I wrote yesterday’s Oldie back in 2007; it ended with this comment,

Corporate responsibility is a major buzzword these days, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s tied more closely to

• doing what’s right;
• doing what you can get away with; or
• not getting caught.

It’s taken 13 years for practitioners of the second and third approaches to even consider changing.

The pressure they face to take such steps is real; the industry’s years of reliance on hypocrisy, lobbying, and misleading public relations tactics is eerily reminiscent of the approach taken by tobacco companies, and its litigation risks are set to follow a similar trajectory, with lawyers and activists framing failure to address climate change as a human-rights violation.

The changes certainly aren’t being driven by the Feds (consider the EPA’s decision to limit scientific research when drafting environmental and public health regulations), but by people.

The corporate responsibility façade is—finally, thankfully—crumbling. Activist investors and angry citizens have forced a reckoning. The Conference Board views the upcoming 2020 proxy season as a tipping point for disclosure of corporate political activity.

Even more potent are Gen Z’s and many Millennial’s attitude on choosing a place to work.

Young graduates evaluating prospective employers know that the true narrative of a corporation’s purpose can be found by reviewing who it does business with and which politicians it backs [emphasis mine].

There is no company that can survive without an adequate workforce and there is no Generation in history as suspicious and downright cynical about corporate America, including Big Tech, unicorns and startups in general than Gen Z — an attitude already infecting other generational segments.

Amazon employee reaction to CEO Jeff Bezos’ climate change initiative is a good example.

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice responded to Jeff Bezos’s recent $10 billion commitment to fight climate change by reminding their CEO that “one hand cannot give what the other is taking away.”

That two-faced approach isn’t unusual; in fact, it’s common practice — more plainly described as talk the talk, but screw the walk.

It will be difficult for that approach to continue working when it seriously limits recruiting efforts, not to mention paying customers.

Image credit: Frits Ahlefeldt

Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

It’s interesting that so many of the entrepreneurs whose ideas could actually change the world are either still in school (not college) or at the other end of the spectrum. It also seems that most of the 20s/30s/40s crowd are primarily interested in changing their financial status and burnishing their brand. Oops! Seems like I’m getting cynical in my golden years.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I frequently see comments on blogs and social sites along the lines of “I know I could be an entrepreneur if I just had a good idea” or “I want to be an entrepreneur and change the world.”

Sadly, it seems that most are looking for ideas to make them the next Groupon or Foursquare and while that might make them rich, it will hardly change the world.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it won’t change much or get you into the history books.

You change the world by tackling real-world problems, often with hard science.

But you don’t need to be a scientist; self-taught Gary Cola invented the world’s lightest, strongest steel that takes less than ten seconds to make.

In fact, you don’t have to be an adult. Take a look at the winners of the first Google Science Fair and you will be blown away; none are 18 yet and none of their ideas involved the Internet.

Here’s an idea; if you want to change the world look for problems with global impact. Blake Mycoskie is changing the world with shoes and glasses, while Anthony Capone, CEO of Nimbus Water Systems, is changing it with inexpensive, solar-powered, portable water purification systems.

Then there are toilets.

Yes, toilets.

That handy gadget that we take for granted (unless it isn’t working) and that many parts of the world only dream about.

“No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet.” –Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s global development program

And the Gates Foundation is putting its money where its mouth is.

Look around; think about changing the world by reinventing or innovating something that addresses a basic need.

You may not end up as rich as Mark Cuban, but I guarantee that it’s the sexiest, most exciting, rewarding, feel-good thing you’ll ever do.

Image credit: Kate Ter Haar

I first mentioned Public-benefit company (PBC) as a viable alternative to the typical Inc corporate structure in 2015, especially for entrepreneurs with an eye on more than money.

The next year I expanded on that when Kickstarter changed its legal status to PBC.

Don’t confuse PBCs with B-corps; both are profit-making entities and both have stated values, but PBCs are legal entities and legally held to their specified values and mission.

“A value is only a value if it’s non-negotiable.” –Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen

PBCs come in all sizes, both public and private. The variety is obvious in this list of the Top 25 PBCs globally in 2016, including

Method Products, Patagonia, Etsy, Toms, Clif Bar and now Danone.

What is Danone?

Danone is a French multinational food-products corporation based in Paris and founded 99 years ago in Barcelona, Spain. The company is listed on Euronext Paris where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index.

Danone is present in over 130 markets and generated sales of €21.9 billion in 2016, with more than half in emerging countries. In 2015, fresh dairy products represented 50% of the group’s total sales, early life nutrition 22%, water 21% and medical nutrition 7%.

Some wonder how/why large, public companies would even consider a legal status that doesn’t put shareholder interest first.

Emmanuel Faber, Danone Chairman & CEO , explains.

The reason I am writing is because this new major milestone is a breakthrough point for Danone on our global B Corp roadmap. With our major North American activities being certified as of today, it is now proven that it is possible to certify as a B Corp for large organizations that are committed to being change agents, for business and for the world we live in.

Obviously, if a company with such far flung parts can do it shoots holes in those who claim it’s not possible.

And before you claim that startups can’t spend time/resources on stuff like this, remember that Marc Benioff implemented his 1/1/1 philanthropic model when he founded Salesforce in 1999 and that certainly hasn’t slowed its growth.

These days, the definition of success involves more than just money.

Image credit: Danone via Wikipedia

I find it amusing that of everything I’ve read from a variety of academics, consultants, and other pundits regarding hiring and retaining millennials it is Sharna Goldseker who best described it

Interestingly enough, she wasn’t talking about hiring, but about charitable giving.

Goldseker agreed and said it’s time to do away with the stereotype of millennials as entitled slackers. “What we really saw, the top three reasons for giving among these generations, they’re supporting a mission or cause that fits with my personal values, fulfilling my duty as a person of privilege to give back to society, and seeing that my contribution makes a real difference and the organization has real impact,” she said. “As these people are entering the working world and having more resources, they are caring about values more than valuables, and they’re making choices in alignment with those values.”

“…care about values more than valuables.”

That pretty much says it all.

Of course, values are very much public knowledge, as opposed to a poster on the office wall, which makes them hard to fake.

Think Marc Benioff as opposed to Travis Kalanick and you can’t go wrong.

Image credit: Expert Infantry

I am reading a book right now called “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. The book was written in 1937 and has stood the test of time. The premise of it is simple. The author spent time with the titans of his time and observed what separated those that amassed great wealth from those that didn’t. I am still reading the book, but what it boils down to is not education, physical abilities, or even intelligence that will grant you success.

It’s mindset and being able to focus your energies towards a goal without stopping.

I am not sure how I stumbled across the book, but I figure if a book from the 1930’s was still being discussed, I should read it.

In my own life I want to attain a certain amount of wealth, but not for wealth alone. In fact, I find the single minded pursuit of money to have an emptiness to it. However, I have found that those who create wealth in a just way can also create an ecosystem around them that can be almost self-sustaining.

Mentorship can be offered to others. Ideas that require capital can be pursued. Innovations can be perfected and causes can be embraced.

If you look at a man like Bill Gates you see a savvy businessman that has spawned an industry and can now use his great wealth to promote positive actions around the world. However, he would never be in that position if he had not been single-minded with his company in the beginning.

I doubt myself constantly or tell myself no when I should say yes.

Abundance comes not from being timid, but by being bold and honest with what you want.

Think of the possibilities you could pursue should you truly embrace who you are. It would be better for everyone!

And without making this seem like a rah rah post about positive thoughts, consider the fact that we have nothing to lose by pursing a better version of ourselves.

I am still working on the book, but I encourage you to try it. Is it going to make you think in a new way? Perhaps, but that can be a positive. The author has some insight and he is genuine with his writing.

What would you do with abundance?

Image credit: Good Reads

A month ago KG shared an article about how Facebook rummages through your life in pursuit of profit using and algorithm called People You May Know. The results are beyond creepy (emphasis mine).

• A woman whose father left her family when she was six years old—and saw his then-mistress suggested to her as a Facebook friend 40 years later.

• An attorney who wrote: “I deleted Facebook after it recommended as PYMK a man who was defense counsel on one of my cases. We had only communicated through my work email, which is not connected to my Facebook, which convinced me Facebook was scanning my work email.”

Still creepier, but great for profit, are Facebook’s shadow profiles.

… built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users. Contact information you’ve never given the network gets associated with your account, making it easier for Facebook to more completely map your social connections. (…) Because shadow-profile connections happen inside Facebook’s algorithmic black box, people can’t see how deep the data-mining of their lives truly is, until an uncanny recommendation pops up.

Then there is Android, which collects information even when you tell it not to.

Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card?

Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet…”

“Don’t be evil” Google also records conversations around their products; that’s not counting the bug in the new Home Mini that secretly recorded everything said near it.

And Amazon’s Echo is no different.

Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO Social Capital, who worked at Facebook for seven years and became vice president for user growth, is the most recent social media veteran to publicly apologize, “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

Social media addiction is not an accident; it’s intentional, design driven, and it’s sole purpose is to generate revenue.

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”

Palihapitiya’s isn’t the only one feeling guilty.

Palihapitiya’s remarks follow similar statements of contrition from others who helped build Facebook into the powerful corporation it is today. In November, early investor Sean Parker said he has become a “conscientious objector” to social media, and that Facebook and others had succeeded by “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” A former product manager at the company, Antonio Garcia-Martinez, has said Facebook lies about its ability to influence individuals based on the data it collects on them, and wrote a book, Chaos Monkeys, about his work at the firm.

The forces at work behind social media are also money-driven.

In his talk, Palihapitiya criticized not only Facebook, but Silicon Valley’s entire system of venture capital funding. He said that investors pump money into “shitty, useless, idiotic companies,” rather than addressing real problems like climate change and disease. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.

I doubt any of this is going to change your social media consumption.

But never forget that these companies are not your friend. Their primary purpose is not to make you or anyone else happy.

Their purpose is to make money.

Period.

Anything else that happens is plain old serendipity.

(Watch the entire interview.)
Flickr image credit: Duck Lover

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Entrepreneurs are great, although I have to admit that the entitled, connected, mostly white, bros of Silicon Valley aren’t among the ones I like and respect.

And no matter how large the investment, high the valuation or great the returns, coming up with a new way to find a date/restaurant/cheap ticket for whatever or share your life (in order to believe you have one) I don’t find particularly impressive.

But I love those who solve real problems, whether for enterprise, healthcare, agriculture, and, especially, for our poor, beleaguered planet.

So I got a real kick out of seeing what  Arthur Kay, the UK founder of Bio-bean, is doing.

Most of the products his company makes from used coffee grounds are industrial, but they do have a consumer product called Coffee Logs (sadly not available in the US — yet).

Each carbon neutral Coffee Log is made from the grounds of 25 cups of coffee and contains about 20% more energy than wood – meaning it burns hotter and for longer than wood.

Now Bio-bean has teamed with Shell to produce biofuel.

The startup collects used coffee grounds from cafes, restaurants and factories, and transports them to its recycling facility. There, the grounds are dried before coffee oil is extracted.

The coffee oil is then blended with other fuels to create B20 biofuel, which can be used in diesel buses without modification.

Without modification, that’s huge and undercuts the biggest reason governments use to avoid greener options — cost of conversion.

And that doesn’t even factor in the benefits from not sending all those coffee grounds to the landfill.

The UK produces 500,000 metric tons of coffee grounds each year, but that pales in comparison to what is left in the US after making 400 million cups of coffee every single day.

Kay needs to bring his concept to the US—it would make quite a difference.

Image credit: HikingArtist and bio-bean

“Do the right thing” used to be an accepted mantra, as well as a point of pride.

That’s changed; think Volkswagen’s “defeat device” to Nissam’s 20+ years of using untrained inspectors (due to a “shortage”) to Uber’s Greyball, and others too numerous to list.

The companies involved only fixed/changed/stopped because they were caught.

These days, the mantra is “do the right thing if

• caught doing the wrong thing;
• it doesn’t interfere with revenue;
• it removes the spotlight from a scandal;
• it generates good press; or
• it counteracts bad press,

In other words, do the right thing as a sop to the masses until they forget and then it’s business as usual.

And why not?

The same attitude has worked well for politicians, religious leaders, and business executives for decades, if not centuries, so why change a formula that works so well?

The same attitude is in play for individuals, especially these days when personal convenience and comfort are paramount and ethics, morals, integrity, decency and responsibility play second fiddle to expediency.

Like companies, people go their merry way lying, cheating, and stealing their way to the top.

And if they happen to walk into/over/stomp on someone they will look around and, if caught, do the right thing by helping them up and apologizing.

Maybe.

But whether enterprise or individual, permanent change is unlikely.

Image credit: Kurt Bauschardt

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

This is a short post, because it links to a longer one by Henry Mintzberg that should be required reading for every entrepreneur.

Three years ago I questioned the profits entrepreneurs derived from building incompatible systems for the electronic medical records (EMR) systems mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

The money in play is substantial; privately held Epic is one of the largest suppliers and its founder, Judith R. Faulkner, is supposed to be worth around $2.3 billion.

When you’re making that kind of money who worries about lives ruined or lost because of EMR incompatibility?

Last summer Ryan wrote a thoughtful post comparing ‘enough’, on a personal level, to an empty hole that needs filling and ending with this comment.

Perhaps there is never enough.

Perhaps all that matters is what you are filling up that hole with.

Mintzberg is the latest to write on the subject, but with far more knowledge and authority than most, and his focus on staying private, instead of IPOing truly changes the conversation: Enough of MORE: Better is better

We would do well by shifting our economies from MORE toward better. While MORE is about quantities, better is about qualities. They lift us up instead of dragging us down. We can invest our efforts and our resources in durable products, healthier foods, personalized services, properly-funded education. Rather than reducing employment, a shift to better can enhance it, with higher paying jobs in healthier enterprises. When we work better, we feel better, and so we do better and live better. Our societies become better…and sustainably democratic.

Any of these moves requires moving profit out of the top slot, which won’t be easy.

I looked up the example Mintzberg provided at the end of his post and it is proof of how difficult it will be to change the money focus.

…many shareholders expressed concern on Wednesday that the Germanwings tragedy risked distracting management from its turnaround efforts.

The “distraction” involved 149 intentional murders and one suicide.

More recently, money trumped responsibility (pun intended) for Facebook, Google and Twitter during the presidential election.

Hard research from Harvard provides proof that money isn’t the focus of successful startups..

If what really interests you is building a company that actually does make a difference and helps change the world, while providing you and yours a happy life along with the money, then read Mintzberg and seriously consider his advice.

Image credit: HikingArtist

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of some of the best posts during that time.

I wrote this in 2012 with high hopes that more bosses would move in Chris’ direction, with an eye to making their workplaces more socially responsible and individuals more aware of the world outside their little corner of it. Sadly, the importance of ‘me’ has grown considerably, dwarfing, at least in the media, those who strive to move beyond that narrow focus.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

I met an interesting guy over the holiday.

“Chris” has a small startup in the financial services sector and is starting to gain traction.

He said it’s been an uphill battle and that he wishes he had spent the same energy doing something “socially responsible,” because it would be a lot more satisfying.

I’ve heard similar comments from other entrepreneurs and small biz owners.

Happily, this is one of those times it is possible to “have it all,” because all it takes is changing the way you look at the world.

Having a socially responsible business doesn’t require a focus on solving social ills and it certainly doesn’t mean forgoing profit—without profit your business won’t be around.

It does mean running your business in a responsible manner

• pricing fairly, passing on savings whenever possible and never gouging
• fair wages and other compensation
• fair employee treatment (not playing favorites, etc.)
• reducing your carbon footprint
• community involvement and contributing whenever possible; and
• believing that it’s not all about you.

None of this is rocket science and all of it makes good, profitable, business sense.

In fact, Chris and others who feel the pull to help fix the world would do well to read Richard Branson’s Screw Business As Usual to see how others are ‘doing well by doing good’.

Note: the unseen pause is between ‘screw’ and ‘business’, not between ‘business’ and ‘as’,

Image credit: HikingArtist