Before you scoff, think back to the last time you went produce shopping. How willing were you to buy something lumpy, bumpy or funny-looking?
Every year some six billion pounds of United States perfectly good fruits and vegetables go largely unharvested or unsold, for aesthetic reasons. These outcasts are being called “Ugly Produce” or “imperfect produce” by the media – or produce that is deformed, wonky, crooked, or long-necked.
Bias is probably one of the most inclusive human reactions.
Think about the general reaction to a hairless cat or dog.
Research has even shown that unattractive babies aren’t held and cuddled as often as attractive ones.
No question that bias runs deep.
But just like the wasted food is the wasted talent.
But some very smart folks who don’t like waste are creating successful companies selling ugly produce and reducing wasted food, too.
So if you’re having problems filling your positions, take a cue from them and drop the bias in favor of finding talent, filling openings and raking in revenue.
In 2008 Coke paid $43 million for a 40% stake in Honest Tea and acquired the other 60% in 2011 for an undisclosed amount. The founders are still running the company and (so far) it’s stayed true to its mission.
But that’s not what today is about.
If you aren’t a reader, and even if you are, you’re probably tired of plowing though business books.
Even the good ones are often over-written; publishers want a certain number of pages to warrant the price, so there is often a lot of same thought/different words repetition, while customers’ assume there’s a direct correlation between length/weight and price.
It’s even harder to find business books that provide solid advice for startups that are focused on sustainable, environmentally friendly and socially responsible along with financial success.
Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff, founders of Honest Tea, are hoping to fill that gap with a 302 page comic book due out in September.
We’d like to think this isn’t your typical How I Built My Business book. For starters, it looks like a comic book. We designed the book this way because we wanted the story to come alive. You get to share in our journey, meet some colorful characters, and not take us too seriously.
Different company, different business advice, different marketing.
The pair, with a budget they did not disclose, are focusing on online and social media efforts, and have created a Web site, missioninabottle.net, where, for $25, a customer can buy a book, a signed bookplate and a T-shirt.
I haven’t read the book, but the first chapter (all of four pages) makes at least three important points painlessly in very few words. (My kind of writing!)
And skipping a few trips to Starbucks will pay for the signed book and T-shirt.
A McKinsey study on the value of corporate social responsibility found “…highly innovative Fortune 1000 companies derive greater financial returns from their corporate-responsibility activities than their less innovative counterparts do,” and suggested three actions to improve CSR ROI,
“Upwards of 40 percent of industry’s energy efficiency improvement opportunities can be realized through low or no-cost projects rooted in corporate culture change”
They must know something since dollar savings to date are not millions, or even hundreds of millions, but billions.
“The key to this model is the formation of multi-disciplinary, cross-functional site teams, with insight from operators, maintenance, mechanics, core process experts, energy experts, engineers and management.”
Two of the biggest stumbling blocks on this path are Wall Street, with its short-term, i.e., quarterly, focus and the current definition of “stakeholder.”
Typically, stakeholders are viewed as investors, management, customers and workers; progressive companies have added the local communities where they do business and a few have tiptoed further.
Whereas Richard Branson points out in Screw Business As Usual every living thing and the planet itself are stakeholders.
Sadly, rather than being in the lead, the majority of US corporations are staying focused on short-term results and narrow definition of stakeholder.
But the winners in the future will be those companies, large or small, whose thinking is longest and definition is broadest.
I hope you are one of them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kung Hei Fat Choy (Wishing you an abundance of wealth and prosperity!) Happy Year of the Dragon
How profitable can a company be that takes social responsibility to its extreme?
What kind of corporate social responsibility is possible if Wall Street isn’t breathing down your neck?
For answers you need look no further than India’s Tata and America’s SAS.
I’ve already written twice about SAS, its amazing culture and the lengths they go to to take care of their people.
And then there is Tata, where Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Group, built a culture of innovation after India dropped its trade barriers.
… for his companies to survive and thrive in a global economy he had to make innovation a priority—and build it into the DNA of the Tata group so that every employee at every company might think and act like an innovator.
Notice it says every employee, not just the stars, designers or engineers.
Obviously good culture and good business, but not really extreme.
Extreme social responsibility follows a different path. In 2000 Tata Tea Ltd. purchased Britain’s Tetley Tea Company and shortly after sold the vast plantations in an economically underdeveloped community where it had been the largest employer for a century.
But the transaction was anything but routine. Instead of working out a lucrative deal with eager investment bankers, bribing local politicians to mollify them, laying off workers, and selling to the highest bidder, as some other Indian companies shedding a moribund business might have done, Tata Tea sold 17 of the 25 plantations to its own former employees. Layoffs were generally limited to one per household, and Tata gave a group of voluntary retirees enough cash to buy equity in the new company that was formed. (That company, Kanan Devan Hills Plantation Company [KDHP], still operates as an employee-owned enterprise.)
Although Tata Tea would henceforth maintain only limited business interests in the area (including some equity in KDHP), the company continued its active social role there. It still subsidizes a range of social services and KDHP employee benefits, including free housing for plantation workers, a private school, an education center for disabled children and young adults, and the newly renovated Tata General Hospital in Munnar. Tata still remains a major customer of KDHP, which helps guarantee a stable supply of tea at competitive prices.
Tata’s extreme culture is simple.
Since its founding in 1868, Tata has operated on the premise that a company thrives on social capital (the value created from investing in good community and human relationships) in the same way that it relies on hard assets for sustainable growth.
And at $70 billion it certainly is thriving.
Extreme culture is long-term and looks well beyond the next quarter and short-term profits.
Extreme culture is successful, but not in the US—Wall Street would never allow it.
Culture is finally at the forefront of the corporate mindset.
For Boards, CEOs, executives and managers at all levels it’s a case of ignore culture at your peril.
Almost every article and comment regarding the workplace is, directly or indirectly, a comment on culture—what works, or not; what’s needed, or not. Want to innovate? Change the culture. Increase retention? Fix/keep the culture.
Keeping people (customers, employees and investors) is the key to sustainable success and culture is one of the main reasons that people join/buy/invest in a company—and its demise is a major reason why they leave.
Think of a stool with customers, investors/stockholders, and employees comprising the legs and culture being the seat that unites them. Over-favor one leg and it will get too long, ignore another leg and it will shrink, but the end result is the same—the stool tips over.
For everything that’s been written here and other places about creating good, let alone great, cultures you still need to start with the basics:
Practice open, honest, constant communications and insist that others do, too
Never kill the messenger
Accept and act on input from all levels
Walk your talk
Sure, there’s tons more you can do, but I guarantee that if you do only these four you’ll be well on your way to creating a positive, sustainable culture.
Terms come and terms go, but their meaning stays fairly constant.
Managers used to strive for employee buy-in, ownership, commitment, involvement; today it’s engagement.
Management has worked to develop that behavior for decades, whereas the way to achieve it is as old as humanity.
Disengagement is costly, “Gallup estimates it costs the US economy about $300bn a year and that 17 per cent of employees are “actively” disengaged. These employees each cost their employers $13,000 a year in lost productivity.” That was last year and I’d bet that 2009 will be worse.
Managers of organizations with a high level of engagement know that achieving that is as simple as 1, 2, 3—4.
The 4 acts of engagement are
respect;
encouragement;
support; and
rewards.
This isn’t exactly secret management knowledge. There are thousands of books, hundreds of classes, dozens of blogs and forums all teaching variations on this theme.
So if it’s that simple, why isn’t it put into practice more often?
If you don’t really believe in the value or numbers 1 or 2, you can talk all day and your people will hear what you say as hollow, i.e., no authenticity.
Number 3, support, includes skills training and career development, but how do you provide these when money is tight or, even in good times, when your company doesn’t believe in it?
Ingenuity—not just yours, but your group’s.
Your people aren’t dumb, they know when the company can’t/won’t fund training, but there are tons of ways to work around that, such as building up a broad departmental learning library and sharing their own expertise with each other during organized brown bag lunch sessions.
Number 4 also usually involves money, as it should. But when there’s an authentic, provable lack of funds to provide significant rewards, every company can find enough, monetary and otherwise, to prove that they value their people’s contributions.
Again, people aren’t dumb. If the CEO, execs or their boss fly first class or receive a bonus after telling people that the company can’t afford raises or rewards, it shouldn’t be a surprise when they disengage and eventually leave.
That’s it; not rocket science, but you must do it consistently, sincerely and with great enthusiasm—no matter what else is going on.
Yet another article on Wal-Mart’s commitment to sustainability. Now, I’m not knocking what they’re doing, but I do wonder if Wal-Mart’s sustainability efforts will ever be extended to their workforce.
Of course, according to Northeast corporate affairs representative Steve Restivo it is, “”Another component, and the one, frankly, that I’m most proud of, is the Personal Sustainability Program for our associates.”At the Portsmouth store, employees are taking part in three programs — stopping smoking, losing weight and changing to CFL bulbs in their homes.”
It really is too bad that sustainability doesn’t extend to equality in the workplace, health insurance, full-time employment and decent wages, but maybe the shopping public won’t support that.
What do you think? Are Wal-Mart’s efforts ground-breaking or damage control?
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
A McKinsey study on the 
Culture is finally at the forefront of the corporate mindset.
Management has worked to develop that behavior for decades, whereas the way to achieve it is as old as humanity.
Yet another 
