Today my colleague and collaborator Elad Levinson of Noble Purpose Consulting and I facilitated the first Working for Good workshop, which we co-designed over the past few months. It was quite an experience.

Thanks to all who participated. I am heartened by the participants' presence deep engagement, and their open appreciation for the experience. I am especially encouraged by the positive response from all involved to the "container" for inquiry and exploration we created. Like the book, Working for Good (Sounds True, September 2009), we focus on creating the conditions and providing structure that foster awareness, embodiment, connection, collaboration, and integration, rather than a simple formula.

Based on the response to the workshop and the early response to the book, it feels like many people are open to the inner exploration and dialogue that facilitate true Working for Good. And it feels like creating containers that support this exploration and dialogue is a valuable and viable service.

Elad and I will announce the next Working for Good workshop soon, and we look forward to collaborating with Ted Robb (of InHouse Creative Studios) and others to develop a more richly textured, multi-media Working for Good experience.

Stay tuned, and be well,

Jeff

Audacity is essential to entrepreneurs, artists, inventors, and other creators and innovators. This posting, written by my colleague and collaborator Julie van Amerongen, celebrates Audacity.

Jeff

“Success is the child of audacity.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

I hope that whoever writes my eulogy will include the word audacious. Audacious! It makes me want to throw my head back and laugh. However you want to define it, it’s juicy! Full of fearless daring, willing to take risks, adventuresomeness, intrepidity, heedless of restraints, marked by originality and verve, vitality, vim, vigor, dash, spirit, life, animation, get-up-and go… Audacious people know who they are and they act “as if…,” creating a persona that is matched with action. I certainly aspire to be more audacious more of the time. Don’t you?!

I’ll readily admit that I can be a bit of an adrenaline junkie with activities like jumping from bridges, cliffs and planes, running marathons or backpacking in remote locations. To me though, those things fall under a narrow piece of the audacious umbrella. What’s really audacious is taking risks every day. Audacious people are marked by their motivation and confidence, making bold moves and letting their original and creative selves shine. They are firmly on the road to where they want to go.

Some lessons on embodying audaciousness:

• Think of someone who has inspired you and say to yourself, if they can do it, then so can I. My friend Chelsea says she thinks of me when she runs on her treadmill. I think of Greg Mortensen from the Three Cups of Tea story in my work. There are so many more!
• Think about something that makes you feel confident every day. It will help loosen the stranglehold that fear has on your audacious impulses.
• Laugh more. Find some jokes online or go to a comedy show. I’m not actually sure this will make you more audacious, but I think audaciousness is about claiming what is authentically you. Laughter triggers my intuitive joy so it must be good for building the audacity muscle.

“I look forward to growing old and wise and audacious.” ~ Glenda Jackson

LINKS:

Barack Obama’s #1 best selling book: Audacity of Hope

Greg Mortensen’s audacious adventure: Three Cups of Tea

Audacious Film about Audacious Gathering.

Jeff: In their best-selling business book Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras identify one of the keys to great companies is that of having a “big, hairy, audacious goal.” While having such a goal does not ensure success, it does set the stage and open the possibility for making a profound difference.

As I reflect on the first week of May 2009, the idea blooming come to mind. As Walter Robb (President & COO of Whole Foods Market) commented to a group of friends tonight, with good soil, you get strong plants, which produce good fruit, and it takes years to build good soil.

It seems like the many years of soil building is bearing fruit on many trees right now. All three of the FLOW programs are experience growth spurts. Planning for the 2009 Catalyzing Conscious Capitalism event are well under way and the related Conscious Business Alliance is forming quickly. A great group of allies is coming together (including Intellicap, Inspiris, the Global Peace Index, and a Multi-agency Task Force on Security, among others) to plan and produce the next Peace Through Commerce conference at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona early next year. And women entrepreneurs in the Middle East, Africa, and South America, and others who support them are converging to bring AWE (Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs) to life.

My colleague Michael Strong, co-founder of FLOW and author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems, was interviewed on the Freakonomics blog this week, stimulating lively conversations. And I see John Mackey’s 2-CD set Passion & Purpose: The Power of Conscious Capitalism at all of the local Whole Foods Markets.

Michael just sent me a link to our friend Chris White’s CSR for CEOs blog, with great information about poverty alleviation and peace-building through commerce, economic development, and conscious globaization.

On a personal note, I am deeply appreciative for the endorsements I received for my book, Working for Good, and am encouraged by the response. In addition to the glowing endorsements i received from John Mackey, Patricia Aburdene, Brian Johnson, Michael Strong, and others, I received this reflection yesterday in a note from Anna Madrona, a writer who works with John at WFM: I am impressed with the practicality of your book. Many business books err on the side of theory and grand statement. You have a graceful, lyrical style, as well. Nice work!

We continue to get great feedback on last weekend’s workshop. Most meaningful are the comments of various participants who reflect that as time goes on, the effect increases, rather than decreases. This is certainly inspiration to do it again, soon!

I look forward to the unfolding of May and the flowers that will reveal themselves as it proceeds. May you witness many beautiful blossoms, literally and figuratively.

This posting, written by my colleague and collaborator Julie van Amerongen, celebrates Authenticity as a core principle of Working for Good.

Authenticity is certainly worth cultivating. Like happiness, profits, and other such things, it tends to be the result of focusing on other things, rather than something you can accomplish by focusing on it directly. And, ultimately, others will be the judge of whether or not we are authentic.

Yours in Working for Good,,

Jeff

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can you sense when you are truly being authentic in your work? For me, it’s when I’m really connected with my passion and working actively in that direction. I feel confident and energetic, focused, creative, light and productive. I am honoring my inner world, while expressing myself in my outer work world.

Applying the Working for Good skill of Awareness, we can tune into our passion and purpose, and what our unique offerings really are. And, when we carry our purpose through Embodiment to Integration we activate the power of being evermore deeply authentic and witness the results, such as taking better care of yourself, more connection with your office team, or experiencing more success overall. It just feels right.

Before attending the Working for Good workshop, participants are asked to take the Keirsey Temperament Sorter - a personality questionnaire designed to help people understand themselves better. Inquiring into our deep-routed behavioral patterns and understanding our tendencies, supports us to align with and express our strengths, address our weaknesses, and be more authentic. When we can see ourselves, we are more likely to be ourselves.

“That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something.” ~ Meredith Monk

LINKS

Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value, by Bill George

Keirsey Temperament Sorter

In the context of my work with FLOW and my collaboration with FLOW co-founder Michael Strong (author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems), for the past three years I have been deeply engaged in advancing the idea of Peace Through Commerce.

This coming week I will be moderating the last week of a two-month long Peace Through Commerce eConference at BusinessFightsPoverty.org, the focus of which will be “Where do we go from here?”

Among FLOW’s responses to the question of where do we go from here? Are: to catalyze a Peace Through Commerce Alliance, focused on facilitating collaboration on-the-ground in various places around the world to cultivate Peace Through Commerce projects and systems and on spreading the word about the importance of Peace Through Commerce to advancing peace and prosperity. In collaboration with PTC Allies, FLOW will be co-producing the next Peace Through Commerce conference early next year at Thunderbird School of Global management.

The idea that economic opportunity leads to peace is long-understood on some level, as people who trade together tend to build relationships and dependencies that preclude conflict, and when people have basic needs addressed, opportunity to enhance their conditions, and hope for the future, they tend to be more peaceful that belligerent. Various indices validate this understanding, including the Fraser Index of Economic Freedom, the World Bank’s Doing Business Project, among others. This week my friend Haley Rushing (Chief Purposologist of the Purpose Institute and co-author of It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For) introduced me to the Gallup Organization’s World Poll and Global Migration Report, which strongly reinforce the idea that economic opportunity is the key to peace. “What the whole world wants is a good job. That is one of the single biggest discoveries Gallup has ever made.”

While, clearly, people need to have their basic needs met and have to be and feel safe and secure, to venture into enterprise development and trade, having meaningful work and feeling a sense of opportunity are key to establishing an orientation towards peace.

Please join the Peace Through Commerce eConference next week, and consider how you can support the Peace Through Commerce movement.

Yours in Working for Good,

Jeff

It is highly appropriate that this posting is principally written by my friend, colleague, and collaborator Elad Levinson. If it weren't for Elad, I doubt I would have written Working for Good: Making a Difference, While Making a Living last year. Elad's insights, support, guidance, and encouragement brought out the best in me. And working with Elad and Julie (van Amerongen) made the process of writing the book an integrated one for me, as one of the essential elements and skills of Working for Good is collaboration.

Designing and facilitating the first Working for Good workshop (May 2nd in Mill Valley, CA) as with our previous collaborations on events and meetings, was a rich a enriching experience, deepening my understanding and practice of Working for Good. Without further ado... here is Elad on Collaboration.

Yours in Working for Good,

Jeff

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” ~ Charles Darwin

Once upon a time it was thought in the world of business and all things results-oriented that the way you got to your desired outcome was through hard work and will power. Or just simply power – the ability to impose your desires on others by force, skill, or guile.

Over the past twenty years that fantasy has been deflated by examples that demonstrate both the limits of power over and the limits of individual contributions to success of any endeavor. Today it is widely accepted that collaboration is the principle means by which good things come to fruition.

True collaboration is the process of co-creation, tapping into the knowledge, wisdom, experience, and skill of all of the participants to create a group mind – smarter and more capable than any individual. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

In collaboration, groups of people find the best ways to solve problems and to cause results via a robust process of dialogue and synthesis that leads to new insights and innovations. Dialogue is not debate – it is not the “I can prove that I am right to you by the force of my logic, will or loudness of voice.” Rather, dialogue is thoughtful assertion and careful listening with curiosity inspired by a sincere willingness to learn and synthesize with others’ conceptions.

The content of collaboration can be anything that we are out to explore or create together. The keys to collaboration are the factors of human performance, including communications, commitment, trust, and performance.

Collaboration begins with a sincere desire to establish a consensual understanding of the issue (i.e. goal, objective, or problem) to work upon together, the definition of success, an agreement on process, and a commitment to work together. Collaboration is fulfilled by following through to produce the results the group agrees upon, through the process defined.

Collaboration is at the heart of all new product and service innovations and for that reason it is imperative that collaboration be treated as a skill set that is learn-able and worthwhile taking the time to develop.

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” ~ Edith Wharton

LINKS

Interaction Associates

David Straus’s excellent book How to Make Collaboration Work: Powerful Ways to Build Consensus, Solve Problems, and Make Decisions

Thursday night my daughter Meryl Fé and I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It had been decades since I watched this Frank Capra classic with Jimmy Stewart. Sometimes we all feel like Jefferson Smith, facing the seemingly insurmountable sustained by our sense of purpose, principles, and passion, and will power. As he says towards the end “… and you know you fight for the lost causes even harder than for any others. You even die for them.”

At his commencement address this week at University of Portland Paul Hawken observed… “When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

My experience is very much like Paul’s; everyday I meet, hear about, and communicate with countless people who are working for the lost causes and, by virtue of their work, the causes are far from lost. I recall an article I read in the CoEvolutionary Quarterly in the early 80s by Paul, in which he calls human creativity the most powerful anti-entropy agent in the universe. We can create order, beauty, reason, peace, where there is chaos, decay, and irrational violence, by the purposeful engagement of our hearts, minds, and bodies – envisioning a new reality and a path to manifesting it, bringing our intention into action, to pursue the path, and creatively evolving our generative process to reflect new information and circumstances. This is what we evoke with Working for Good.

And like Jefferson Smith, as much as we emphasize the object of our attention, we focus on the process by which we engage in our pursuit. There’s only one rule, he proclaims to the congregation of Senators and bystanders “love thy neighbor….”

How we pursue our causes is as, if not more, important that what we pursue. The process is the product!

Wishing all a happy Memorial Day weekend; ideally filled with time with loved ones, and time for yourself–to rest, reflect, and rejuvenate.

Yours in Working for Good,

Jeff

My favorite commitment quotation is Goethe's, which goes like this :"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw  back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative  (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

What ever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"

Commitment is a powerful force, that moves or, perhaps, aligns with providence . Below are some reflections on Commitment from my friend and collaborator Julie van Amerongen, followed by some more by me.

May the force (of commitment) be with you!

Yours in Working for Good,

Jeff



“If you deny yourself commitment, what can you do with your life?” ~ Harvey Fierstein

Most of us are committed to something that requires mutual commitment from others – relationships, an organization, our Monday night poker game…  But commitment in terms of Working for Good is a commitment first and foremost to yourself, to your values, principles, and personal growth.  It requires clarity, consistency, and persistence, and is, in its very nature, active, hard work.

Once you are clear about what you want to commit to, commitment can be profoundly liberating.  It frees up your energy to focus on your work and sometimes it seems as if things start lining up to support you in your action toward your goal/s.  Commitment catalyzes action a whole lot faster than hoping, wishing, dreaming, or praying. 

Do your commitments line up with where you want to go?  If not, better get committed to making some commitments!

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.” ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Jeff: Keeping commitments is one of the most powerful building blocks of integrity—the ability to congruently hold together, the way a tree holds together with its roots seamlessly connected to its trunk, which seamlessly connects to its branches and out to its leaves. If our intention aligns with our expression, which aligns with our actions, we cultivate integrity—and others recognize us for it. Keeping our word to ourselves is the initial step in keeping our commitments. Keeping our word to others ensues from there. Holding each other accountable for our commitments is a great service we provide to one another. A short list of core commitments for Working for Good might include: continually cultivate awareness, stay on purpose, act according to principles, and support one another in doing all three of these.


LINKS

Commitment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDnPeZoaVno

I spent the past two days (May 28 – 29) at Bentley University outside of Boston attending the first Conceptualizing Conscious Capitalism conference, which is intended to be a precursor to the Conscious Capitalism Institute. The event, produced by Professors Raj Sisodia of Bentley (co-author of Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion & Purpose) and Ed Freeman of University of Virginia (“author” of the stakeholder model of business management), with Shubrho Sen, serial entrepreneur, outsourcing pioneer, and visiting professor of marketing at Bentley. In addition to providing an enlightening survey of work being done in diverse academic disciplines at universities throughout the country and around the world, the event convened an inspiring and energized group of academics and others dedicated to transforming business and business education, and making meaningful progress towards these ends.

Among the highlights were inspiring presentations by pioneers in the practice of Conscious Business Roy Spence, Chairman and CEO of GSD&M IdeaCity and co-author of It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, and John Mackey, Chairman and CEO of Whole Foods Market, author of the new audiobook, Passion & Purpose: The Power of Conscious Capitalism, and co-founder of Conscious Capitalism, Inc (aka FLOW), and a conversation between John and Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline (among other books) and founder of the Society for Organizational Learning.

In addition to exploring the implications of applying consciousness to business in general, marketing, leadership, and other aspects of business in particular, Raj began the conference be setting outlining the frame of Conscious Business, which John powerfully articulated in his presentation. The core principles of Conscious Business are:

1. Purpose: Finding and focusing on the higher purpose of the business.
2. Stakeholder Orientation: focusing on the health of the overall system, rather than singularly on the return on shareholder investment.
3. Servant Leadership: through which the management plays a role of steward to the company’s deeper purpose and stakeholders, focusing on fostering a harmony of interests.

You can watch a brief video of John talking about Conscious Business on the Sounds True web site and you can order Passion and Purpose from the FLOW website, where you can also order Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems, by FLOW co-founder Michael Strong, which also features a chapter by John on Conscious Capitalism.

Earlier this month, Conscious Capitalism, Inc. launched the Conscious Business™ Alliance and began design and development for the 2009 Catalyzing Conscious Capitalism event in October in Austin. Both the CBA and CCC event are by invitation, so please let me know if you are interested.

I am honored to serve as Executive Director of Conscious Capitalism, Inc and on the Governing Circle of the Conscious Business Alliance. In both capacities, I encounter people everyday who are applying the principles of Conscious Business, studying, and promoting their positive impact, to cultivate and advance new ways of thinking about and practice “the art of business.” While we certainly have a long way to go before this new approach is predominant, the journey of a thousand miles is definitely well under way.

Here's to the movement!

Yours in Working for Good,

Jeff

www.workingforgood.com