Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • If You Want to Make a Difference, Start a Business Not a Charity

    If You Want to Make a Difference, Start a Business Not a Charity

    “An idea hit me: Why not create a for-profit business to help provide shoes for these children? Why not come up with a solution that guaranteed a constant flow of shoes rather than being dependent on kind people making donations? In other words, maybe the solution was entrepreneurship not charity.” Blake Mycoskie, TOMS Shoes

    Although Blake and his TOMS shoes have spurred the whole concept of one-for-one business models, he isn’t alone nor the first to consider how business can be a cause.

    With decreasing government funding for charitable causes (and I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing) and so many charities competing for individual’s attention, people who want to make a difference may be better off being entrepreneurs rather than social workers or not-for-profit managers. Blake’s quote tells us why: sustainability. Want to help, then you have to have a continuous flow of revenue to do so.

    There are three key ways we see businesses aligning with this idea:

    1. The TOMS Model.- One-for-one models.   Buy something, something is given. Simple as that. It’s done with shoes, water, eyeglasses, blankets, meals, vaccines, even condoms. The list goes on. However, in the wake of business as a cause through one-to-one initiatives, there is speculation that these models may actual hurt in the long run by sabotaging local economies.

    2. The Microsoft Model- Make a lot of money so you can give a lot of money.   It’s simple, make a lot of money so that you can give away a lot of money (and time) to support needs. What do you think Bill and Melinda Gates spend most of their time doing now?   It isn’t designing computer software. It is working to meet the needs across the globe through their foundation.   Many for-profit companies, large and small, operate charitable foundations, while others give a certain percentage of their earnings to charity.

    3. The Patagonia Model- Promote a social cause through your company message, product(s) and profits. With a desire to reduce consumption and waste the impacts our environment Patagonia started this campaign (see image below- subscribers click through) What happened? Profits are up. They sell fewer jackets that cost more, and should last forever, and by doing this they build a loyal brand of followers who are interested in the same thing they are, conservation.

     

    In all of these cases, the purpose is dual: the profit and what the profit can do for the purpose.

    In reality though, capitalism or free enterprise systems (with certain controls) where there is the incentive of profit to be made, is THE economic system that actually may be the single best way to reduce poverty in this world and fight the ills that result from it. History has shown that the to be best method for bringing a society, and therefore individuals, out of poverty is to give a person the opportunity to work for something worth working for- namely a profit (and this may be why the TOMS model may actually be hurting local economies). Because what does that profit produce? Self-sufficiency and independence. Then, some people will keep all they earn for him or herself, but most, as we can see by many models, find a way to give much of it back for the greater good.

    So what should you or your organization do if you want to start or focus a business on capitalism with a conscience?

    1. Identify your greater purpose. What is it that you want to impact and how is your business or how can you position a business to uniquely meet that purpose? Is it tackling poverty, world health issues, conservation, education, entrepreneurship? Define specifically what is you want to impact and get it on paper. You can’t move on to your how of impact until you define your what and why.

    2. Learn.  

    a. Learn by reading about these different models and determine what the best fit for your organization.   For the one-to-one model, read Blake’s Start Something That Matters as well as the pieces that show how this model may actually hurt- such as When Helping Hurts. For the Microsoft model, read Bill Gate Sr.’s, book Showing Up For Life. For a local model, read our Give Back Piece on Valley Rubber, LLC. For a piece on several models like Patagonia, read This FastCompany article.

    b. Learn through education. Like Casey Gerald said in his graduation speech from Harvard Business School, if you want to find a method for helping the most today, then go to business school. You may not need to actually go to business school, but you do need to know how to design a business model that meets a market need through your product or service.

    3. Create or revise your business plan so that it meets both the market need and the greater purpose you have in mind. For some great resources to do a business plan, visit score.org.

    What cause is closest to your heart and what business(es) are doing something about it? My guess is you buy from them.

  • The World of Work is Rapidly Changing. Are You and Your Organization Adapting?

    The World of Work is Rapidly Changing. Are You and Your Organization Adapting?

    The world, and especially the world of work, is changing at a rapid pace. In fact, from a technological perspective,Moore’s Law postulates that the rate of change is exponential, doubling on itself approximately every 18 months. Many of the things that are driving the changes in work are due to technology, but some are not.

    This month we will be exploring on the blog some of the key changes we are seeing in the world of work and what those changes mean for us, more specifically what they mean for us in terms of possibility and opportunity for the individual and the organization. We’ll provide some advice on what you can do to capitalize on each opportunity.

    Here are the key things we will hit:

    1. Trend 1: Conscious Capitalism. Want to make a difference? Don’t start a charity, start a business.
    2. Trend 2: What happened to the newspaper? How technology is changing the way we market and communicate from guest blogger and marketing guru, Heather Thompson.
    3. Trend 3: It doesn’t matter how and where work gets done. The death of office space, office hours and the employee-employer relationship.
    4. Trend 4: The death of the policy, at least we hope.
    5. Trend 5: The changing world of work changes education slowly but surely.
    6. Trend 6: Really not a trend, but the changing world of work and how it effects the job seeker by guest blogger Stephanie Siebel.

    The world is changing, are you changing with it?

  • 2 Things to Do to Address HR’s Biggest Pain Points

    2 Things to Do to Address HR’s Biggest Pain Points

    We had a great time and learned a lot at the Alabama SHRM Conference a couple of weeks ago. It’s always great to network with colleagues and learn from some of the best in our profession. We try to make this type of event part of our professional development game plan.

    In order to learn even more at the conference, we asked the professionals who stopped by our booth to complete a short survey where they identified their biggest pain points in HR.

    Here’s how the results shook out (subscribers click through to see chart):

     

    While there was no stand-out pain point above all the others, the highest scoring area was compliance training at 31%. Next in line were leadership training and employee development at 24%. In trying to make some sense out of these trends from the additional comments people added, two key things emerged:

    1. HR professionals’ biggest pain points are the things that impact the business in the long term. When you add it all up, so many of the things are people development issues- employee development, training of all varieties and succession planning- all critically important, but….
    2. The pain points aren’t being impacted for one of two reasons:
      1. Lack of buy-in from upper management
      2. Lack of time to address

    So how do we address the things that are keeping us from impacting the important things? I found some insights from the conference:

      1. There was so much focus at the conference on HR needing and wanting to be a “strategic business partner” and wanting a “seat at the table”. This ties to number 1 here. The gist of how to get a seat at the table and therefore buy-in from upper management was you gotta prove it. The best way to prove it is through data that shows the impact on the bottom line. In one of Jennifer McClure’s she focused on utilizing data to help make better human capital decisions, not to track metrics that have happened in the past. For example, she used data to get her boss to buy-in to an HRIS system that was needed.For example, one professional noted that the biggest pain point he/she has is succession planning. Comments he/she made tied to this issue went something like this… “We think the leaders that have been here 10 years will stay another 10 and even though I know they all won’t; there is no buy-in at the top to start planning in case people at the senior management level do exit for whatever reason”.Want to get senior management’s attention in order to get buy-in to start planning? Put in front of them the replacement cost of someone at that level and the lost time in productivity due to someone at that level exiting unexpectedly. Most cost to replace stats (SHRM has some good resources on this) show a 100-200% of base salary cost and that doesn’t even factor in lost time due to productivity.
      2. In terms of addressing lack of time to address key HR pain point areas, two insights showed up from the conference during Dawn Hrdlica-Burke’s lunch keynote on HR needing a revival. Some simple, yet profound insights were offered as methods to get rid of the “stuff” and to devote time to purpose and addressing your greatest HR pain points.
        1. Get control of your email.

          A great guy was sitting next to me at the lunch. When she mentioned getting control of your email, he leaned over and said, “I’ve started checking email ONLY at Noon and at 4 pm and it has increased my productivity dramatically.” I knew he wasn’t joking when we emailed after the conference about getting together for some business development reasons and I got an automatic reply from him stating that he only checks email at Noon and 4, and he would respond to me during one of those times. Well done! What is he doing during with that increased productivity time? My hope would be he is addressing some of those key pain point areas that impact the bottom line.

        2. Delegate.

          3. Once you’ve maximized some productive time by not letting your email control you, you can either delegate 1) the stuff that is keeping you from getting to your critical HR pain point areas (and a pain point may actually be one of these) or you can 2) delegate the pain point area. For example, if compliance training is your number one pain point area that you don’t have enough time to get to (and I would tell you this isn’t a strategic priority, it is just a get it done and check if off thing), then find a quality vendor that can deliver this training for you in a way that leads to more efficiency. But wait you say, “I can’t do that, it will cost money and I’m back to my issue of lack of buy-in”. See number 1 above. Prove the value of outsourcing it to with data. You know you’ve found a good vendor when they can provide you with this data to prove it.

      We at Horizon Point spend a lot of time focusing on helping clients address those strategic pain point areas that are critical to employee development. Contact us if you need to consider how you might bring in help to address those priorities that lead to a more engaged workforce. And we can help you with the data to prove it’s worth it. An example here.

      What is one thing you can do today to address a pain point?

  • True Leadership is Servant Leadership: Cory’s Give Back

    True Leadership is Servant Leadership: Cory’s Give Back

    As our focus on leadership this month comes to a close, it is only fitting for us to highlight someone in our Passion + Productivity = Give Back feature whose passion is focused on developing leaders of all ages.

    Cory Wilbanks, Director of Leadership Development at the Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce, facilitates four yearlong leadership classes for members of the community. Her focus is on growing potential leaders as well as nurturing the skills of well-established leaders. She does this not only through the leadership programs, but also through her own personal volunteer efforts and supporting the volunteer efforts of others.

    When asked her passion, Cory says, “My passion is people. I love working with the participants in the four leadership classes the Chamber offers. The two youth programs give me the opportunity to get to know and work with students in our county. It is exciting to see all of the potential the students have and the opportunities before them. The adult programs give me the opportunity to get to know some of our up and coming community leaders and some well-established leaders as well. In addition to working with the leadership classes, I also get to work with our Commodores. The Commodore program is a group of volunteers that serve the Chamber and the Community. The best part of my job is that I get to meet and know all of the volunteers and participants with the leadership classes and Commodores. They are phenomenal people.”

    Cory gives credit for the success and growth of the leadership programs to the dedicated volunteers. She says, “The Chamber has been able to add an additional leadership class during the last couple of years. We have great volunteers that work with our leadership programs. These programs wouldn’t be possible without the volunteers.”

    Seeing that leadership is grounded in volunteerism, Cory spends time each week helping students at Hartselle High School determine their career and college direction. Her focus is on helping students find their passion so they can be productive in the work they do and grow to be leaders in the community that give back through a servant leadership mindset.

    She says, “I help students look at career options and give them opportunities to see those career options first hand. It is so exciting to help students discover their passion. I tell them how important it is that they LOVE their job. My goal is to help students find a career that is well suited for their skill set, in demand and something they will enjoy doing long term. I think you foster passion and productivity by having people do jobs that they enjoy and fit their skill set. If you have the right person doing the right job then they will be both productive and passionate.”

    True leadership is grounded in an attitude of service, which allows leaders to make more leaders. Cory does just that through her focus on people and on giving back.

    Wanting to enhance your leadership skills? You can learn more about the Chamber’s four leadership programs here.

  • Top 10 Leadership Quotes

    Top 10 Leadership Quotes

    What is leadership? In one word, leadership is influence. It’s the ability to accomplish things through others.

    Taken to the next level, and as the noble ideal that leadership has become (as opposed to say, management) great leadership involves positive influence that leads to positive results. Leadership makes others, and therefore the world, better through focus on people.

    With this in mind, here are some of the great leadership quotes that espouse what real leadership is:

    “Lead from the back- and let others believe they are in front.” Nelson Mandela

     

    “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” Sheryl Sanberg

     

    “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Benjamin Franklin

     

    “Leaders don’t create more followers, they create more leaders.” Tom Peters

     

    “Great leaders don’t set out to be a leader…they set out to make a difference. Its never about the role- always about the goal.”

     

    “Leadership is not a position or a title, it is action and example.”

     

    “Leaders take all the blame and give away all the credit.”

     

    “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.” John Buchan

     

    “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. Jack Welch

     

    “The key to successful leadership today is influence not authority.” Ken Blanchard