A More Meaningful Kind of ROI

Working Capital for Community Needs (WCCN) partners with individuals and organizations in Latin America and the U.S. to build sustainable economic opportunities that help people work their way out of poverty. Utilizing the powerful tools of microfinance and fair trade, WCCN provides low-income Latin American entrepreneurs, small farmers, and their producer-owned cooperatives access to financing so they can grow their operations and work their way out of poverty. WCCN also promotes women’s empowerment and housing improvement initiatives and fosters greater understanding, goodwill, and peace through people-to-people exchanges.

Good for Business had the honor again this year to help create WCCCN’s 2011 Annual Report. What helped makes the report so compelling is the balance between meaningful words, wonderful images and strong design. We encourage you to support WCCN by visiting http://www.capitalforcommunities.org/invest.

Expanding Organic Opportunities

Good for Business recently helped develop the communcation strategy, name, logo, tagline and messaging platform for a brand new non-profit. We helped them unearth their purpose ‘Expanding Organic Opportunities’. We then worked with them in crafting a message strategy that outlined their key audiences, the competitive and collaborative climate, value proposition and ‘brand personality’. Based on this strategy, we proposed a variety of names. ‘The Organic Processing Institute’ was selected. We then developed a variety of logo and tagline options. The selected logo and tagline are showcased here on this post. Here’s the one minute message platform:

The Organic Processing Institute is here to help you navigate a path to successful organic processing in the Midwest. We help forge links among organic farmers and processors to ensure sustainable success. Whether you are a current processor or want to become one, we can help you thrive. The Institute offers short courses, mentoring programs, research summaries, open houses, and processing tours. We can help you take advantage of real growth opportunities by providing assistance with entrepreneurship training, business development tips, organic planning, sourcing, compliance, and organic certification. The Organic Processing Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating a healthy return on your processing investment.

We at Good for Business encourage you to learn more about the Institute and how it will be a key means of expanding organic opportunities in your local community, the Midwest and beyond. A web site is currently being constructed that will provided more information (organicprocessinginstitute.org).

Fortune Told Here

Good for Business recently had the opportunity to work with the Center for Dairy Research and the UW Foundation to create the “Campaign to Secure Wisconsin’s Dairy Future’. The campaign featured the support of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the Wisconsin Cheesemaker’s Association. In working with the campaign’s leadership team, we embraced the theme ‘A dairy bright future’. It was felt this theme best captured the promise and potential of a newly renovated and expanded Center for Dairy Research and Babcock Hall. The messaging created revealed how investing in the Center’s future will lead to greater economic returns for everyone in the state – from dairy farmers and master cheesemakers to large dairy businesses marketing products around the world and citizens of Wisconsin who take pride in their dairy industry. Initially, the campaigns core communications tool is a ‘vision brochure’. Here is a cover and sample spread from the brochure.

One. And for All.

We at Good for Business would like to share with you a recent message we developed for Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS). It’s part of a completely new brand and communications platform developed for DAIS. This particularly piece is created to communicate two facts:

One: 1 in 4 women and their children will be victims of domestic violence (a shocking and horrific fact)

Two: The current DAIS shelter/facility doesn’t meet the demand or challenge and therefore, a new DAIS facility with fortified services is being created.

If you live in the DAIS service area, we strongly encourage you to support DAIS in whatever shape or form you can. You can contact DAIS via email at newdais@abuseintervention.org or call 608-807-4012.

If you aren’t in the DAIS service area, we encourage you to support your nearest domestic abuse organization and or shelter. The fact that 1 and 4 women will be abused in their lifetime is one we as a society can not tolerate. Let’s eliminate such violence once and for all.

What’s the point is the point

British Prime Minister David Cameron claimed at the UK’s Business in the Community Conference that business “is the most powerful force for social progress the world has ever known”. Mr. Cameron’s point is one well taken. I have believed this since founding Good for Business over a decade ago. I have believed that business was and is the most powerful force in the world. I have believed that I can do something to help make it a force for good. The goal of Good for Bueiness is to help make sure the messages businesses and organizations send out into the world are true, informative and inspiring. They are true in that they are nakedly honest and transparent. There is no washing whatsoever. They are courageous in how they present their proposition, void of hyperbole and spin. The messages of business emerge from a place where honest content is the true north and that the words and images provide the kind of education, information and insight necessary to help foster a responsible and wise customer base. And, the messages are inspiring in ways that no longer promote consumerism and a sense of want and need, but they speak to both the hearts and minds of customers and citizens in ways that promote what many call conscious capitalism. This is all great stuff to believe in, but at times, the belief is challenged by the disappointing and disconcerting behavior of business. The state of the economy appears to have nudged some businesses to move away from their sustainability and corporate social responsibility programs and to seek comfort in the profit-at-all costs fetal position. This nudge wouldn’t happen if their sustainability and social responsibility programs were not just programs, but were truly part of the core DNA of the business. This may seem too much to ask in today’s landscape of financial stress, high unemployment, plant closings and home foreclosures. But is it? Aren’t we just dancing around the elephant in the boardroom and living room? It’s the bottom-line-first behavior that is a major culprit in putting us in the state we are in today. It’s a behavior that defined ‘social progress’ in mostly material terms versus planetary and humanitarian terms.

We have the opportunity now to truly realize that business is the powerful force for social progress the world has ever known. But we’ll need to look at our past and current behavior and make some changes. We’ll have to make changes that start with seeing people/employees not as liabilities but assets on a ledger sheet. We’ll have to make changes that help us start to see every plant, factory, office and corporate campus has the means to actually improve the environment – both the physical environment of air, earth and water, and the cultural environment where people and employees have the respect and sense of ownership necessary to make positive change happen. We’ll have to make changes where we run our business on clean energy and ethical economics. These changes may seem more than daunting considering the way we’ve been programmed up to this point.

We may be so disillusioned that we just shrug our shoulders and mutter ‘what’s the point’. Well, go ahead and shrug. But then shrug it all off and realize that it’s the ‘what’s the point that is the point’. Stand up straight and realize the evolutionary power of pointing toward a goal and going for it. Go for the goal of achieving economic democracy; the goal of achieving planet nurturing energy programs; the goal of realizing that business is the most powerful force for social progress we have ever known. Ultimately, the goal is to never ‘give up’. Never give up on our belief in what we can achieve, as CEO’s, producing line managers, farmers, fathers, mothers, students, academics, artists – all walks of life, moving forward to a place where we all get the point.

That’s my idealistic rant for the day, and I’m sticking with it.

A Different Kind of Holiday Message

Is Everybody Happy?

On August 18 BBC website had a link titled ‘Is the end of the world as we know it’ which prompted me to click and come upon an article titled’Is the world facing fundamental changes?’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14583201.
Well, it woke this sleepy blog up. Having not posted for a while, the idea of the world coming to an end as reported by BBC had me a bit rattled. Of course, the article was primarily addressing the financial markets and models we have created and how they may need to be fixed or reinvented or discarded. But it also brought to mind issues that we seem to sweep underneath the economic dominated headlines of the day – issues ranging from the planet’s population and pollution to melting ice caps and ironically, water shortages. Of course, all of this is interconnected – stock markets, debt and derivatives sleep in the same room as poverty, vanishing rain forests and human rights.

This consideration of a such a potentially gloomy future caused me to reflect on the past – actually, 2007, when I presented at a conference in Edinburgh the idea of global happiness indexes – one for humanity in general and another for business. I think it might be of value to revisit this idea amidst this moment in time when change is definitely in the air.

Inspired at the time by the Bhutan Happiness Index, I thought why not take that idea and embrace the entire world with it. Imagine a positive vision of what the world could be like in the year 2020 and the steps and actions we can all take to make that vision real. Imagine in 2020 we live in world of clean oceans, lakes and rivers and clean air and skies. A world of open spaces for growing, playing, learning and reflecting; of locally grown foods nourishing whole communities of engaged citizens; of renewable energy powering a sustainable, meaningful economy; of excellent health care for all and excellent schools educating all to realize our inviolable connection to nature and to one another; of manifesting a quality of life not measured by what we have or own, but who we are: loving, respecting, relating, contributing, creating and happy.

What if you could live this vision physically and digitally, where a portal lets you discover and share what other countries, communities and citizens are doing in the areas of sustainable economies; education; air and water; healthcare; social justice and peace and understanding.

And for business, what if it could change the world for good? What if balance sheets see workforce and people as an asset, not a liability; if new products and services are developed to make a sustainable, positive difference; if economic engines are driven by a reverence for the natural world order as business improves the environment;if business works with communities to genuinely enhance real quality of life; if everything business does and say is true and transparent and books and boardrooms are open; if profit is the fuel for positive change and business is one of the most respected institutions the world?

What if you could live and work this vision physically and digitally and employ a portal where CEO’s, clerks and customers can all share and discover answers and ideas addressing topics including purpose with profit; ecological economics; meaningful innovation; workforce wealth; community championing and truth and transparency?

We can do this. We’ve done remarkable things before. What’s stopping us now – only ourselves and our weakened belief in the human spirit. We can shift from a doomsday view propelled by fear to a vision that is driven by an unconditional love for what matters most.

Take a look at these words and graphics from 2007 and let me know your suggestions for how we can update this concept for today. The visuals are set up to be digital doors to learning and taking action.
There is an overall statement that allows one to click to a specific topic and then, ideally go deeper and deeper into understanding that leads to answers and solutions. As mentioned earlier, one set of graphics is humanity in general focused, the other set business focused.

Is everybody happy? Why not?

Hire Calling?

Every State, from Washington to Florida, is knee-deep in budget concerns. The debate is often framed as create jobs at all costs vs. maintain a safety net for those in need. This is too simplistic of a picture for these complex times and tonite, in Madison, Wisconsin, there will be a conversation about these debate points and other key factors and issues that help make up this extremely challenging economic landscape. Although tonite’s event happens in Madison, you’ll find the conversation has relevance for where you live and work.

The conversation features Don Nichols and John Torinus, twp of Wisconsin’s best minds on jobs and the economy. They’ll assess the current situation in Wisconsin and the prospects for economic growth and development in the state. Don Nichols, emeritus professor of economics at UW–Madison and the former director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, and John Torinus, Chairman of Serigraph Inc. of West Bend and a founder of BizStarts Milwaukee will discuss several recent plans and proposals offered by business associations, think tanks, and government offices on how best to revitalize the state’s economy and generate jobs.

If you are in Madison tonite, the conversation is from 7:00–8:30 pm at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art lecture hall, 221 State Street. If you live in Wisconsin, but can’t attend you may be able to view it at a later date. Many Academy Evenings are taped and broadcast at a later date by Madison City Channel 12, Wisconsin Eye, or Wisconsin Public Television. Check your local listings for show times or visit our Multimedia Viewing Opportunities page for more information.

If you live in one of the other 49 states, the website Portal Wisconsin carries podcasts of most Academy Evenings presentations.

Happy H2Olidays

Gratitude is an elixir for the soul and the power of gratitude erupts during the holiday season. Our sense of connection to humanity is strongest during this reflective time of year. We appreciate and revere the humanity nearest to us – our family, friends, colleagues at work. We also come to have a more pronounced bond with people we have never physically met or may never meet. It’s this bond and our gratefulness for it that ignites hope, erases fear and bolsters a belief that we can experience peace in our time. This peace is underlined by a unified purpose to eliminate poverty, racism, ignorance and injustice. This peace is fortified by a common cause to increase the well-being of all – including not only our species, but all species and this wondrous planet we all inhabit.

This season we have explored the idea of what make us human. Specifically, what makes us human in the physical sense which leads us to water. Two thirds of our weight as a human is water. 95% of the human brain is water. 70% of the planet is water. Still, over one billion of us don’t have access to fresh, clean water. Unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all disease and kill more than all forms of violence, including war. It’s this particular water issue that inspires our holiday message this year. We invite you to join us in doing something about making sure all of us have access to clean, fresh. Action can begin by connecting with a range of organizations committed to addressing this issue including water.org and charity:water.

Cheers!

No bottoms. No lines.

The concept of the triple bottom line has been around for some time. It’s been a good model and has proven in many instances to be a guide to good business practice. But what if we stopped thinking of a triple bottom line? What if we stopped thinking of a bottom line? What if we begin to see that there really are no lines? What if there is no bottom? What if there is a continuous flow of purpose and profit that isn’t measured by a final line item metric. Do we have the means to make this shift happen? I think we do. And the first step is to seize the moment at hand and begin to shape it according to principles and purpose first, then product and profit.

Now is certainly one of those moments in history when the call for business to step forward and use its muscle in a meaningful way. The belief here is that for a good time now business has been the most powerful force in the world. That belief is fortified by the current and anticipated state of economics and politics. We invite all businesses that have hope, purpose and meaning as the key ingredients of their corporate DNA to step forward and become a business activist. This activism can best be felt through our actions within your business by empowering, honoring and inspiring your employees and culture; by building a customer base that is inspired by your thoughts, actions and responsible products and services; by connecting with your community in ways that transcend the traditional public/private boundaries and result in business actually making the community healthier by doing business there – and not healthier by only providing jobs; and by telling the world, your employees, customers and community what you believe and what you are truly doing to make a difference – this telling will inform and inspire others to join in the movement of business making a difference. Size doesn’t matter here. You can be a one-person shop working out of your home or employ thousands working in multiple sites and locations – the point is you realize doing the right thing is part of who you are as business person and to not take action will be a disservice to yourself and others.

This is not a new insight. But it is one that bears repeating on a regular basis. We will continue to do our part to remind ourselves and others to always keep meaning and purpose at the forefront of all decision-making and to not get mired in a hopeless, me-first, school of thought.

This is our first thought on the idea of ‘no bottom line’. We welcome your thoughts on the idea and how to make it real.