings are “resources” for companies. Consider how psychologically toxic this meaning is. When we consider ourselves “human capital” or “assets” for companies, what sort of sense of self does that foster? These are not just semantics — these terms reflect a meaning system that is, unfortunately, broadly accepted.

From the perspective of emotional meaning, the economy should be a resource for human beings to meet our psychological needs. If our companies and our economic systems are failing to do so, it is time we recognized the evident truth that we can and should change them.

HIGH-QUALITY MEANING As human beings, we yearn for meaningful lives. When our meaning systems produce low-quality meaning, we disengage and lead lives of quiet desperation, as is reflected in our statistics on work engagement. When meaning is absent from people’s lives, we see frightening phenomena like the current opioid crisis in the US. So, far from being a luxury, high-quality meaning is a requirement for our wellbeing.

High-quality meaning systems do at least three things well: they help us build a deep sense of self, they nurture emotionally fulfilling relationships, and they provide structure and support for transformational personal growth.

something), and we yearn for relationships with people who value us for who we are. Companies that care about nurturing deeper bonds between employees will need to radically rethink the pace, length, and structure of their workdays.

It’s also easier to make deep connections with other people when your company provides a supportive environment for personal growth.

TRANSFORMATIVE PERSONAL GROWTH We all want to have a sense of competence in our professional lives, and while building skills is an important part of this, so is personal growth. As covered in the Q4/Fall 2016 issue of this magazine, companies like Next Jump are building meaningful personal growth into the very fabric of their daily work practices. This approach of becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization is built on having an understanding that adults, not just children, go through developmental cycles and need continual growth and development — which dovetails nicely with SDT. Companies that take personal growth seriously will need to commit to approaches like this.

The intent of this article is to kick-start conversations about quality meaning in our workplaces and in the broader economy. We’ve got plenty of high-quality technology, but we are in desperate need of meaning-entrepreneurs, and a global open-source meaning project. Rebuilding our economy around the fulfillment of our core psychological needs and environmental sustainability won’t be easy, but it has the potential to be highly engaging!

The author would like to thank Osman Parvez for his contributions to the ideas in this article.

A DEEP SENSE OF SELF In Self-Determination Theory (SDT), “autonomy” includes achieving a sense of control (agency) in one’s actions, but it is also about having a coherent experience of who we are and our place in the world. Meaning systems and environments that support us in discovering activities that intrinsically interest us nurture healthy autonomy, whereas command-and-control environments that dictate what we must do, and provide external rewards and punishments, tend to thwart it.

EMOTIONALLY FULFILLING RELATIONSHIPS “Relatedness” is the need to both care about and be cared for by other people. We are naturally able to sense when people want to connect with us for ulterior motives (e.g., to sell us

Brian Sherwin, MBA, is a smart-grid IT project director and co-founder of Inside Feedback, an emotional-intelligence technology.

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PURPOSE

T HE WHAT, W HY & HOW

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19 lessons (and one dirty little secret) from 20 years in the arena

BY HALEY RUSHING

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More than two decades ago, we first began observing that companies operating with a greater purpose (beyond just making money for shareholders) were, in fact, creating systems where everyone flourished: employee wellbeing was high, customers were delighted, communities welcomed them with open arms, and shareholders profited handsomely.

Back then, profit-driven companies modeled the dominant ethos of business while purpose-driven companies were considered unicorns in the land of make-believe. Leaders were skeptical that companies could strive to make a difference and still succeed financially — surely, being overly concerned with improving the lives of others would come at your own expense (or so they thought). But as extraordinary purpose-driven companies like Southwest Airlines, Chipotle, Whole Foods Market, John Deere, BMW, Starbucks, and others have grown and prospered, the ascendance, acceptance, and proliferation of purpose has been nothing short of astounding.

After 20 years in the field, I’ve collected my fair share of insight into what “company purpose” really means, why purpose-driven business is so prevalent, and how you can not only determine the best purpose for your company but also leverage that purpose in service of all stakeholders. Here’s what I’ve found.

DEMAND FOR PURPOSE 1 / Humans need and yearn for purpose

After their basic survival and security needs are met, people long to have significance and meaning. People want to use their talents in service of something that matters. As Viktor

Frankl put it, “The more one forgets himself — by giving oneself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”

2 / Employees thrive on purpose

It’s not surprising that people are more engaged in their work when they believe that what they do matters. Gallup has identified 12 factors known to drive employee engagement, and purpose is one of them: “The purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.” Employees of purpose-driven organizations have higher levels of engagement, productivity, loyalty, and life satisfaction.

3 / Society increasingly expects corporations to operate with a higher purpose

The old adage “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” has never been more true than for businesses operating in today’s world. According to the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand report, people now believe that brands have more power to solve social ills than governments do. In the 2018 Deloitte Millennial Survey, when Millennials were asked what the primary purpose of business should be, 63 percent more of them said “improving society” than “generating profits.”

4 / Investors are promoting purpose as a driver of sustainable long-term performance Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock and one of the world’s biggest investors, wrote in his 2019 letter to CEOs, “Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits but the animating force for

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achieving them. Profits are in no way inconsistent with purpose — in fact, profits and purpose are inextricably linked.

When a company truly understands and expresses its purpose, it functions with the focus and strategic discipline that drive long-term profitability.” Fink’s letter may very well be the most significant development in purpose to date — a real tipping point in settling the age-old purpose-versus-profit debate.

5 / Humanity needs the power of purposedriven organizations to help heal the world

Capitalism has proven to be an enormous force for good in lifting people out of poverty and improving the human condition across many objective measures. And yet we also see a host of problems, like mental illness, loneliness, and uncertain economic futures for so many, along with a climate-change crisis of epic proportion. We need conscious leaders to step up and use their power, influence, and resources to heal some of humanity’s most pressing issues.

ADVANTAGES OF PURPOSE

In the war for talent, Millennials don’t just want a job; they want a calling, something that enables them to simultaneously earn a living and make a difference. To be clear, purpose is not a substitute for fulfilling the basic needs of employees (a living wage, benefits, dignified working conditions, opportunities for personal growth and development, etc.), but once those basic offerings are in place, the added dimension of doing purposeful work makes an enormous difference in attracting and retaining talented and passionate people.

11 / Purpose moves mountains

Most people don’t jump out of bed in the morning eager to increase sales by X percent; they are much more capable of extraordinary feats when they’re asked to work in service of a goal they find meaningful and worthy of their time and effort.

12 / Purpose is a path to high performance

6 / Purpose drives decision-making

In his book “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies,” Jim Collins notes that companies with purpose outperform their competitors eight to one; add the multi-stakeholder model to the equation and performance soars even higher.

7 / Purpose fosters innovation

Purpose enhances not only corporate performance but also corporal performance, in the form of high levels of physical and emotional wellbeing. People who report high levels of “purpose in life” live longer, have lower rates of depression, lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease, reduced risk for heart attack and stroke, better sleep, and better sex!

With a well-articulated purpose in place, the clarity and consistency of decisions increase dramatically. You can and should look at everything on your to-do list through the lens of your purpose. If something is in alignment with your purpose, do it. If something trespasses against your purpose or does nothing to further it, then move on.

When people have a clear understanding of the positive impact they’re trying to make, they can get to work identifying gaps between the aspiration and the reality — and find creative solutions to fill them.

8 / Purpose holds you steady despite a turbulent marketplace

When you know and believe in what you stand for, you’re less likely to be thrown radically off course by volatile market conditions or competitive pressures. Purpose acts as a compass when navigating tough decisions; when aligned with your highest ambition, making the right decision for your company becomes much clearer.

9 / Purpose injects your brand with a healthy dose of reality

If you’re relying solely on the creativity of your advertising agency or the size of your ad budget to create and carry the brand, then you’ve got a problem. Your customers should feel your purpose in every interaction with your brand. The role of advertising for a purpose-driven organization is less about using creativity to invent a brand image and more about using creativity to tell genuine and powerful stories about the difference the brand aspires to make.

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10 / Purpose attracts talent

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13 / Purpose contributes to personal wellbeing

DISCOVERING, ARTICULATING, AND BRINGING YOUR PURPOSE TO LIFE 14 / Old wisdom holds true

The saying goes: “Where your talents and the needs of the world intersect, therein lies your purpose.” It’s that simple.

What’s the biggest need or problem in the world that you have the wherewithal and desire to address? The simplest tool for exploring this question is what I call “The Purpose Venn” [next page].

• Take an honest look at your strengths: What are you built to do? It’s one thing to want to do something; it’s another to have the wherewithal to actually do it. This capability is what gives credibility to your purpose.

• Tune in to the things your people are most passionate about: What do they love to do? There’s always something that brings your people to life and makes them proud of what they do. Find it. This passion provides the fuel to fulfill the purpose.

• Identify where you can have the most meaningful impact: What does the world need you to do? Get really clear on

17 / Get your employees on board Meaningful Impact Need to Do

Passions Love to Do

Strengths Built to Do

So you’ve done some soul-searching and have landed upon a clear and inspiring articulation of your purpose. Now you must bring the purpose to life within the organization. Employees need to be informed of and engaged with the purpose in order for any of the benefits mentioned to materialize. If they believe the new purpose is just a marketing ploy or a new tagline, it’s dead in the water. Think about all of the ways that you could inspire your workforce and put as much energy into those initiatives as the ones you will eventually create for your customers.

18 / Determine where you are and aren’t fulfilling your purpose

Conduct research to assess where and how your purpose is currently being fulfilled — and where it’s not. Look at all of the ways that your stakeholders experience your brand and ask yourself if that experience is aligned with the purpose.

When you find the gaps, don’t despair; it’s just an indication of where you have work to do. Create a game plan for moving toward being a fully aligned organization. the problem, need, or issue that you want to address. This clarity ensures your purpose is worthy of the time, energy, and talent you’ll invariably put into it.

15 / Tips for articulating your purpose

Once you have a good idea of your purpose, it’s time to put pen to paper. Here’s what I’ve learned over the decades: stay focused. Keep it simple. Aim high. Your purpose should reflect who you are when you’re at your best, but don’t end up in the ether. “To change the world for the better” is not a useful purpose. Here are a few good examples to follow.

• Disney: “To use our imagination to bring happiness to millions.”

• Chipotle: To serve “food with integrity.”

• Starbucks: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

• Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

• Walmart: “To save people money and help them live better.”

16 / Remember: it’s your purpose

“Who is the purpose for?” That question comes up a lot. The answer: purpose is first and foremost for the people leading and working at the organization. In a 2012 Gallup poll, 63 percent of employees and 40 percent of executives do not “strongly agree” that they know what their organization stands for. Purpose ensures that everyone goes to work knowing what they’re there to do. Don’t be overly concerned with what a customer or any other external stakeholder might think. A good communication strategy will ensure that your purpose is positioned in a way that will resonate with them when the time comes.

19 / Set the purpose flywheel in motion

It’s essential to understand that no organization becomes purpose-driven overnight as a result of some epic launch event, radical transformation, or spectacular breakthrough.

It is a gradual process that requires continual commitment to making little purpose-aligned decisions every day. With intention, discipline, and consistency, the purpose flywheel begins to turn. Momentum builds. But to keep it going and to really gain ground requires ever-present vigilance.

THE LAST AND MOST IMPORTANT LESSON 20 / The dirty little secret about purpose

Purpose works only if it is authentic. Without a sincere and serious commitment from the leaders of an organization to act as faithful stewards of the purpose, nothing described here will come to pass. If you’re just trying on purpose as the marketing strategy du jour because employees seem to want it or because Larry Fink said you should, don’t bother. Motivation matters. The call is to think deeply about the problems facing our world that your organization has the wherewithal to heal and then to put your heart and soul into creating a more conscious company that positively impacts the word.

Haley Rushing is co-founder and Chief Purposologist of The Purpose Institute and co-author of “It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For: Why Every Extraordinary Business is Driven By Purpose.”

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H OW TO AVOI D

COMPASSION E XH AUSTION

Purpose-driven business leaders are not impervious to burnout; here are 4 ways to combat stress and depression

BY GIA DUKE

I

n December 1999, Julia “Butterfly” Hill’s feet hit the ground for the first time in 738 days. Many of us who consider ourselves change-makers know the story well.

What began as a weeklong sit-in to protect a 1,000-year-old redwood tree near Stafford, California, became her residence for two years as she and a group of activists from Earth First! protested deforestation.

People often wonder how she did it.

What does 738 days in a tree do to one’s compassion for our planet and forests, one’s resolve, and one’s sense of self?

In her book “The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and The Struggle to Save the Redwoods,” Hill comments on her lowest moments. “Each time I’d start to feel that the fire inside me was just too weak to burn any longer and that I couldn’t face another day, the great spirits of the universe would send something to fan those flames and burst them back into the bonfire I needed to renew my strength.

Sometimes it would be a call from a friend. Other times it would involve a prayer being answered more quickly than I could have thought possible.”

Even the toughest and most committed leaders among us experience moments where we doubt our own ability to solve the problem we’ve vowed to address. As a result, we’re left feeling run down, burned out, and helpless.

Many of us are driven by empathy and compassion. We understand each other in

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ways not everyone can. We want everyone to feel okay on the inside, to feel whole, to experience joy, to have hope.

We don’t want anyone to suffer or feel pain. We’d love to fix it all with a magic wand, but know we can’t. No matter what we do or how hard we try, we can’t help everyone. So pay attention: when you acutely feel this limitation staring you in the face, compassion exhaustion is about to kick in.

COMPASSION EXHAUSTION Compassion exhaustion is when you have deep sympathy for someone who is struggling, but your efforts to help that person are so overwhelming that your desire to do so completely wears you down.

When you start to wonder “Am I even making a difference? Am I the only one who cares?” or when your body begins to send you signals in the form of stress and fatigue, you’re likely close to reaching compassion exhaustion.

The little data that exists on the intersection of burnout and social entrepreneurship suggests that chronic stress and depression are already negatively affecting quality of life for many, which isn’t surprising given our culture’s obsession with hustle. In fact, nearly 50 percent of the social entrepreneurs attending the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2018 reported struggling with burnout and depression.

Instead of letting burnout keep you from carrying out your mission, here are four suggestions for how to prevent or overcome compassion exhaustion.

FOUR WAYS LEADERS CAN AVOID BURNOUT 1. REACH OUT FOR SUPPORT Are you ready for this? Ask for help. That’s right. We know how badass you are. We know how much you’re capable of. But sometimes you have to ask for support.

In the study “The Impact of Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Satisfaction on Social Work Students,” published by the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, researchers surveyed social work students and human services professionals and found that while young people often begin their work feeling satisfied, they experience high levels of compassion fatigue within the first five years of their professional careers. What’s more, students younger than 40 years old were most affected by compassion fatigue.

These findings highlight the importance of reaching out not only to people who have more experience in your field but also to friends, family, and co-workers. Sometimes it’s the little things that can make a big difference, such as asking for and receiving a check-in phone call or an encouraging text.

Other times, it’s about getting a few things moved off

your plate. This is the time to delegate, pass on, or set aside tasks for the moment until you can rest up. Asking for a hug that lasts a little longer doesn’t hurt, either.

2. RELEASE AND LET GO Here’s a little secret: all those exhausting thoughts running around in your head, not just your kind heart and the work you’re doing, are causing your emotions to deplete you. The good news is that you can fix that. Take notice.

There have been many studies that show the negative psychological effects associated with suppressing our emotions — and the positive effects of accepting them. In a longitudinal study by psychology professors at the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley, an experiment with over 200 participants revealed that those who accepted their emotions were more likely to experience better psychological health.

So, what emotions are coming up for you? Write them down. Get the negative, exhausting ones out of your head one by one. Release them into the wind like a wish on a dandelion. Acknowledge them, take a deep breath in, and let them go.

3. GIVE PEOPLE MORE CREDIT Sure, we can offer people our time and guidance, but we can also trust them to give things a go for themselves. You are not here to rescue, but to support. Give people more credit. Let them step up and figure it out. You don’t have to carry the heavy burden alone; you can do it together.

Although it feels great to help others, it’s also just as important to allow people the space to take on new challenges and help themselves.

4. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF I’m here to remind you that you can care about others and take care of yourself — it doesn’t have to be either/or. In fact, to kick butt as a social entrepreneur, you have to pay attention to what your body is telling you. No matter how much you might want to ignore the signs or push through it, your body will always win. It will hit you with a cold, the flu, or worse, knocking you out for weeks. It takes less time in aggregate to take good care of yourself on a day-to-day basis than it does to recover from spreading yourself too thin.

Above all, remember that you’re not alone here. You’re not the only one who cares. We’re all working on this together.

Gia Duke is the author of “Get Your Heart On: The How-To Guide for People Who Want to Make a Difference,” the founder of the Re:mix Foster Youth program, a certified coach through The Life Coach School, and a graduate of the Martha Beck Life Coach Training program.

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MOR E T H AN A HA N D B AG How Kate Spade New York’s social enterprise initiative is radically transforming an entire community

BY VANESSA CHILDERS // Photos by Jeremy Stanley

Nestled in the foothills of Masoro, Rwanda — about a 45-minute drive from the capital, Kigali — sits Abahizi Rwanda, a handbag manufacturing facility that Kate Spade New York helped local artisans establish in 2012.

The for-profit company was created to serve as the first handbag supplier for Kate Spade’s then-budding social enterprise initiative, On Purpose. Its mission? To create long-term sustainability and help transform the community by empowering and employing its primary agents of change: women.

Abahizi employs over 250 people full time, 90 percent of whom are women, and provides them with benefits including health insurance for their whole families, paid maternity leave, sick days, vacation days, and bonuses.

Seventy-two percent of artisans are parents, and 20 percent are single parents. Last year alone, Abahizi produced 32,000 On Purpose handbags in both the company’s mainline and outlet business.

Built into each handbag’s production cost is a fee that covers a suite of life-skills training programs offered to all employees, who have shown a consistent increase in workplace, economic, psychological, and community empowerment, year over year.

While On Purpose is one initiative inside the Kate Spade New York business, it has had an organization-wide impact — especially since the fashion brand’s

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acquisition by Tapestry, Inc. in July 2017 — further transforming the lives of the families of Masoro and other Kate Spade New York communities.

We sat down with Kate Spade New York’s Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Mary Beech and Director of Social Impact Taryn Bird to learn more about the impetus for On Purpose, the program’s blended finance model, the ripple effect it has created within the community of Masoro, and what the future holds for Abahizi Rwanda.

What was the impetus for Kate Spade’s On Purpose initiative?

Mary Beech: From the early days, our company wanted to do something involving our product that could also do good for the world. We initially worked through a traditional public-private partnership with the organization Women for Women International. We sourced products from local female artisans from Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Our executives traveled to those regions, met the women who were working there, and began to see not only the impact we were having on these women and their lives but also the way that both our customers and our employees were responding — it was all positive. We saw what is now researched and proven:

Built into each On Purpose handbag’s production cost is a fee that covers a suite of lifeskills training programs offered to all employees, who have shown a consistent increase in workplace, economic, psychological, and community empowerment, year over year.

employees feel better about working in a company that’s positively impacting society and the world.

We determined that we wanted to create an initiative that was part of our supply chain, that was financially sustainable, and that incorporated products that were fully integrated — designed to look like the rest of Kate Spade New York’s seasonal collections, but done in a way that created positive impact. That’s when we set up the social enterprise On Purpose model in 2012 and Abahizi Rwanda was the pilot.

el, which then influenced the evolution and re-launch of the Kate Spade New York Foundation in 2015 — a more traditional CSR initiative, with a mission linked to what we were already doing with On Purpose: empowering women to transform their communities.

Our mission as a company — and our brand’s promise — is “to inspire women to be the heroines of their own story.”

We believe in the power of women to be storytellers and to feel confident about moving forward in the world. It was also inspired by the work we were doing with On Purpose.

How did the company decide on women’s empowerment as its area of impact — and how does this weave into or support Kate Spade’s purpose as a company?

Tell us about the On Purpose business model and Kate Spade New York’s role within Abahizi Rwanda.

MB: Empowering women was an easy place for us to lean in. We were founded by a woman, the vast majority of our customers are women, and 85 percent of our company is women. That is not just within our retail workforce, which is fairly common within a fashion organization, but all the way up to our senior leadership team. We’re one of the only fashion companies with a female CEO and a female creative director. Empowering women comes very naturally.

On Purpose has had a tremendous impact on our initiatives overall as an organization. We evolved from a traditional CSR partnership to a social enterprise mod-

Taryn Bird: We at Kate Spade New York act as Abahizi Rwanda’s social impact investor and their client. There are over 250 women from the local community working at Abahizi Rwanda. The company is a locally run, employee-owned, for-profit social enterprise. We at Kate Spade do not own it. We have a unique relationship with Abahizi, a true partnership built on years of trust and that has led to pretty significant impact.

MB: At Abahizi Rwanda, built into the cost of every product is a social impact fee that allows the factory to offer empowerment classes to the women and men working

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Kate Spade New York’s mission as a company — and the brand’s promise — is “to inspire women to be the heroines of their own story.”

there, during the work day. We have learned firsthand that economic empowerment is important, but it must be coupled with psychological and emotional empowerment to have the greatest impact.

TB: On Purpose is a blended finance model, so we use commercial capital and philanthropic capital to invest in the community of Masoro. All of our commercial capital is invested in Abahizi Rwanda, and our philanthropic capital is invested in the community. The philanthropic part of the model is funded through an employee fundraiser and also a sale with our customers called Shop With Purpose. We offer 30 percent off product in-stores and online over a four-day period and then donate 2 percent of net sales to a donor-advised fund that sits within the Tides Foundation.

We call this fund the On Purpose Fund. The On Purpose Fund then distributes those funds to nonprofits that are working in the communities where we build our On Purpose suppliers. With this, we’re not only investing in the empowerment of each woman working in the factory but also in the empowerment of the community where the factory is located.

To ensure responsible and sustainable investment into the community we deploy our philanthropic capital toward physical infrastructure and local capacity development.

We work with the government of Rwanda and community development experts to identify and select nonprofits with

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track records in Rwanda in innovative program design, effective capacity development, and rigorous impact measurement. In this approach, we follow our commercial investment strategy by building a foundation of infrastructure and human capacity that the community owns, sustains, grows, and uses to better their future.

Why did the company choose not to start a traditional corporate social responsibility program?

TB: Both On Purpose and the Kate Spade New York Foundation are committed to empowering women to transform communities. On Purpose is the social enterprise extension of our women’s empowerment portfolio. Over the last five years with On Purpose and embedding our social impact work into our core business, we have been able to set up longer-term partnerships between our brand and our partners. In addition, we are able to engage more of our corporate teams, customers, and corporate field teams in bringing our social impact work to life.

How do you measure the success of On Purpose, and what are your goals moving forward?

TB: We bring in a third-party company called Laterite to conduct an annual survey. Each individual who works at Abahizi Rwanda participates in a 60-minute survey with

a little over 100 questions — so we’re getting a very accurate snapshot of the socioeconomic status and the empowerment that’s taking place. Along with the Abahizi Rwanda Leadership team we evaluate where there are areas of opportunity for increased education and investment. We’re focused on efficiency and growing our business there, and so with that also comes hiring new individuals. There are 250 full-time jobs created at Abahizi Rwanda with 93 percent being women from the local community who have access to full-time employment. When we started On Purpose there were a little over 100, so as the business has grown so has the number of individuals employed.

We have a full social impact report. If you look at the self-empowerment scores, you’ll see that these women are ranking themselves higher year over year in terms of how they view their life today and what they’re hopeful for in the future.

The self-empowerment score is a metric that was developed

by Georgetown University in 2017. Georgetown has been a measurement partner of ours measuring not only our social impact but the business viability of what we set out to do.

Something that’s really important to us is that the business itself has a retention rate of over 97 percent. Women are not only coming to work [at Abahizi Rwanda], they’re also staying there. With that comes not only an improved livelihood for themselves but also for their families; 93 percent of the children of the women who work at Abahizi Rwanda are currently in school. That means that [those female employees] are actually making decisions on the home front. We’re also looking

ABAHIZI RWANDA STATS FOR 2018 86% of leadership roles were held by women. 30% of these were senior roles; middle management was 100% female.

5 life-skills training programs and services were provided to all employees: health education, financial literacy, counseling, leadership training, and English classes.

68% of all artisans were actively saving money.

There has been a 35% increase in women’s participation in decisionmaking on purchases at home year over year.

There has been a 36% increase in women’s decision-making on family planning year over year.

32% of all employees secured a loan through a bank or financial institution.

141 members of the community were employed by a side business owned by an Abahizi artisan.

There has been a 29% increase in prenatal doctor visits since 2016 among all employees.

One in three women who work at Abahizi Rwanda owns a business outside of their job.

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HOW IT WORKS

Kate Spade New York builds the handbag supplier that produces their On Purpose line.

Shop With Purpose sale profits feed into the On Purpose Fund, which is facilitated through the Tides Foundation.

at the number of businesses that are starting to populate in the community as a result of their employment. One in three women who work at Abahizi Rwanda owns a business outside of their job, so they not only have access to full-time employment at Abahizi but they’re starting new businesses and then hiring individuals from the community to work in those businesses. We’re seeing not only self-empowerment and improved family livelihood but also this ripple effect into the community, consistently, year over year.

“

We have learned firsthand that economic empowerment is important, but it must be coupled with psychological and emotional empowerment to have the greatest impact.

What gives you hope for the future?

The On Purpose supplier employs women from the local community, and provides sustainable income, benefits, and a suite of empowerment classes.

The fund then grants money to local nonprofit organizations where their On Purpose supplier is based to help offer services and facilities that are relevant to the community.

+ All of these streams improve the health, economy, and education for people in Masoro, Rwanda, where the On Purpose supplier is based.

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”

MB: I’m particularly excited right now. Tapestry recently announced 2025 Corporate Responsibility goals. One of the goals is around Worker Dignity, and is an extension of Kate Spade New York’s empowerment work in Rwanda.

Our production at Abahizi Rwanda is a small portion of what we do as a company, so Tapestry will look at the rest of its supply chain across all three of its brands (Coach, Kate Spade New York, and Stuart Weitzman) and focus on bringing empowerment programs to 50,000 people crafting products in our factories by 2025. That really gives me hope that we can take these lessons from Masoro and roll them out to other factories around the world.

There are many good things that happened through our acquisition by Tapestry, and one of the most exciting for the On Purpose intitiative is that we brought in Coach as a second client for Abahizi Rwanda. We had no idea when we launched in 2012 that we’d have sister brands, so that’s been a wonderful aspect of our acquisition. Our focus now is to help other companies replicate this model around the world. We have learned a great deal over the last six years building On Purpose and through our partnership with Abahizi. We want to share those learnings and inspire other companies to take similar approaches by investing in local communities and using their own supply chains to create impact.

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Through its ReEntry program, Interface recycles used carpet tiles to create pellets for GlasBacRE, one of the company’s innovative carpet backing systems.

HOW TO START A

CO RPORATE REVOLUTION Over a quarter-century, a global public company in one of the world’s dirtiest industries overhauled its environmental impact. Here’s a look at the early years.

BY NATHAN HAVEY, FEATURING GRAHAM SCOTT // Photos courtesy of Interface

I’m frequently surprised at how often I meet someone in the conscious business world who does not know about Interface. I can’t quite remember when I first heard about Ray Anderson’s 1994 spear-in-the-chest revelation and the 25-year environmental transformation that followed, but I have been a fan of the story for years: a global public company in one of the world’s dirtiest industries decides to become a paragon of environmental stewardship, embarking on “Mission Zero” — Interface’s promise to eliminate any negative impact the company may have on the environment by the year 2020 — not for marketing purposes, but because they can’t keep doing business as usual and be proud of the world they are leaving for their grandchildren.

Erin Meezan, chief sustainability officer and vice president of Interface Inc., also believes that the company’s story is important, and she admits that they could do a better job telling it. She sent me a copy of a speech she gave in January 2019 in which she summarized the company’s achievements to date: 1. Interface has reduced waste to landfill 91% 2. Interface has reduced factory water use 88% 3. 88% of all the energy Interface uses globally comes from renewable sources, including 100% in Europe and 98% in the US 4. All Interface factories operate with 100% renewable electricity 5. Interface has reduced GHG emissions intensity 96% “Because of our progress on recycled materials, we hit a major milestone in 2018,” Meezan says. “All of our products were able to be made carbon-neutral by purchasing a small amount of offsets. We now sell carbon-neutral products across our global portfolio, including carpet, rubber, and luxury vinyl tile — and we did that two years ahead of our commitment to do so by 2020. That means [we’ve achieved] net-zero carbon in the atmosphere as a result of all of our products. Everywhere.”

There are many other conscious and environmentally sustainable companies out there, but most were born that way. It is rare indeed to find a story of corporate purpose

transformation at a global scale. It is rarer still to find such a story in a public company. But the purposeful transformation of global public companies is exactly what the world needs now, and that is why the Interface story is so important. It has already inspired changes from visionary leaders like Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, and Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, to name a few.

I believe a proper understanding of Interface’s story can not only inspire but also instruct us all in how a purposeless company can transform itself to become a vehicle for achieving something important for the world and improve its financial performance in the process. So last year, I began work on a feature documentary to tell the Interface story. In the process I have gotten to know the people who’ve spent their careers advancing “Mission Zero.” One of these people is Graham Scott, vice president of technical services of Interface.

Scott was brought into Interface long before the transformation started. I interviewed Scott in February, and he brought me a printed copy of a speech he had given. Like Meezan’s speech, it summed up progress to date, but the date of this one was the year 2000, just six years into the 25-year story, as Scott prepared to retire and leave the mission in the hands of the next generation. We asked Scott if we could share edited portions of his speech with Conscious Company readers. He agreed.

What follows here is a unique look at what was happening in the company in the early years of working toward achieving a monumentally bold vision. At this time, no one knew if they would be successful, and the kind of results Meezan shared last January were still 20 years away.

The things Scott described in his speech are the building blocks of a corporate revolution. We would do well to study them so that we might better understand how to instigate similar revolutions in other global public companies.

GRAHAM SCOTT’S 2000 SPEECH

AWARENESS AND THE BEGINNING One of Interface’s senior executives had called a meeting to consider environmental issues. He invited our CEO, Ray Anderson, to open the meeting and address the dozen or so executives in attendance. Ray frankly admitted that a day or so before, he had not known what he was going to say and was not certain why he had been asked to attend.

Quite by chance, a few days earlier Ray had received a copy of Paul Hawken’s book “The Ecology of Commerce.”

I think in desperation, Ray quickly read through the book in an attempt to have something to pass on. After reading it, Ray’s whole life changed in ways that he could not have

Graham Scott

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Recycled-content nylon on a tufter.

foreseen, and as a result, the lives of many others would become changed for the better.

After Ray’s opening remarks, he presented us with a task that really got our stunned attention.

He charged us with making Interface a sustainable enterprise: our company was to become an environmental leader. As the meeting progressed, we were each invited to share our thoughts. That’s when it hit me! By association I had consumed vast amounts of energy, materials, and resources; I had produced thousands of tons of product that would sit in landfills for hundreds if not thousands of years; I had polluted air and water in God-only-knows what quantities — and for what? The product I had made did little to improve humanity’s lot. You couldn’t eat it, learn from it, or claim that it had any lasting artistic value. I became very concerned over the extravagance that was my life. My remarks at that meeting reflected those thoughts. Others had similar thoughts and reactions.

Everyone likes to think their life has purpose. Was mine to destroy a supportive environment? What was my justification for being?

When I came down to a basic answer, it was, of course, my family, children, and grandchildren. So in response to that responsibility I go and mess up their future by stealing resources from them and polluting their environment?

Nice job!

END OF SCOTT’S SPEECH

BEING OVERWHELMED So, where to start? Most of our products had proved the soundness of their design in years of use. Attempts by competitors to knock us off our perch were largely unsuccessful, especially if they tried to come up with product constructions that were radically different from ours. We had found that when we strayed from well-proven product systems, we always seemed to come up with an inferior result. So, changing from PVC,

nylon, and fiberglass was, we felt, likely to put us out of business.

How about being more efficient and less wasteful?

Any business that has stayed competitive over the years must surely be efficient, so there was not likely to be much there. Much of our equipment was up to date and not regarded as wasteful in any way, many of our factory buildings were reasonably new, and it was doubtful that much could be saved by investing in new premises. We enjoyed having as associates very capable engineers, planners, accountants, and production managers, together with a body of associates who were hardworking people. It was unlikely that we would be able to find any savings significant enough to make an environmental difference. The idea of being a sustainable enterprise seemed firmly out of reach.

Our CEO had told the US business community that we were going to be an environmental leader, and there we were wondering how, and silently hoping the whole

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thing would go away, even though we all knew in our hearts that it was the right thing to do.

Despite the enormity of the task confronting us, the seeds that would help us make a start had already been sown. It was one person who wrote the book that Ray read, it was one individual who called that first environmental meeting, and it was the commitment of one CEO who risked his reputation by standing in front of the business community to commit his company to the cause of sustainability. The power of the individual would be central to all of our efforts and would become the grassroots and the foundation upon which our journey towards sustainability would begin and grow. The power of one would be the key.

ONE STEP AT A TIME A program came together that allowed every associate to promote ideas and suggestions to improve company performance. This program became known as QUEST: Quality Using Employee Suggestions and Teamwork.

Where we had thought that improvements were going to be hard to come by, we saw some very significant reductions in waste almost immediately. Ray at that time asked everyone to “brighten your individual corner.” In other words, try to do something no matter what. We all started to think about what we each might do to make a start, and the concept of us all taking individual small steps, each contributing to the whole, began to take hold.

After some initial cynicism by some senior executives, company management began to buy in and contribute to the program. We decided that if we were to enlist the efforts of every associate, then it would be necessary for everyone to understand what we were doing, why we were doing it, what we hoped to achieve, how we would manage and measure it, and how progress would be rewarded.

I am going to quote Ray’s stated position at that early point in our program: “I believe we have come to the threshold of the next industrial revolution. At Interface, we seek to become the first sustainable corporation in the world and, following that, the first restorative company. It means creating the technologies of the future — kinder, gentler technologies that emulate nature’s systems. I believe that’s where we will find the right model. Ultimately, I believe we must learn to depend solely on available income the way a forest does, not on our precious stores of natural capital. Linear practices must be replaced by cylindrical ones. That’s nature’s way. In nature there is no waste; one organism’s waste is another’s food.”

ASSOCIATE EDUCATION, INVOLVEMENT, AND WELLBEING We decided to give every single member of the Interface team an intensive three-day course that concentrated on bringing out the individuality of each attendee. Group ac-

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tivities demonstrated the power the individual has, especially when backed with the support and encouragement of a team of associates. Individuals found that they could, with the help of their workmates, achieve things that they never thought they were capable of.

We got people to understand the power of one and the strength of the individual both inside and outside a team.

The three-day course and follow-up was a major step, and setting up QUEST teams throughout the organization provided a channel for ideas and suggestions for every individual in the company.

Biyearly meetings were attended by every employee.

These meetings provided a venue where environmental issues would be discussed, and where accomplishments and individuals could be recognized for their contribution to our overall sustainability goals. Details of company policy were made known and plans for the future laid out.

And at every meeting, Ray would reaffirm the company commitment to sustainability and would continue to teach and inform all of us about environmental issues. Today, training continues for all associates.

As the sustainability concept began to take hold, more and more associates began automatically thinking about the company’s stated environmental goals, and if a particular vendor was found to be thinking along sustainable lines, then Interface would work with that vendor rather than a competitor. This simple act, if everyone would follow it, would do so much to further the environmental cause.

EARLY FRUIT AND THE QUEST FOR IDEAS Early on, we took a close look at what we were taking and how we were using it. We decided to measure both fuel and materials used in BTUs. Thus our gas, oil, and electricity consumption and our product construction materials were all reduced to the same unit of measurement, namely that of nonrenewable energy. How much could we immediately reduce our energy consumption? We found that a single pound of inbound unprocessed nylon represented about 65,000 BTUs of embodied energy and we discovered that a pound of backing material represented about 17,000 BTUs. This information would have recycling implications later. But for now we decided to concentrate on reducing our embodied energy consumption per square yard. A “Less is More” program was initiated.

Our recently developed testing equipment indicated that product construction had more of an effect on performance than the amount of material used. Well-designed 26-ounce products were found to outperform some 30-ounce materials. An extensive redesign of our entire product line followed. Over a period of 3 to 4 years, our average product pile weights were, by careful design and testing, reduced, yet at the same time product performance was increased. From this design and testing activity alone we removed 15,000 BTUs from our consumption

This installation was created to symbolize Interface’s Climate Take Back mission: to move toward positive impact and reverse global warming.

for every square yard produced.

At the same time, we pushed for waste reduction in processing. Less trim waste, less planning waste, better production procedures, better use of energy, energy audits, electric motor sizing, insulation of premises, and so on. Our savings from embodied energy reductions and plant and process improvements were now approaching 25,000 BTUs for every yard of carpet produced. We were beginning our long journey towards sustainability.

But, after these first few steps had been taken and the low-hanging fruit picked, we seemed to be in danger of hitting a wall and not knowing where to go next.

QUEST set a new, self-driven goal: drive out waste, with an ultimate goal of zero waste. What’s the definition of waste? Anything that does not benefit our clients: materials that are used wastefully do not benefit clients; energy that is wasted does not benefit anyone, least of all our clients; customer-service mistakes will cause waste in materials, time, and energy; incorrectly designed machines and processes will be inefficient; products that are designed without considering their environmental impact will benefit no one; products designed without concern for the best possible performance per unit of material used will, in the long term, be wasteful; and so on. Slowly, our organization was finally becoming more responsive to environmental needs and, even more important, was becoming aware of the scale and size of the problem.

Many waste-reduction ideas came from the shop floor and from office workers who were in a position to understand what was needed to improve matters.

We set out to stop landfill usage by attacking the problem. Arrangements were made to either recycle old carpet into other products or to use it as a source of energy via clean-burning converters. Stringent requirements had to be met and satisfied before the energy conversion route was taken.

PROCEDURAL CHANGES The normally accepted and industry-wide wear-test methods are conducted to reveal how much fiber is lost or how compressed a surface becomes. Most tests do not take into account the effects of soiling, nor do they consider the effects of floor maintenance. Typically a wear warranty will be written to take into account the amount of fiber lost in service, and, in a commercial installation, if more than 10 percent of fiber is lost, then a wear warranty is activated. Over a period of at least 25 years, I cannot recall one such complaint, yet we have had numerous situations where clients have been dissatisfied with the performance of their purchase, resulting in replacements being undertaken with the accompanying waste and loss of material. Clearly, something has been missing in our industry’s test procedures.

I decided that new test procedures were needed and set about developing more meaningful test equipment that would forecast what products would look like after periods of, say, 5 or 10 years of use. The resulting test procedure did not depend on “wear” as measured in a laboratory but instead examined the amount of appearance change that took place. As a result, we now look

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for constructions that resist appearance change.

This automatically takes into account all of the factors that impact product performance. We refer to this approach as Appearance Retention Testing (ART). Our test considers the effects of traffic, soil, and maintenance. It also allows for different carpet-cleaning methods and will even factor in the modest maintenance budgets that exist in the real world.

During the extensive use of this newly developed equipment, we discovered that the density of a pile surface was a much bigger performance factor than pile weight or content. This discovery directly supported our “Less is More” philosophy.

ART identified a way for our product designers to reduce pile content and at the same time increase product performance and lengthen service life. Our product designers embraced this method and, as a matter of course, now test all prototypes before investing in any new product line. Product performance complaints decreased, with accompanying drops in material and energy losses. Additionally, customer expectations are now measured and accommodated by testing and showing ahead of

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time how the product they are considering for purchase will perform in their location. This allows them to select the best product for their particular use, further helps reduce product performance complaints, and gives our customers confidence in the purchase they are about to make.

ART testing has played a significant role in the reduction of BTUs needed to produce our product lines and incidentally prevented the introduction of newly developed nylon fiber that would not have performed in the commercial environment in which we operate — thus avoiding unnecessary waste.

This test-procedural change came about because we believed in the power of the individual and were allowed and encouraged to develop outof-the-box ideas and procedures. On a personal note, I felt like I had been given a chance to start to give something back after many years of being an environmental taker, and I must confess to regarding the project as something akin to a crusade on my part.

Imagine, then, the commitment it takes for a company to create the conditions necessary to allow individuals to take risks without fear of reprisal

Interface’s products are all carbon-neutral, meaning any emissions used to create the products that they have not yet been able to offset are negated by the purchase of carbon offsets.

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and to take those steps that contribute to the overall goals of the crusade.

PRODUCT DESIGN CHANGES There is a growing movement within the environmental activist framework that believes there are many answers regarding sustainable development to be found by studying nature itself. Interface is very fortunate to have the services of an imaginative designer who continually thinks out of the box. For years we have been challenged to hide carpet tile joints to make the installed material look like broadloom without seams. For all sorts of reasons, this is very difficult to achieve. Also, it is necessary for the same reason to install carpet tiles all in the same direction because if you don’t, individual tiles will stand out like a sore thumb. Our designer got his idea from the bed of a natural stream of water. What he observed was thousands of pebbles on the stream’s bottom, each one different in shape and color, and yet no matter where he looked, the overall effect of the composite of all the stones was the same no matter how they were arranged. By careful use of color placement and by randomizing a pattern, he designed a product line in which no two carpet tiles would ever be alike, yet each contained the same colors. The results were amazing. These particular tiles can be installed without regard to direction, and the overall effect is a stunning seamless broadloom. Nature was waiting in the wings all along with a solution to the problem. We are in the process of taking this random concept further in the hope that we will be able to mix old with new and therefore get a second life from used product when it comes time for replacement.

This experience has encouraged a closer look at nature. What if we could duplicate the strength of a silkworm’s thread? Some shell creatures have developed materials of incredible strength and have done so in natural, gentle, environmentally friendly conditions.

Nature uses life-friendly manufacturing processes and self-assembly; incredibly smart when you think about it. What can we learn from all this? Are there lessons for industrialists to heed or perhaps ignore at their peril? I suspect that nature will teach us much if we will only heed her.

CLOSING So that is our scorecard after six years of effort: about a 25 percent reduction in nonrenewable materials consumption; reductions in global warming potential, emissions, water, and landfill usage; increased renewable energy production; and recycled content

in our product lines. We have an evolving and steadily improving ecometric accounting system that is showing us what we need to do and tells us that we must now concentrate on reducing carbon content in our product lines. Obviously we have a long way to go, but we are on our way. I don’t believe we could have come this far without having a dedicated environmentalist at the helm. The reality is that the sustainability journey is not an easy one. Companies have to find ways to stay in business whilst at the same time turning their efforts towards sustainability. Interface has, as a result of its journey towards sustainability, been able to reduce product cost and manufacturing costs.

These savings have helped offset all the training and development costs. These reductions would not have been accomplished without the support of our entire workforce.

We are looking for a groundswell of environmental responsiveness from our client base. There are signs that it is beginning to happen and when it does, and when clients are prepared to make buying decisions that factor in environmental concerns, Interface will be ready and will prosper. Doing well by doing good will then be seen by others to be the way to go, and we hope our business model will become the norm for more and more enterprises.

Almost 20 years after Scott gave these remarks, Meezan reported the results that opened this article. And in that speech, she also announced the next chapter of the Interface story: “Climate Take Back.”

Stay tuned.

Readers of Conscious Company Media can hear more about Climate Take Back directly from Erin Meezan in our August Live Q&A. Learn more at consciouscompanymedia.com.

Nathan Havey is the founding partner of Thrive Consulting Group, where he helps leadership teams fulfill their potential by teaching them to build high-performing, impactful cultures that employees love.

Graham Scott joined the Interface team in 1974, retired in 1999, and has since served on the board of a Georgia mat-making company and is part owner and founder of an Atlanta-based commercial floor care company.

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TOP 2 2 CO N SCIOUS B USINESS L EADERS O F 2 019 These forward-thinkers are saying no to profit at all costs and yes to advancing a new business-as-usual

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onscious leadership comes in many shapes and sizes that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: the entrepreneur whose business model, from the get-go, is a vehicle for positive global change; the impact investor who funds purpose-driven companies; the CEO who radically transforms a traditionally run business or industry for the good of all stakeholders; the leader who creates a workplace culture where team members thrive and feel genuinely valued; the person who has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to cultivating the practice of conscious leadership on an individual level through self-development work; and the thought leader whose ideas inspire a new class of game-changers to join the

movement. The common denominator here is someone whose values extend beyond self-gain to the wellbeing of others, whose business practices align with and reflect those values, and whose stakeholders — employees, consumers, and planet — can attest to the positive impact of their strategies.

These 22 superstars, nominated by their communities and handpicked by our editorial staff, are making a difference through their work on personal transformation, the thriving workplaces they create, and the global impact of their businesses and ideas. May their efforts inspire us and serve as a reminder that we’re all in this together. Without further ado, meet the 2019 trailblazers of conscious leadership.

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SUNNY WILLIAMS CO-FOUNDER & CEO, TINY DOCS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Sunny Williams spent his childhood in and out of hospitals due to his self-admitted accident-prone nature. Of particular note was when his eye was scratched by a defender during a game of basketball, damaging his cornea, retina, and tear duct, which required surgery. Sitting in the examination room, Williams was anxious and scared. When the nurse handed him medical brochures to help him understand the procedure he was to have the next day, he felt even more confused. For a child, these written explanations were not helpful at all — but this experience served as the impetus for a business Williams would launch years later.

Tiny Docs is a for-benefit company that creates cartoon videos to educate children about health scenarios — from strep throat to anesthesia — in easy-to-understand language. Kids enjoy the videos, and so do the company’s paying customers, including doctors’ offices, hospitals, and healthcare systems. To date, Tiny Docs has helped more than 13,000 families. The company will partner with Special Olympics Indiana this summer.

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“Sunny is a sterling example of someone who identified a problem, rolled up his sleeves, and recruited the resources to address the problem,” says his nominator.

LESSONS FROM WILLIAMS

“When I finished the improv program at Second City in Chicago, I learned the value of listening — truly listening. This means listening with heart. As business leaders, we have a responsibility to listen to many stakeholders.

It’s easy to listen to words, but often, words don’t communicate everything.

Absorb what’s said and unsaid. This will allow you to better understand what is going on with the individual and your organization. It will help you ask better questions and discover more. It will help you establish a culture of empathy, enhance communication, and put the organization in a better position to succeed.”

Photo by Justin Barbin

PERSONAL JOURNEY // CONSCIOUS WORKPLACE // GLOBAL IMPACT

Photo by Karen Pavone Photography

Photo courtesy of Florida for Good

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3 JARED MEYERS MARCUS BENEDETTI

CHAIRMAN & CEO, CLOVER SONOMA PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA

Marcus Benedetti may be the third-generation owner and leader of his family business, Clover Sonoma, a certified B Corp dairy company located in California’s Sonoma County, but he first honed his conscious-leadership chops in college. When his grades dipped below the agreed-upon metrics, Benedetti’s parents stopped financially supporting his studies. This period of tough love caused him to look to nature for motivation. He worked his way through college as a wilderness guide in Alaska — learning how to earn people’s trust and communicate well with others on secluded and sometimes scary 10-day excursions.

Clover Sonoma embarked on its own expedition as one of the first dairy companies in the US to say no to Monsanto’s rBST hormone in the ’90s and was the first dairy in the US to be certified by the American Humane Association. As chairman and CEO of the company, Benedetti continues his family’s legacy, serving as a thought leader in environmentally sustainable and conscious dairy-production practices.

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“Marcus is a humble, mindful, and compassionate leader,” says his nominator. “He has built a culture of making business personal and driving change to elevate the entire dairy industry. He’ll tell you that his employees do all the hard work and that his father and grandfather laid the foundation, but he has been the catalyst for the elevation and success of Clover Sonoma.”

LESSONS FROM BENEDETTI

“Measuring revenue growth by positive impact creates a flywheel that generates more efficiency, profitability, and sustainability that will transcend generations. It’s that simple.”

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CO-FOUNDER, FLORIDA FOR GOOD ORLANDO, FLORIDA

Jared Meyers was the owner of two successful Florida businesses, Legacy Vacation Resorts (LVR) and Salt Palm Development (SPD), when he became aware of his desire to use business as a force for good. Through his research, he found that the most credible values-aligned organizations were certified B Corps, and he embarked on the rigorous process of certifying both of his companies; SPD became the first real-estate development to become a certified B Corp in the Southeast. In hopes of inspiring other companies to follow suit, Meyers co-founded the Florida for Good movement, which provides free resources and events to facilitate the spread of conscious business and certified B Corps.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

Since its inception in 2018, Meyers and his companies have contributed close to a million dollars to Florida for Good’s endeavors, about half of that as cash and the remainder through in-kind support. As part of their missions, LVR, SPD, and Florida for Good encourage companies to take B Lab’s free B Impact Assessment so they can learn how they measure up against other businesses and the areas in which they can most improve. His companies are also members of 1% For the Planet and Conscious Capitalism.

“What strikes me the most about Jared’s journey is the fact the he did not pursue the certifications for publicity or as a marketing ploy,” his nominator says. “He did it because he genuinely believes that business can be transformed into a tool to help our society and our planet.”

LESSONS FROM MEYERS

“We are the sum of those we choose to spend time with and the aggregate of our decisions over our lifetime. We have the resources to solve most problems if they are deployed based on love — not fear or greed. Inaction is also a choice.”

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KHALILAH OLOKUNOLA VICE PRESIDENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES, TRU COLORS WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA

Born and raised in New York, Khalilah “KO” Olokunola spent much of her teen years on the streets in Brooklyn and Troy’s most notorious street gangs — Bloods, Crips, and Folks. She eventually served four years in prison, where she became passionate about the importance of education in her life and spent nights dreaming of an opportunity to have a positive impact on the lives of others. When George Taylor founded TRU Colors Brewing to put a stop to gang violence in Wilmington, North Carolina, by employing active gang members, Olokunola found her calling. As VP of Human Resources, she has created a company culture that provides stability and drives both personal and professional growth for the team.

In December 2018, though TRU Colors had not yet opened its doors, gang violence in Wilmington was already down by 90 percent due to the work they had already begun. [Learn more at consciouscompanymedia.com/TRUColors.]

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cational tools to thrive both at TRU Colors and at home, and even offers courses to their significant others,” says her nominator. “In addition to transforming the perception of the gang member, KO is also an author, speaker, and personal care coach to female business leaders.” She has also become an advocate for diversity, inclusion, and underserved talent.

LESSONS FROM OLOKUNOLA

“Conscious leadership is a superpower. The ability to see value in your product and your people is not something everyone can do. See your ROI in the oak tree that started from an acorn — and be intentional on the process in between.

Not everyone will be a star performer, but you can create a strategy to get them there. As a conscious leader, remember that your return on investment is never just tangible; it’s intangible, homegrown, and human.”

“The guys trust her guidance. KO provides them with edu-

Photo by Kathleen O’Sullivan

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PERSONAL JOURNEY // CONSCIOUS WORKPLACE // GLOBAL IMPACT

5 RAVNEET VOHRA FOUNDER & CEO, WEAR YOUR VOICE LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and as a South Asian in a predominantly white community, there was a period of time when Ravneet Vohra felt like she did not have a voice. She was working in the fashion industry when she recognized something that echoed her larger life experience: a lack of inclusion, particularly in terms of size and color. Her solution to this diversity gap was to break the silence with her digital platform, Wear Your Voice (WYV). Launched in 2014, Vohra’s intersectional feminist publication challenges cultural norms and unconscious biases and features voices from historically unheard and marginalized communities — creating “a safe space without the constant pressures of being pretty or skinny or white or tan being shoved down their throats.” Vohra has always prioritized the payment of her writers, whose work often involves reliving emotional trauma, and thanks to the funding of well-known investor Mark Cuban, she can now value the voices of her community at an above-average rate.

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“Even with a powerful, highly opinionated, multibillionaire investor backing her, Ravneet does not get swayed from her vision and values,” says her nominator.

“She’s not just shaking up media; she’s shaking up corporate culture.”

LESSONS FROM VOHRA

“As an entrepreneur I am consistently pulled in all directions and required to wear many hats and be successful at it. When I get overwhelmed, I often think of Arlan Hamilton’s story [founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital]. There were way more barriers to entry for her, so many challenges she had to overcome, and she still made it happen. In that moment, I take a deep breath and carry on.”

Photo by Annie Shak

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KEVIN CHRISTOPHER FOUNDER, RIDGELINE VENTURE LAW CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE

Kevin Christopher is a benefit trailblazer in Tennessee — but not in the way he originally envisioned. After living in central China and then working for Habitat for Humanity in the Deep South, Christopher entered law school in 2007 wishing to pursue an environmental justice career. Then the recession hit, budgets were cut, and he found himself without employment in the field where he had assumed that he could effect the most change. Instead, he found opportunities in technology, first working for a renewable energy startup, and later more broadly in technology commercialization.

His law firm, Ridgeline Venture Law (RVL), is one of only

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JANÉT AIZENSTROS

CHAIRWOMEN & CEO, AHAVA GROUP GLOBAL KITCHENER, CANADA

five total certified B Corps in the state of Tennessee — and the only law firm with that distinction. Since his firm specializes in intellectual property, Christopher works with numerous entrepreneurs, and in doing so he encourages each to instill and safeguard benefit principles in their businesses so as they grow, so does their ability to positively impact the world around them. In addition to his daily legal work, Christopher serves as an elected commissioner in his home county and is also on the boards of IMPACT Cookeville, Mustard Seed Ranch, and The Biz Foundry, all nonprofit organizations devoted to lifting up and empowering marginalized communities.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“In 2018, Christopher was recognized by the Tennessee Supreme Court as an Attorney for Justice for his pro bono service to Tennessee residents,” says his nominator, “and in 2019, he was Tennessee’s only recipient of a Patent Pro Bono Achievement Certificate from the US Patent and Trademark Office for his representation of area low-income inventors.” Christopher also adopted, through his firm, a one-mile stretch of the Calfkiller River under the umbrella of Living Lands & Waters and Keep Tennessee Beautiful. The RVL team and 30 volunteers removed 1,500 pounds of trash from the waterway and plans for this cleanup to grow into a quarterly event.

LESSONS FROM CHRISTOPHER

“Don’t be afraid to pivot. While I was initially dismayed by pivoting away from my career goals, I found a way to somewhat redefine my path without being redefined myself.”

Janét Aizenstros’ mission is to “empower women to create a whole life they deserve, filled with joy, love, and wealth” — an endeavor she embarked upon herself almost a decade ago. In 2010, Aizenstros mustered the courage to leave a toxic marriage and start a new life with her two little boys, only a few belongings, a lot of debt, and the beginning of what would become a successful business.

In 2011, Aizenstros launched Ahava Group Global — a women-led media holding company that serves Fortune-listed companies around the world and is comprised of Ahava Digital Group, LOVE Lifestyle Publishing Group, LUXE House Publishing, Twelve Twenty One Illustration, and Ahava Entertainment. In 2016, she founded the Janét Aizenstros Foundation to support pioneering programs in arts, education, literacy, technology, and entrepreneurship. Aizenstros’ newly launched Ahava Holdings & Ventures invests in underfunded female entrepreneurs who have sustainable, scalable businesses in the technology sector.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

Aizenstros is a member of numerous committees and associations, including the 30% Club Canada, an organization that includes chairs and CEOs to achieve better gender balance at board and senior management levels.

LESSONS FROM AIZENSTROS

“Be intentional with your mission and have patience. It’s about pacing, not racing; striding, not striving; thriving, not surviving.”

Photo courtesy of Janét Aizenstros

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Photo courtesy of Ben Valore-Caplan

8 BEN VALORE-CAPLAN FOUNDER & CEO, SYNTRINSIC INVESTMENT COUNSEL DENVER, COLORADO

After a start as the founder of a nonprofit program that helped underprivileged students see their way to college and beyond, Ben Valore-Caplan moved into finance and investing at UBS. He built a reputation among nonprofits, foundation leaders, and philanthropists for having a knack for helping them develop ethically grounded investing strategies for their assets, but Valore-Caplan still wanted to give his mission-focused clients more than he could at a standard firm. So he left — just days before the Lehman Brothers crash and the recession of 2008 — and built a new firm, Syntrinsic Investment Counsel, from the ground up.

Syntrinsic is 100 percent employee-owned and offers a holistic workplace culture, which includes full financial support for leadership education programs and encouragement to serve on nonprofit boards and volunteer on company time, matching $1,000 in donations per employee annually.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Recruitment isn’t by automated system, but happens over long coffees,” says his nominator.

“The culture rewards curiosity, not self-protection or aggression. In meetings with staff, Ben is more likely to ask real questions than to give speeches or assume he knows everything. In meetings with clients, he is genuinely appreciative and humble.”

LESSONS FROM VALORE-CAPLAN

“Build bridges between people, sectors, and communities that don’t seem related. It turns out opportunities lie in unexpected connections. Make your leadership about unleashing others to do more good in the world. Managing can often be more about cultivation than control. Make good people even better. Make those around you more powerful. That’s easier if you’re doing something important. You can prove that values and business not only go together but thrive together.”

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Photo courtesy of Brian Schultz

10 TERI RIDDLE

FOUNDER & CEO, THE CROSSLAND GROUP BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

9 BRIAN SCHULTZ

FOUNDER & CEO, STUDIO MOVIE GRILL DALLAS, TEXAS

In 1993, Brian Schultz founded the in-theater dining experience that became Studio Movie Grill (SMG) in Dallas, Texas, with an aim to “open hearts and minds, one story at a time.” Since then, due in part to Schultz’s numerous purpose-driven initiatives and SMG’s thriving workplace culture, the company has grown to 32 locations in 10 states, with more major expansion underway.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Brian has a learner mindset and engages in and encourages ongoing education,” says his nominator, “which has enriched the SMG team culture in so many ways.” In 2003, a kitchen manager at one of the SMG locations noted that he was unable to attend movies, telling Schultz that it was because he has two children on the autism spectrum and he didn’t feel he could bring them into a theater. This motivated Schultz to start sensory-friendly screenings and a Chefs for Children program, where 5 percent of proceeds from select menu items go to local special-needs nonprofit partners. In summer 2018, the company created the Movies + Meals program. For every 1,000 points guests earn in the SMG Access rewards program, SMG donates a movie and a meal to a local nonprofit; since launching the program, the company has contributed over 12,000 movie tickets and meals to deserving nonprofits in various communities.

Teri Riddle is the founder and CEO of The Crossland Group, a strategic advisory firm dedicated to unlocking individual and organizational potential. Since 2000, the firm has been helping purpose-driven corporations, foundations, and nonprofits translate their missions and execute their strategies by designing aligned organizations. And when it comes to unleashing her own company’s potential, Riddle knows that delivering on her firm’s purpose starts with a thriving workplace.

Riddle has created a culture at The Crossland Group rooted in three philosophies: 1) radical truth-telling — having open and hard conversations within the team as well as with clients; 2) having the courage to do the right thing instead of being invested in being right; and 3) acknowledging and honoring that a healthy inner condition is the key to discovering personal and collective potential. She has implemented team benefits such as wellness reimbursements for healing services, human development plans, flexible work hours, remote working options, opportunities for the remote team to gather in person, and starting all meetings off with a meditation practice.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Teri has created a flexible work environment that places the greatest value on each team member living his or her best life,” says her nominator. “She has made a major commitment to deepening her own self-awareness and getting out of her comfort zone this year by intentionally taking time away from her work to participate in a six-month transformational program along with 11 other carefully selected remarkable women who are taking on big things in the world.”

LESSONS FROM RIDDLE

“Focusing on managing my energy, rather than just my time, is essential to experiencing joy and keeping the light within me lit. To enable deeper (individual and organizational) transformation, amplify the attention on equity, service, and whole systems. To unearth real potential, help leaders and organizations let go of fear and ego and embrace courage and compassion.”

LESSONS FROM SCHULTZ

“Servant leadership puts people first. We do that by modeling good stewardship through all ranks and creating an open forum where ideas and thought leaders can flourish.”

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Photo by Johnny Galvin

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MARYAM SHARIFZADEH FOUNDER & CEO, OFFICE YOGA SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

After graduating with her master’s in Sport Management from the University of San Francisco, Maryam Sharifzadeh led a wellness program for faculty and staff at UC Berkeley, where she witnessed the true benefits of making exercise easy and convenient for people at work. In 2012, Sharifzadeh founded her own company with these benefits in mind. Office Yoga brings specialized instructors and custom-designed programs directly into the workspaces of participating companies, helping to increase mental clarity and efficiency and alleviate chronic physical symptoms that can occur from long periods of inactivity.

With the help of her certified Office Yoga instructors, Sharifzadeh has transformed countless workspaces — including the offices of Estée Lauder, Oracle, McKinsey & Company, and the Oakland Athletics. She has also helped elevate the yoga industry by providing livable working wages and opportunities

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for instructors. Today, Office Yoga is the number-one corporate yoga and meditation service in the US.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Maryam is a generous leader who works hard to take care of our team,” says her nominator. “She is a teacher at heart and offers [Office Yoga instructors] the tools they need to be successful teachers, too.”

LESSONS FROM SHARIFZADEH

“Let the core of your work be an authentic expression of who you are and what you believe in. When you’re in alignment with your inherent strengths and higher purpose (dharma), you’ll love what you do and never have to ‘work’ another day in your life.”

12 MICHELLE HAYWARD 13 ROBERT GLAZER FOUNDER & CEO, BLUEDOG DESIGN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Photo by Mark Schepker Photography

Michelle Hayward spent much of the ’90s in the then-new field of brand strategy, working with some of the biggest consumer products companies in the world — and yet she felt that the approach was lacking. Hayward dreamed of starting a new type of consultancy, one that focused on clients’ visions of the future, not just the execution of campaigns. In 1999, she founded Bluedog Design, a modern growth consultancy that specializes in business transformation, strategy, and innovation.

Hayward’s progressive workplace culture provides her team members with holistic support including a sabbatical every five years, full transparency, employee engagement surveys, yoga, acupuncture, parenting classes, meals, and even a concierge to help arrange things like car washes and dry-cleaning services.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

Bluedog Design made the 2019 Crain’s Chicago Business Best Places to Work list and made it into the top 1 percent of the list’s Best Small Companies. “The culture of Bluedog is all-encompassing,” says her nominator.

“It isn’t just about employees; it spills over to clients and resources. The Bluedog ‘feeling’ is palpable.”

LESSONS FROM HAYWARD

“Culture makes or breaks strategy. At our company, we set out to solve hard problems and how we behave together matters if we want to accomplish what we set out to do. We need to all be moving together in the same direction with limited friction.”

FOUNDER & CEO, ACCELERATION PARTNERS; CO-FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN, BRANDCYCLE NEEDHAM, MASSACHUSETTS Serial entrepreneur Robert Glazer wasn’t always the go-getter type.

The founder and CEO of global performance-marketing agency Acceleration Partners (AP) and co-founder and chairman of affiliate marketing and content platform BrandCycle is candid about having felt like an underachiever in his early career. But over the past decade Glazer has developed a mindfulness routine that includes meditation, journaling, and exercise that serves as his foundation for living a more purposeful life.

Committed to finding better ways to lead, Glazer formed AP’s Mindful Transitions program, an initiative built on a culture of trust and inspired by his recognition that the standard “two weeks’ notice” paradigm for employee departures can be damaging to both the employee and employer. Within a Mindful Transitions framework, employees feel comfortable sharing their future plans, even if those plans involve leaving the company. By having open, respectful discussions early and often, employees and their managers are aligned and better positioned to address problems that are impacting engagement. And in situations where it’s determined that it’s time for a team member to move on, the employee is given a longer window in which to transition into their new position and the company has more time to recruit and hire their replacement. The result is a system where people leave companies on the best possible terms without leaving their employer in a difficult situation. Glazer is also openly sharing this system with other companies.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“His inspirational ‘Friday Forward’ newsletter was developed to inspire people to build their capacities and set and achieve audacious goals,” says his nominator. “Since Bob began installing these concepts into AP’s culture, employees have been achieving their personal goals — running races, improving their health, taking once-in-a-lifetime vacations — while also improving their work performance.”

LESSONS FROM GLAZER

“Business leaders should not be only concerned with the work performance of their employees; they should be dedicated to helping them live more fulfilled lives in general.

The biggest mistake companies make is thinking that treating people well and having high expectations are mutually exclusive, but the best leaders do both. By investing in people’s wellbeing and pushing them to improve holistically, leaders will see the best results.”

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Photo by Micheal Cogliantry, AV Department, Inc.

15 BEN CHESTNUT

CO-FOUNDER & CEO, MAILCHIMP ATLANTA, GEORGIA

14 RAPHAEL BEMPORAD CO-FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL, BBMG NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

An expert in brand strategy, social innovation, consumer marketing, and public affairs, Raphael Bemporad has designed consumer and nonprofit brands, created national advocacy campaigns, drafted public policy, and managed communications for local, state, and federal elected officials. He co-founded the brand and design studio BBMG out of a desire to put purpose at the center of brands. BBMG is a founding B Corp, a Benefit Corporation, and 88 percent female.

Bemporad manages his business using three core metrics: team health (are we growing and happy?); quality (are we doing our best work?); and profitability (is the value equation in check?). His collaborative workplace culture includes growth feedback groups, 12-week parental leave, five-week sabbaticals after five years, and an annual “Inspiration Account” for every employee to pursue a passion outside of work and share lessons from their journeys with the team.

When Mailchimp made the cover of Inc. magazine as the 2017 Company of the Year, co-founder and CEO Ben Chestnut asked the whole company to draw mustaches on images of himself and co-founder Dan Kurzius as a reminder of one of the email newsletter company’s core values: stay humble. The tech startup launched in 2001 and has grown to $600 million in revenue despite being entirely bootstrapped; Chestnut and Kurzius never raised funding, turned down multiple acquisition offers, and have no plans to ever go public. In this way, Mailchimp is able to run independently under their leadership with only two principal stakeholder groups — employees and customers. Chestnut has fostered a workplace culture with an internal focus on growth and ongoing learning through programs like Mailchimp University, Night School, and the Mailchimp mentorship program, which all contribute to the company’s impressively low employee turnover rate of 4 percent.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Ben has always been passionate about helping the underdog,” says his nominator, “and through his leadership, Mailchimp is an active participant in Atlanta, where the company is headquartered: through its corporate citizenship program, Mailchimp has invested $6 million in more than 120 organizations and initiatives that help stop cycles of poverty, support artistic excellence, and encourage considerate urbanism. As a result, employees feel connected to a workplace that embraces a shared set of values and prioritizes diversity, inclusivity, and intentional engagement in its community.”

LESSONS FROM CHESTNUT

“Hire experienced leaders to guide your team. Early on, I learned a hard lesson about leadership when a company-wide meeting went wrong during a period of high growth. I realized I needed to scale my leadership to guide and grow the company, so I hired a very capable senior team and got leadership training for myself, which enabled Mailchimp to scale more effectively into the company it is today.”

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Raphael is a servant leader,” says his nominator. “He seeks to welcome and inspire curious, fearless, and adventurous spirits who show up every day to connect their creativity with their values, do work they love, and never stop growing.”

LESSONS FROM BEMPORAD

“I’ve always believed that the core purpose of BBMG is to nurture the creativity of our team, to stretch, learn, and grow every day, and to do brave work that makes a positive impact in the world.

True leadership is about being in service to others and being part of something that’s bigger than yourself.”

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Photo courtesy of Mailchimp

PERSONAL JOURNEY // CONSCIOUS WORKPLACE // GLOBAL IMPACT

16 NICOLE SNOW

FOUNDER & CEO, DARN GOOD YARN SCHENECTADY, NEW YORK

While operating an international imports business, Nicole Snow discovered that problems like plastic pollution and fabric waste were rampant in the craft industry. When she realized that there weren’t any players in the space selling sustainable options like recycled silk yarn, Snow started her own enterprise, Darn Good Yarn, sourcing and producing natural yarns that contain no synthetic materials harmful to the planet. While in the company’s early stages of growth, Snow learned that the women making the yarn did not have secure employment, so she embarked on a second mission to create safe and sustainable job opportunities in underprivileged communities. Under Snow’s leadership, Darn Good Yarn now employs over 300 female artisans in India and Nepal.

Since its inception, the company has transformed approximately 1 million pounds of material waste into the products it sells and has enjoyed over 900 percent growth in the last three years.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“As the company grew, Nicole could have switched to more traditional fulfillment channels and non-recycled products, allowing for cheaper large-scale production and shipment,” says her nominator. “But she didn’t, because she knew it would take the work away from local vendors who sourced environmentally responsible recycled product and paid employees higher wages. She decided to keep localized suppliers and find more like them instead of shifting to large-scale methods.”

LESSONS FROM SNOW

“Make all positions interdisciplinary. This means that you don’t just get hired into one department.

You get stretched and pave your way into your strengths. It decreases employee burnout and allows people to have multiple viewpoints on business operations and how things are interconnected. As a leader you will see natural strengths arise. It is your responsibility to then gently guide and uplift the employee to the next place on their path to a more fulfilling existence and career.”

Photo by Erica Stoeckler

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Photo courtesy of Nicola Acutt

17 NICOLA ACUTT

VICE PRESIDENT OF SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY, VMWARE PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

As the VP of Sustainability Strategy at VMware, a public company that specializes in cloud computing and platform-virtualization software, Nicola Acutt has spearheaded numerous sustainability efforts in her nine years at the company. VMware’s virtualization technology has helped customers across the globe avoid putting a cumulative total of approximately 540 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The collective impact of this savings is equivalent to the power consumed by 68 percent of US households for one year.

With Acutt leading the charge, VMware recently reached several milestones including becoming a certified CarbonNeutral® company two years ahead of its goal and launching the first clean-powered community microgrid with the City of Palo Alto.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Acutt advocates the principle that sustainability is innovation’s next frontier,” says her nominator, “and the principle that it is our shared responsibility that technology is used as a force for good.” Under Acutt’s leadership, VMware has become a Green Power Partner of the Environmental Protection Agency; a member of Ceres, a nonprofit organization that tackles the world’s biggest sustainability challenges; part of the RE100, a global collaborative representing businesses committed to using 100 percent renewable electricity; a member of the World Economic Forum; and a founding member of The Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, a community of clean-energy buyers, developers, and service providers dedicated to a zero-carbon-energy future.

LESSONS FROM ACUTT

“I’ve learned that inviting people to build a shared vision often takes more time and intentional effort. This African proverb sums it up: ‘If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’”

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MICHAEL BAKER FOUNDER & CEO, SOLE GREAT FALLS, MONTANA

Michael Baker is making a positive impact in people’s lives, starting with their feet. It was a back injury that caused the Canadian-born adventure-seeker to recognize a market need: consistency in quality and cost of underfoot care. In 2001, Baker launched SOLE, a company that provides heat-moldable, over-the-counter orthotics. In 2008, SOLE adopted ReCORK, a wine cork recycling program that harnesses cork, a renewable natural resource harvested from cork oak trees, to replace the harmful petroleum-based materials most commonly used in footwear products. ReCORK has become the world’s largest natural cork recycling program, salvaging over 100 million corks to date and helping realize Baker’s vision of a closed-loop manufacturing system that extended into the company’s industry-leading eco-friendly shoes and sandals.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Baker has proven himself as a strong leader and visionary with a track record of getting things done,” says his nominator. “He is committed to building a healthy, balanced organization that creates shared value.”

LESSONS FROM BAKER

“As suggested by Harvard professor Michael Porter back in 2006, the competitiveness of a company and the health of the communities around it are mutually dependent. If we are unable to solve some of the large existential threats we face, we will of course lose the health of the communities we live in and rely on to sustain us.”

Photo courtesy of SOLE:ReCORK

Photo courtesy Christopher Gavigan

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CHRISTOPHER GAVIGAN

CO-FOUNDER & CEO, PRIMA; CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF PURPOSE OFFICER, THE HONEST COMPANY SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA Christopher Gavigan is a champion for environmental and human health. He serves as Chief Purpose Officer of The Honest Company, an ethical consumer-goods brand he co-founded in 2011 with Brian Lee and actress Jessica Alba. In 2018, alongside Laurel Angelica Myers and Jessica Assaf, Gavigan launched Prima, a premium plant-based wellness company championing the therapeutic potential of non-intoxicating hemp CBD. With Prima he aims to create a science-driven, elevated CBD brand by raising industry quality and transparency standards to the highest level and creating a wellness space that provides better and healthier wellness options for all. He also sits on the board of directors of Mount Sinai Hospital’s Children’s Environmental Health Center and is The New York Times bestsellers list author of “Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home.”

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Christopher aims to make the world a happier, healthier place,” says his nominator. “Through his work he continues to strive for better, safer, and healthier options so that consumers can make conscious spending decisions with a positive impact.”

LESSONS FROM GAVIGAN

“Relationships matter. Raise your self-awareness to be a better, more real human. Create and build your tribe; you only get what you ask for. Build your purpose. Do the work to know what you care about, at your deepest core. This is your legacy. Sacrifice is good. Do the hard work to make success look easy. Focus on the smallest details along the way; people will sense your level of care and quality. Lift others up. Find the love of watching your tribe win. Everyone is elevated when you empower and take care of those around you.”

Photo courtesy of Prima

20 JESSICA ASSAF

CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF EDUCATION OFFICER, PRIMA SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA Since the age of 15, Jessica Assaf has been an advocate and activist for safe products, corporate accountability, consumer wellness, and female empowerment. A graduate of Harvard Business School, Assaf was the first woman in her family to go to graduate school and pursue a career outside the home.

She has produced nationally recognized work in the beauty and cannabis industries and recently co-founded the CBD beauty and wellness brand Prima. As the company’s Chief Education Officer, she helps answer lingering questions about the use and efficacy of CBD products. Since launch, Assaf has produced more than 60 pieces of original content about all aspects of health: physical, mental, and social.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“After helping to influence policy changes, Jessica has realized that she has the opportunity to make the largest positive impact through commerce,” says her nominator, “by creating a brand that provides better wellness solutions to consumers, establishes the highest-quality industry standards, and maintains credibility, transparency, and accountability.”

LESSONS FROM ASSAF

“When you are a lifelong entrepreneur, there is no such thing as failure; every shift is a conscious pivot that gets you closer to your final destination, to the idea that will break through the noise. Resilience is the most important quality — to acquire tough enough skin to never take no for an answer. I only started succeeding when I learned to fully love myself, which empowered me to fight for what I really want: the right business partner, the right idea, the right funding, and the right products. Part of leadership is learning how to trust your team enough to ask for help when you need it. Vulnerability is a strength — one that inspires others to crack open and be human.”

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Photo by Tonya Price

FRED HABERMAN

CO-FOUNDER & CEO, HABERMAN; CO-FOUNDER, URBAN ORGANICS MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

As an agent for change in the good-food movement, Fred Haberman has helped bring organic food into the mainstream. For 25 years, the marketing communications firm he founded in Minneapolis with his wife Sarah has operated with a singular focus — to tell the stories of pioneers making a difference in the world. Under Haberman’s leadership, the agency has advanced the missions of pioneering organizations in a wide range of business sectors, and within the food industry, Haberman has spurred the growth of brands like Annie’s, Organic Valley, Traditional Medicinals, and Earthbound Farm. The firm has also supported the work of the Organic Trade Association, National Co+op Grocers, and the McKnight Foundation.

As one of the co-founders of Urban Organics, a USDA-certified-organic aquaponics farm that uses just 2 percent of the water used in traditional agriculture, Haberman forged a new path in sustainable food systems.

Urban Organics has not only increased access to healthy food, it has also ignited more than $200 million in economic development and hundreds of jobs in its early years. Pentair acquired Urban Organics in 2017 and expanded it to a second facility in St. Paul, Minnesota. And keep an eye out for Freak Flag Foods, Haberman’s latest foray in pursuit of his passion to make the world more sustainable and delicious.

FOUNDER & DIRECTOR, CITY STARTUP LABS CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

Henry Rock believes that business can be a springboard for a rising group of entrepreneurs. He founded City Startup Labs (CSL), a nonprofit, hybrid accelerator-incubator in Charlotte, North Carolina. CSL conducts an annual Center of Excellence event where Black Millennials and formerly incarcerated citizens learn how to research, plan, launch, and operate startup enterprises — and unlock access to human capital, social capital, and economic capital.

Rock has been chosen as an Encore.org Purpose Prize Fellow and has singlehandedly garnered the support of Rockefeller and Kauffman Foundation grants, among others, in addition to local resources like Wells Fargo Bank. He plans to expand the scope of his work in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area, which has the distinction of being the worst of the nation’s top 50 cities for the expansion of economic mobility for underserved segments of the population.

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

CONSCIOUS LEADER CRED

“Henry is extremely socially conscious in the way he conducts his business and urges his cohort participants to do the same,” says his nominator.

LESSONS FROM HABERMAN

“A profound lesson is the role that spirit plays in all that we do, including founding and leading a company.

By ‘spirit,’ I mean the divine intelligence that tells me there’s absolutely no way that I could have plotted out where the dots appeared, much less how to connect them. I contend that that is spirit. Can we create the place within our work for spirit to show up? Are we attentive to what’s divine in the work that we do — the doing of it, as well as the outputs? Can we both govern and lead while releasing control? Do we listen to our instincts along with the analytics? By the way, we can put spirit to work with a clear intention. It happens all the time; it’s built for that.”

Haberman has its own organic garden for employees and hosts activities like in-house yoga, square dancing, and mindfulness sessions. “There’s a constant emphasis on fun and working together,” says his nominator.

“In my experience, the soft stuff of business is the hard part. How you treat people matters. How you treat yourself matters. And here’s why: the reality is we’re all going to fail, and fail a lot. In the face of adversity, how a group of people comes together, bounces back, and finds a new path forward starts by simply being able to work together. That means hiring kind, brilliant, and adaptable people, and creating a workplace culture of respect and mutual support. If you provide people with purpose, they can find new energy every day and develop their problem-solving skills to keep advancing the mission of the organization. If people don’t trust each other and have each other’s backs, the system falls apart. Sweat the soft stuff.

Always.”

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LESSONS FROM ROCK

O C T O B E R 1 3 – 1 8 , 2 0 1 9 AT 14 4 0 M U LT I V E R S I T Y

Discover Your True North with Bill George, Scott Kriens, Dana Born, Michelle Maldonado & Gayle Ober

B A S E D O N B I L L G E O R G E ’ S A U T H E N T I C L E A D E R S H I P C O U R S E A H A R VA R D B U S I N E S S S C H O O L

Develop a deeper self-awareness and discover the key elements to authentic leadership this October at 1440 Multiversity’s True North Leadership program. Look forward to powerful conversation, expert guidance, peer circles, contemplative practices, and time spent under the redwoods. Corporate and nonprofit leaders invited to apply at 1440.org/cc.

1440.ORG/CC

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SCOT T S VALLEY, CA

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WORK R E IN V E N T E D What’s stopping us from doing the best work of our lives?

The author of “Brave New Work” has the answer Interview by Meghan French Dunbar

A

aron Dignan is the founder of The Ready, an organization design and transformation firm that helps companies like Johnson & Johnson, Charles Schwab, and Airbnb break free of bureaucracy, hierarchy, and a compliance mindset and create cultures built on autonomy, trust, and transparency.

We recently picked Dignan’s brain about his new book “Brave New Work,” which outlines a new way of thinking about people and organizations — one that trades the illusion of control for something far better: a more adaptive and human way of working.

What is your own personal story of coming to realize that the way that we work isn’t working?

Aaron Dignan: Earlier in my career, I worked with really large companies like American Express, GE, PepsiCo, and the Gates Foundation, helping them think about digital change, how it might affect them, and how they could take advantage of it. We got a front-row seat inside really large — and in many cases really old — businesses. What we found was a lot of frustration; people who were stuck in an elaborate set of policies, procedures, practices, and norms that were getting in the way.

There was a lot of trapped capacity and trapped human potential.

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At the same time, we were building our firm. In my desire for it to be great, I tried to control every aspect of it. On one hand, we were progressive about the culture, how people dressed and spoke, and what they worked on. We threw very young people in the deep end of sophisticated client work and let them figure it out for themselves. While it wasn’t an overtly controlling culture, I was still thinking in a very paternal way about how we developed people and gave feedback.

While it worked on one hand — we did have a successful business — on the other hand, I was exhausted and my team was stuck at a level of development and performance that was limited by my imagination and the space I made for them. Eventually I got fed up and looked ahead to what we might become, thinking, “There’s got to be a better way.”

So, I went on a walkabout. I looked at biomimicry, complex adaptive systems theory, and unusual organizations around the globe. I found that there were systems in nature that were adaptive at scale. I also found organizations and institutions in almost every industry and geography that were doing things differently, that had “flipped the table over” on bureaucracy. I became enamored with that. The problem with our clients, ourselves, our culture, wasn’t any one thing. It wasn’t digital. It wasn’t Millennials. It wasn’t the change du jour. It was our inability to adapt and be human at work.

For the owner of the small to mid-sized enterprise, where are some good places to start that aren’t as scary as flipping tables over?

AD: One of the safest places to start is with meetings.

Meetings are a microcosm of the organization as a whole. It’s people coming together to solve a problem, create something, or decide something. We bring all of our social dynamics with us to meetings. We bring our titles, interaction styles, and biases. This may sound brain-dead simple, but a good practice to start with is checking in and out of meetings. We check in and out by asking a question and hearing from everyone in turn. This isn’t about the question at all. It’s about making space for everyone to use their voice. One of the things we know about work is that loud voices and personalities tend to dominate conversations and limit the diversity of thought in the room. Within the Fortune 500, there are more CEOs named James than there are female CEOs in total. We have an inclusion problem.

One of the ways to fight that is with equality of voice.

Studies like Project Aristotle at Google have shown that having equal talk time within teams is one of the best predictors of team success. We know this is a good idea.

The trick is to almost prime each meeting by starting that way.

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Should there be weekly, monthly, quarterly check-ins to help people integrate purpose into the everyday lives of all the team members?

AD: The most important thing about purpose conversations is that they happen. Most people take purpose — and strategy for that matter — and turn it into another pyramid. We say, “Oh, we have to take the purpose and unpack it from the CEO’s office down into each group, and every group’s purpose statement has to match exactly.” We turn it into this big daisy chain of compliance and conformity instead of just saying, “We have a purpose at an organizational level; we need to agree on a purpose at a team level that either supports that directly or diverges from it deliberately.” As individuals we have intent, purpose, and things that drive us. If we can talk about how those do or don’t fit together, then we’ll have shared consciousness about what’s going on.

The purpose of the firm is made up of the commitment of all these individuals who have their own callings. As we change the membership and the anatomy of the organization, and as the world changes, that purpose is always morphing a tiny bit. We need to be checking in about that. There’s a way of looking at purpose called essential intent that comes from the book “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown. It makes things a little bit more practical. Vision and purpose can be quite amorphous, like “nourish people and the planet” at Whole Foods, for example. That is motivational, and I can understand how that might be manifested over decades, but it’s also very open-ended. Then there are short-term goals: what’s the project I’m trying to finish?

What has to happen this quarter? And so on. What essential intent does really well is say, “What would need to happen in between — in the next 2 to 3 years — for us to be on track to achieve our purpose? Can we keep an eye on that so that we have a source of medium-term motivation?” It’s not completely pie-in-the-sky, and it’s not completely tactical.

What advice do you have for leaders who want to bring these new best practices into their work but who also feel under-resourced?

AD: When looking at new ways of working, people often think, “We’d have to invest all of this time to unlock a new kind of performance, but I’m really busy right now.”

Yes, there’s an investment, but a lot of that investment, frankly, is emotional and energetic. You get immediate gains in time back, productivity, and creativity. The metaphor I use is the traffic light versus the roundabout.

The traffic light represents that, “I have to make sure we do everything just right, because if we don’t, we’ll have an accident and we’re all going to die.” It’s compliance-based, and it’s a more untrusting approach. By

Photo courtesy of Aaron Dignan

“The problem with our clients, ourselves, our culture wasn’t any one thing. It wasn’t digital. It wasn’t Millennials. It wasn’t change du jour. It was our inability to be adaptive and our inability to be human anymore.”

— Aaron Dignan and large, it works. But the second way, the roundabout, works a lot better in so many contexts. It has 80 percent higher throughput. It has 95 percent fewer fatal collisions.

It’s cheaper to build and maintain. It works better when the power goes out. Everything about it in most situations — not all, but in most — is superior. It creates a couple of enabling constraints around the participants and then lets them show up and use their judgment to solve the problem.

In the traffic light model, yes, I’m complying, but I’m not always present. I’m waiting for instruction. I’m on my phone while the light is red. I’m not really in the moment.

In the roundabout, I’m present the entire time. I have to be. I’m fully engaged. I’m fully committed. I’m giving it everything that I’ve got, basically, to be a responsible participant. That’s the leap. We’re basically saying, yeah, I have a team of two, or 10, and we’re redlining. We can keep doing the traffic light model, and we can make sure everyone is complying and in a pigeonholed role with a pigeonholed set of accountabilities, or we can acknowledge the complexity in the situation; we can wear multiple hats. We can let people use their judgment. We can set up just enough enabling constraints to keep us safe but leave a lot of room for interpretation and collaboration, and ask that people show up fully to the problem and the opportunity. That is, in my view, the superior way to do it.

Do you see any way to get out of the trap of shareholder supremacy?

AD: Well, we got into it; I think we can definitely get out of it. It’s actually a relatively recent phenomenon. It’s in the last 50 years that shareholder supremacy has been born and metastasized. I think the issue is two-fold. One is: what do we as shareholders want? I think we need to

do a lot more work as shareholders to define what that is. What do we value? What does winning look like? If winning just looks like great returns at any expense, then we’re not going to like the drinking water in another 50 years. If we change our conversation at a cultural level about what we expect and what we want to celebrate, then that’s one way to get at it. The other way is just to recognize that it doesn’t work. Even from a purely greedbased standpoint, shareholder supremacy is a strategy that kills businesses over time.

The most successful businesses don’t really sweat what their shareholders want. They care what their customers want. They’re playing long games. They’re investing in moonshots. They’re doing things that the traditional Milton Friedman investor would frown upon, and they’re saying out loud, “We don’t care what the analysts think.”

A lot of the founders of these companies are keeping supermajority voting control of their companies as they go public for this reason. Most of the firms that are dominating the covers of magazines today are firms that have avoided going public for as long as they possibly can and have been figuring out how to do it in a way where they don’t have to be subjected to shareholder demands. In the future, I think we’re going to see a lot more privatized systems, employee ownership, cooperatives, and people closer to the business and the community the business impacts. In the meantime I think we will see the broader market and some of the startups that are achieving these great heights going the route of Eric Ries’s long-term stock exchange, or staying private longer, and finding sources of funding that want to tell a different story.

To hear the full interview with Aaron Dignan, visit consciouscompanymedia.com.

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I S YO U R B USINESS A P LAC E OF H E ALING? Raj Sisodia and Michael J. Gelb, authors of “The Healing Organization,” share how business can alleviate suffering and elevate joy INTERVIEW BY VANESSA CHILDERS

I

f you ask Raj Sisodia, co-founder of Conscious Capitalism, and Michael J. Gelb, founder and president of The High Performance Learning Center, business shouldn’t just be about “doing no harm” — it should fundamentally be a place of healing for employees and leaders; a source of healing for employees’ families, customers, communities, and the environment; and a force for healing in society, healing economic, social, political, and cultural divides.

In their new book, “The Healing Organization: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World,” inspired by the epidemic of suffering connected to unconscious capitalism, Sisodia and Gelb dive into business’s role in the causes of and solutions to the world’s problems, share awe-inspiring case studies of organizations that heal, and offer principles and practices to transform your own company. We sat down with the duo to learn more about the concept of healing through business, and how it’s done.

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“We are the most powerful species on this planet; there’s no limit to what we can create.

But those energies can only be released in an environment where we’re being cared for and can do that for others.”

What would you say is the human need that, when done right, a healing organization is meeting for its stakeholders?

Raj Sisodia, co-founder of Conscious Capitalism

Michael J. Gelb, founder and president of The High Performance Learning Center

RS: The human need to care and to feel cared for. We start as babies and need to be cared for. We develop strength and then want to care for others. It’s about us depending on each other to achieve our purpose. It’s an abundance mindset here, rather than scarcity. Our economy has been built from scarcity. The fact is, we are the most powerful species on this planet; there’s no limit to what we can create. But those energies can only be released in an environment where we’re being cared for and can do that for others. Otherwise, it’s survival mode.

Is it possible for an organization to have a healing purpose without focusing on its workplace culture?

In this conscious business universe, we use the words “impact” and “change” a lot, but we don’t hear the word “healing” as often. Can you tell me a little about what you mean by the word “healing” — and if there is a difference between a conscious company and a healing organization?

Michael J. Gelb: A healing organization and a conscious business are the same to a certain extent. Healing means wholeness. Wholeness means you don’t see your enterprise as separate from the lives of the people who are working in it. You don’t see it as separate from customers.

It’s the stakeholder model, but everyone is a stakeholder; the planet is a stakeholder. You want to be a conscious organization and have the four pillars of conscious capitalism — all of that applies, but the healing organization takes it all to another level in the clarity of intention and the deep purpose of why one begins or transforms an enterprise. It’s an awakening. Business itself obviously has no conscience; only individual humans have conscience.

Raj Sisodia: This is a super-conscious approach to capitalism. We are specifically saying that a business’s purpose should link to the concept of healing, to alleviate unnecessary suffering, to prevent it — and to elevate joy for all stakeholders. There is some suffering in the world that cannot be avoided. People have enough suffering that is outside of our control as leaders — things that happen with their parents, children, health, or financial suffering.

We need to help them deal with and alleviate the kind of suffering that is a part of life — and there are many ways to do that. It all comes back to the fact that happier, more engaged people are going to do more wonderful things for the business.

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RS: Yes, many institutions in the healthcare industry are a good example. These are workplaces that are healing the outside world but are a place of suffering inside. Most employees and leaders get completely burned out, used, and abused — and after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to school. There is an obsession with the customer! If you had to pick a stakeholder to prioritize, it has to be employees. They and their children — and multiple generations to come — are impacted.

MG: What you really manage within the business is the energy. When you have a healing purpose, when what you’re doing is not just for your own self-aggrandizement but it’s for your colleagues, your family, your community, for the world — this is the heroic spirit! This brings out something in people. There’s no other way to get that level of energy, commitment, and engagement. You can give people a lot of money and they still don’t operate with that kind of energy. But don’t say you’re going to do it and not deliver. If you start saying, “We want to heal,” then you’d better follow up; you’d better be impeccable in how you lead because it’s a sacred trust that you are asking for.

You’re holding yourself to a very high standard — although we’re hoping it’ll become a new standard.

Can you use an example from the book to talk about how you can deliver on that promise and earn that sacred trust?

MG: DTE Energy. It’s a utility company — nobody likes utility companies. They’re virtual monopolies. You get your bill, you have to pay it, there’s not much recourse, there’s no other service provider you can go to. They’re rarely renowned for customer or employee satisfaction. Gerry Anderson took over this company and asked a simple question, “Are we a good company?” There was a really

clear answer by every metric: no.

He set out to figure out what he could do about this. He came upon the notion of continuous improvement. The first principle of continuous improvement is prioritizing the wellbeing of your people. And then the financial crisis hit and Detroit was spiraling downward. His accounting team said, “We’re about to become a junk utility; we need to lay off a huge number of people. We’re going to be short a couple-hundred million dollars.”

He chose to go with his conscience, and I’m sure it wasn’t easy. He went in front of the whole company — 10,000 people — and said, basically, “We need to let go of a lot of people, and I’m not going to do it. For us to not do it, here’s what I need from you.” He asked people to work with more creativity and passion than they ever had before. And they turned this company around within a year. They were not only fully solvent but they also were doing really well.

Anderson was meeting with people who directly serve customers, who go to the field and do repairs. One woman said, “I never really got to thank you for saving us. We were in stark circumstances. My husband lost his job, and if I had lost my job we probably would’ve been homeless. Your following through saved my family. We’re doing really well now, but a lot of Detroit is suffering. Now that our company is back on its feet, what can we do to serve our community?”

As people experience this healing energy, it cascades.

DTE embarked on all these efforts in Detroit to try to heal the community, efforts that continue to this day.

Meanwhile, their financial performance is fabulous, and it’s the best place to work. It’s an amazing transformation because Anderson, at the moment of truth, followed through. He took a huge risk and said, “We’re not going to manage by the numbers; we’re going to manage by our principles and our commitment to healing.”

there anything we can do to make your experience of working here more enjoyable?” And the first thing they said was, “Get rid of these terrible chairs!” This industry’s turnover rate was 150 percent per year; that means that everyone leaves and then half of them leave again.

His company was slightly better than average at 120 percent turnover every year. But after they [started listening to their employees], the turnover went down to 18 percent. Are you making someone sit in an uncomfortable chair? Whatever it is, figure it out and stop doing it.

RS: Unless the leader embarks on the journey from within — and is open to the self-evaluation necessary — this type of change can’t happen. Working on yourself is something you have to do if you want to become a healing organization.

What is one action item or practice a leader can implement today to start transforming their company into a healing organization?

MG: People don’t like to do this, but search your conscience, search your soul; look really objectively and compassionately. I’ll use the example of Appletree Answers. When one of the leaders found out that one of his people was homeless, that most of the people who answer phones for his company have back problems because of the lousy chairs and no one ever asked them how the company could help them, he experienced a sense of profound shame because he hadn’t thought about these people — and then he was telling them, “Be nice to our customers when they call us!”

They started asking their employees every day, “Is

“The Healing Organization” is slated to hit shelves in September 2019.

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Photo by Andrew Dolgin

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FO R T H E GO O D O F TH E GA M E In his new book “The Infinite Game,” Simon Sinek poses a bold new paradigm for capitalism

INTERVIEW BY MEGHAN FRENCH DUNBAR

W

e’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard of Simon Sinek. The innovative thinker, whose training and background is steeped in the systematic study of people and cultures, burst onto the scene in 2009 with his TED Talk “How Leaders Inspire Great Action,” which is now one of the most popular TED Talks of all time. In the decade since, Sinek has elaborated on his unconventional approach to purposeful leadership with several bestselling books, including “Start With Why,” “Leaders Eat Last,” “Together is Better,” and “Find Your Why.” We caught up with Sinek to learn more about his most recent work, “The Infinite Game,” released this year, which challenges Milton Friedman’s idea of capitalism and offers a definition of the responsibility of business daringly different from the one we’ve been taught for the past five decades.

Tell us about your new book, “The Infinite Game.” What is an infinite game, and how does it apply to business?

Simon Sinek: A theologian by the name of James Carse in 1986 wrote a great book called “Finite and Infinite Games,” where he offered this definition: if you have at least one other player — one other competitor — you have a game. There are two types of games. A finite game has known players, fixed rules, agreed-upon

objectives, and a beginning, middle, and end; take baseball, for example. Then you have infinite games, which have known and unknown players, rules that are changeable, and an objective that is to perpetuate the game. There is no such thing as winning in an infinite game.

If you think about it, business is an infinite game.

There are known and unknown competitors that we compete against, and any player can join at any time. You don’t have to play by the same rules in the way you run your business; anyone can play the way they want. And there’s no such thing as winning in business; there’s no finish line. The problem is, if you listen to most business leaders, they talk about being number one, being the best, and beating their competition. The vast majority of businesses are being run by people with a finite mindset, and when you play an infinite game with a finite mindset, there are a few consistent and predictable outcomes: the decline of things like trust, cooperation, and innovation.

Whether we like it or not, we are all players in an infinite game. I wrote the book about how to change our mindset and lead in an infinite game.

What does it mean to have an infinite mindset?

SS: Finite mindsets like to control circumstances and don’t like uncertainty. Infinite mindsets tend to embrace

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uncertainty and see opportunity in surprises. Most importantly, a finite player plays only for the good of themselves.

An infinite-minded player plays for the good of the game, and many conscious capitalists embody this mindset. They want to share with others the techniques and strategies that they’re embracing. It’s good for the game of business as well as their own business. They want to perpetuate the game.

From your point of view, who are some excellent examples of business leaders who are embodying the infinite mindset?

SS: Kip Tindell, the founder of The Container Store. He wants the business to survive him. He wants other companies to embrace what he’s figured out from being willing to make his own company the guinea pig — because he thinks it’s just good for business, and good for capitalism.

Garry Ridge from WD-40 believes that his role is to coach his people, make them feel safe at work, and create a space in which the business can continue way beyond him. Bob Chapman from Barry-Wehmiller figured out all these techniques to build an incredible company for 6,000 people — and then challenged himself to take everything he learned and give it to the outside world — again, for the good of business, not just for the good of himself.

These are all fantastic examples of truly pioneering infinite-minded players that we should study.

Talk a little about the role of the infinite-game mindset amid Milton Friedman’s ideas of profit maximization and shareholder supremacy, which have become the finite rules by which most businesses play.

SS: The form of capitalism that we have now is not the capitalism that Adam Smith envisioned. It’s bastardized.

Milton Friedman theorized that the responsibility of business is to maximize profit within the bounds of the law. But what about ethics? Milton Friedman clearly never ran a business, because if all you focus on is money, your business will break. Even Henry Ford said that business that’s made only to make money is a weak kind of business.

There’s only one thing on the planet that is obsessed with growth for growth’s sake — and that is cancer.

Capitalism isn’t the enemy. It’s the modern brand of American capitalism that’s the problem — one that has perpetuated the lies of Milton Friedman and continued to worship people like Jack Welch as a hero. He’s not a hero; he’s an antihero. He titled one of his books “Winning.”

There’s no winning in business! Capitalism is a great thing, when it’s done right. Even Adam Smith agreed. When done right, capitalism considers the wellbeing of human beings.

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How do we actually change the mindset of company leaders — especially of publicly traded companies — who are already playing by that finite measure?

SS: The way we’ll change it is by more and more people adopting the lifestyle to the point where it becomes normalized. That’s how Milton Friedman’s work became adopted. It didn’t happen overnight; it took 20 to 30 years over the course of the ’80s and ’90s for it to become fully baked into the system. And it’s going to take us another 20 to 30 years to fully bake it out. This is a movement, and no one of us has the answer; we all hold pieces of the puzzle.

It’s really the law of diffusion of innovation that Everett Rogers proposed in the 1960s, which is: we don’t need everyone. We need the early adopters — the conscious capitalists who are questioning the legitimacy of the status quo and thinking, “There has to be a better way to run a business.” We only need a couple of courageous leaders to stand up and say, “I’m going to do it differently and the results will speak for themselves.” I believe in not trying to preach to the status quo, because the people who benefit from the status quo are going to be the most ardent supporters of it. All we need is 15 to 18 percent of business to change their mindset and suddenly we’ve got everybody.

Do we need those courageous leaders out at the forefront to be large publicly traded companies that others are looking to as examples, or can they be small to mid-sized enterprises, as well?

SS: We need all of it. I’m not going to say we need one from the top and one from the bottom — we need top-down, and we need bottom-up. The order doesn’t matter. The quantities don’t matter. It’s really the mindset of the leaders who are willing to say, “I’m willing to do this differently.”

What advice do you have for small-business leaders who are trying to maintain this mindset while figuring out how to make payroll and pay bills week to week?

SS: An infinite mindset is not the absence of finite components. Remember, if you have a beginning, middle, and end, it’s finite. The finite wins have to have context, and the infinite mindset provides that context. We need to win or come out ahead for a reason, so we can continue to have the money to fuel our ambition and our cause. There’s nothing wrong with finite games; the problem is thinking that that’s all there is and that the short-term goals of your company are the reason the company exists. There’s no such thing as a perfect infinite-minded organization or leader because we’re human beings. This stuff is messy.

Things like fear, pressure, and incentive structures get in

“Too many companies become obsessed with their business plan and strategy at the cost of their own business. For the most part, bankruptcy is an act of suicide.”

Photo by Andrew Dolgin

the way.

The best way to continue the infinite mindset is with help from others. None of us is strong enough to resist the temptation of the finite mindset by ourselves. We are all susceptible to it, and we will absolutely stray from the path many times in our journey. But [the temptation to stray is challenged] when we have people who show up when we ask for help — because we don’t build trust when we offer help, we build trust when we ask for it.

When a submarine commander says, “Go due north,” a submarine doesn’t travel in a straight line. It can’t. It weaves because of currents and all kinds of things, but the crew figures out how to navigate it. They’re constantly going off path. It’s a serpentine route, and any business is a serpentine route. It takes a team of trusting people to bend and weave and stay on the path.

Are your personal purpose and company purpose aligned, or are they different in some ways?

SS: Let’s talk about a “why” versus a just cause. A why comes from your past. It is ostensibly an origin story. It’s who you are, the sum total of your upbringing. Your why

is fully formed probably by your mid to late teens, and it’ll never change for the rest of your life. The only question is: are you living in balance with your why? But there’s no changing who you are.

A just cause is the future. It’s where you want to go.

Every single person has their own why that is unique to them — just like every single company has their own why, because every company has its own origin story. But a just cause is something we can share — like “All men are created equal” or “I have a dream.” I think people put unbelievable pressure on themselves, this young generation in particular. They think they have to have a vision.

You don’t have to have a vision; you have to find a vision.

Find one that you believe in and then follow it. You can only have one why, but you can be a follower of multiple just causes.

As it relates to a company, if you’re a founder of the company, then your personal why and your company’s why are exactly the same because your company is one of the things you do to manifest your own why. So of course it’s going to be a representation of you. Virgin is a representation of Richard Branson. Apple is a representation of Steve Jobs. Walmart is a representation of Sam

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Walton. It is born out of the personalities of the founders.

You recently spoke about the idea of setting your just cause and then not necessarily feeling like you have to have a certain way that you do it. Can you speak a little more to that?

SS: A finite mindset is obsessed with sticking with the strategy, but it’s the destination that really matters. The world changes. Politics change, culture changes, public tastes and trends change, technologies change, so to stick to the strategy in an ever-changing world is just a fool’s game. It’s why companies like Blockbuster — the 800-pound gorilla — went out of business. This little startup called Netflix was letting people subscribe to DVD rentals. The CEO of Blockbuster went to the board and said, “We really should investigate subscriptions as a business model.” They wouldn’t let him change the business model because the company made 12 percent of its revenue from late fees and they didn’t want to give up that revenue. Blockbuster doesn’t exist anymore because they were clinging to the strategy, to the business model. At the end of the day, business models and strategies are just best guesses on how to advance our cause; that’s all they are. When they cease to work

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or when we see something better, we have to be able to adjust. Too many companies become obsessed with their business plan and strategy at the cost of their own business. For the most part, bankruptcy is an act of suicide.

What are some of the most important things for business leaders to know about purpose?

SS: Purpose is the very reason to have the business. It’s not marketing. It’s not a recruiting tool. It’s not something you just write on your website. It’s not a corporate social responsibility program. It’s the very reason why you started the business in the first place, and it has nothing to do with money.

To be truly purpose-driven, the most senior leader in an organization will still see themselves as subservient to a higher purpose — not to another human being, but to an ideal. We are in service of those ideals, and although we will never actually achieve them, we will die trying, which is the point. It’s about progress, not just prosperity. Prosperity is counting what comes in; progress is counting how far we’ve moved down an infinite path. The people who work at truly purpose-driven organizations feel like they belong, that this is their calling — and it has nothing to do with the business or the product.

Photo courtesy of Workhuman

Barry-Wehmiller makes machines. WD-40, for heaven’s sake, makes lubrication. Who cares? These are not sexy businesses. And yet the people who work there feel like they’ve found their tribe. People confuse the sexiness of a company with purpose. That has nothing to do with it.

They’re using their products to advance a calling greater than themselves.

What are some things people get wrong about purpose?

SS: 1) Growth is not a purpose. 2) A corporate social responsibility program is not a purpose. That’s just the business word for giving to charity. 3) Moonshots are absolutely big and long-term, but they’re still finite.

They’re just long-term, finite, inspiring things. Moonshots — then what, another moonshot? They’re fantastic, but they’re not purpose. They’re just bold goals that help you advance your purpose. People often get them confused.

When you read the vast majority of corporate missions and vision statements, they’re quite egocentric.

“To make the highest quality X at the best possible price, offering the most value.” It’s egocentric and it’s grounded in the product — and as we just said, true purpose has nothing to do with your product. In fact, your vision statement should be a statement of the future you imagine, and the mission statement should be about how you aim to get there. And there should be no mention of the product whatsoever.

Steve Jobs’ message was, “I want to empower people to stand up to Big Brother.” Where does that say “computers”? Barry-Wehmiller says, “We measure success by how we touch the lives of people.” Where does that say “making machinery”?

As a leader, what are you struggling most with right now?

SS: I think my struggles are the same as everybody else’s. I get in the way of myself a lot. I could improve a lot of skills. I could be a better listener. I could be less impulsive. Because I talk about this stuff, you would think that my business would be problem-free and that we get everything right. No. We have all the same problems as every other company. We have employee issues, innovation issues, and the stresses of making payroll.

But the way you exemplify the infinite mindset is by the way you respond to the challenges — not by a lack of challenges. It’s like courage. Courage isn’t the lack of fear. It’s being afraid and doing it anyway. If you talk to Navy SEALs and US Marines, they’re damn scared when they go into battle. The reason they’re able to do it is because they have comrades to the left and to the right of them who make them feel safe. It’s the people who give

them the courage; it’s not something ingrained in them, necessarily. It’s the entire system that says, “I got you.”

They do it for each other. That’s why they run into battle.

It’s not different for a business. It’s not the absence of problems; it’s how we respond to them. And we respond to them as a team.

What is giving you hope for the world?

SS: The fact that your [content] exists and people read it.

The fact that I have a career. I shouldn’t have a career. In the ’80s and ’90s, I would’ve never been offered a book deal. So the fact that there’s interest in even calling oneself a conscious capitalist or reading about it, the fact that you can even have a business writing about this stuff gives me hope. It means that there is demand for this better way of doing business, and the demand is not small. Employees are starting to put pressure on their leaders to start thinking this way. And some forward-thinking leaders are starting to embrace it and find the courage to run their businesses this way. What gives me hope is that momentum is on our side.

To hear the full interview with Simon Sinek, visit consciouscompanymedia.com

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PARTING THOUGHT

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

W I T H G R AT I T U D E We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of the supporters of Conscious Company and the magazine since our first issue in January 2015.

We could not have printed 23 purposeful issues without you. While our “how” has changed, our “why” remains constant — and we are excited to keep collaborating with you in the conscious business movement through our events and digital content.

Here’s to redefining success in business in service of all life — and to saving a few trees going forward!

Much love, The Conscious Company Media team

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