Positive Foundry

Positive Foundry is a Columbus-based company founded by business leaders

Laura Cooke, Chris Cooke and Doug Smith. It has developed a 40-week training program centered around positive psychology and emotional intelligence. All IGS Energy employees go through the training, which takes just 20 minutes a week to help develop science-backed wellbeing skills.

The result, according to Positive Foundry? Higher productivity, lower absenteeism and higher profits.

The 12 Skills to Flourish by Positive Foundry include:

• Build positive emotions

• Master your stories

• Foster positive relationships

• Grow your EQ

• Discover your purpose

• Practice gratitude

• Learn optimism

• Manage energy

• Embrace forgiveness

• Lead with mindfulness

• Develop resilience

• Succeed with goals and habits

It’s my belief that by creating a value, you make a profit. It’s not the other way around. We ask what do our customers need? And how can we provide that? So that goes back to business as a force for good and Conscious Capitalism.

What did you learn from your dad?

My dad was an ethical person who worked hard. He didn’t work just to make money. He worked to do something. It was about, What is the why?

He spent 40 years at Columbia Gas, and then he retired as chairman, president and CEO. And the reason we started IGS after that was he didn’t want to just stay at home and not do anything.

When we started the company, he simply did it as a hobby. He’d already had his whole career. He didn’t have to work. He could stay home and watch TV. But he didn’t want to do that.

So he taught me the joy of getting up and putting in a good day’s work doing something that you love to do. He taught me to think about, Why do you do something? Is it just about the money? Or do you actually enjoy what you’re doing?

When I was in my 20s, he would set up meetings out of town at 8 a.m. and say I’d have to meet him at 5 a.m. so we could drive to Alliance, Ohio. There was a strategy there. He was telling me to start the day early. I would not have done that—it would not have been my choice (laughing).

How old are your kids now?

My kids are 27, 25 and 21.

Do they work in the business?

No. I guided them to choose to work somewhere else for a couple of years. And then I said, “If you feel like you’d want to pursue a career here, you’ll have more credibility and be able to bring good value. You may love what you’re doing. If you go somewhere else for two years and love what you’re doing, then why would you come back here? But if you have an interest, I think you’ll be more successful going somewhere else at first.”

I have two nephews who work here, and they did that—they worked elsewhere first and developed some skills. Now I think that’s going to be our family policy guidance, because the company is also owned by the families of my brother, two sisters and Doug Austin—not just me.

One of the commitments IGS has made publicly is working to help everyone—not just people from certain backgrounds—have a chance to succeed. How are you doing it?

As a community, we’re successful and we’re thriving, but not all segments of the community are thriving, and some are being left behind. That’s not something I can solve on my own. But what can we do? Well, we offer employment in the community. So how do we connect those job opportunities to areas of the community that we’re not reaching?

We’re looking at the universities we typically recruit from, and those demographics are somewhat skewed. Not everybody can get a four-year college degree—it’s expensive. So we’re rethinking our criteria for hiring and are starting to introduce a skills-based mindset when it makes sense.

We’ve identified a few ways to find talent that might otherwise have been overlooked. That’s using our position as an employer to help solve a social issue. That’s being a leader and using our good fortune for positive social change.

Get Lit: Three Books That Changed Scott White

Happiness: The Art of Living with Peace, Confidence, and Joy

By Doug Smith, 2014

Summary: Columbus author Doug Smith was the CEO of Kraft Foods Canada, chairman and CEO of Borden Foods and chairman and CEO of Best Brands Corp. Then, a terminal cancer diagnosis changed his life. He set out on a path to discover what truly makes people happy.

Scott says:“This book really impacted me in a positive way. It’s just an incredible real-life story. It’s like a roadmap to be happy. And I agree with what (author Doug Smith) says: ‘I’ve got good news and bad news: Anybody can be happy, but you have to work at it.’”

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

By Stephen Covey, 1989

Summary: This bestseller has inspired businesspeople around the world, selling more than 40 million copies. Its advice: Be proactive. Begin with the end in mind. Put first things first. Think winwin. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Synergize. Sharpen the saw.

Scott says: “I have read and re-read this book to put it into practice.”

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don’t

By Jim Collins, 2001

Summary: This bestseller sold 4 million copies and features the stories of 11 companies that made it to “great.” It’s regarded as one of the top books on management.

Scott says: “It’s hard for a good company to become great because you’re already good. So why bother, right? That challenges me to say, ‘OK—how can we be great?’”

Several of our job postings now don’t require a four-year college degree, where before they did.

We’re also thinking about the training piece. Could we teach people how to do this, if they have an interest and a willingness to learn? Can we then give them an opportunity and then teach them the job? Maybe that’s a little bit more work on our end. But maybe that’s how you break out and reach segments of a talent pool that exists that we otherwise wouldn’t reach. It pushes us to think differently and act differently.

Along those lines, you’ve given grants to a couple of nonprofits to support job training in the energy field, and you’re starting an internship program for students from under-resourced schools.

We’ve identified a few ways to find talent that might otherwise have been overlooked. At the same time, we can help address some of the economic disparity that we’re seeing in the community—that many communities are experiencing.

As communities succeed, sometimes not everybody succeeds. I feel passionately about this. Columbus is succeeding at an incredibly high rate. How can we do better at creating a rising tide for everyone in this community? How can we contribute to reducing social problems by finding meaningful employment for people?

It doesn’t mean we’re not going to hire people from four-year institutions. It just means we’re going to add room for other ways of finding talent. That’s using our position as an employer to help solve a social issue. That’s being a leader and using our good fortune for positive social change.

Speaking of positive change, you have an interest in meditation and mindfulness. Tell us about it.

I don’t know if I’m an expert at it, but I have been meditating. I try to be aware of my emotions in real time. I’m a big advocate for emotional intelligence. That’s a key piece in one’s success, so I read a lot about that. And I try to practice being more present and more thoughtful.

You have to engage. You can’t just read something and say OK, I read it, now I got it. You have to practice. I try to find ways to put things into practice.

(Columbus-based consultants) Positive Foundry created a great program that all of our employees go through for 40 weeks. The program identifies an emphasis for the week, and you do it every week for 20 minutes, so you develop positive habits that reinforce each other. These are very simple things that your doctor would tell you—you know, get a good night’s sleep, take care of yourself physically and mentally, and have control of your emotions.

I don’t practice perfectly, but I try. I love to read, but I haven’t made time for the last couple of years, because I’ve been busy. So I made an intention this year that I’d like to be done with television at 8 and start to get ready for bed and read from 8:30 to 9. I’ve probably done that only five times in this first month. Hopefully next month it’s maybe 10 times. I’d be happy with two or three days a week. That’s two or three days more than if I didn’t have any intention around it. It’s not that I’m not going to watch Netflix—but instead of two hours of Netflix, how about one hour?

What value do you hope, someday when you’re gone, that people will say you brought to the world?

We’re a capitalist society, right? And I grew up thinking capitalism was good. So how can we demonstrate that? It’s not new—this is the way it used to be done. You run an ethical business, you do it in a way that’s successful, and you do it in a way that’s not just about maximizing profits. And it’s sustainable.

I’d like to help re-instill some of the virtues of capitalism. We need to be a role model, come in and do what we do, and do it the right way. And demonstrate that capitalism can be a good thing.

My greatest hope is that when I’m gone, the company will continue to do the same things we do now. That the people who I leave here to take over will continue to do that.