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"A rare CEO personal phone call: After making a customer complaint, I received a phone call from the CEO of Jiffy mix, the top producer of baking mixes in America."
While Jiffy competes by selling quality products at the lowest price (40 to 60 cents for corn muffins, for example), most American companies now try to sell their products by making people feel inadequate.
Many of our best and brightest minds shuffle paper and money ...to earn big salaries, while the real creators of wealth — bakers, builders, farmers, inventors, teachers, designers, and doctors are loaded down by debt.
Jiffy mix is a welcome trend-breaker.
According to CEO Holmes, "Our staff puts more emphasis on internal and external relationships than we do on completing tasks. This is very different from most companies ... Our dedication to strong family business values, combined with real world professionalism has us uniquely situated for the 21st Century."
Related posts by Deb:
"It's the double bottom line, baby! ESPECIALLY if you are in non-profit leadership today." I just heard Jeanne Bell, CEO and author of NonProfit Sustainability talk honestly about the double bottom line in her own business as well as in her consulting engagements. Her fresh, tested perspective rings true. In a nutshell: - ...in the mythic past it was possible to think first about strategic impact goals, and then about how to raise the money. ...today...you can't talk about what you're going to do without talking about how to get the money. And, you can't talk about how to get money without talking about what you're going to do.
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Cultivate direction, identify sacred cows. Name it. CHANGE it. _______________________ Here are some gems from her presentation today in Flint, Michigan as well as a great Scooped article by her. Flint is an appropriate setting; it's a place that has seen hard times and where the BEST Funders Collaborative brings in stellar talent to keep non-profits doing what they do best. - Declare change as constant.
- Model change by turning down money not headed in the right direction. We have some agency over this – don’t have to jump to funders. "
- Cultivate direction, identify sacred cows. Name it. CHANGE it.
- Use good tools, frameworks.
- DO NOT confuse strategy and planning.
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What is sustainable today may be unsustainable tomorrow. _______________________ Excerpted gems from the article: - If the financial goal in a for-profit company is to maximize profit, should our goal as a nonprofit be to have $0 profit? Or should the goal be to grow an endowment of $10 million, or to have a surplus of 5%, or a deficit of no more than $50,000?
- The financial goal of a nonprofit is to ensure that it has adequate working capital; that is, its financial goal is to have enough money to do its work over the long term. Today we often use the term sustainability...
- What is sustainable today may be unsustainable tomorrow. ...We never arrive at a mix of programs and revenue streams that can be described as permanently sustainable. But we can always be heading in the right direction.
Read about Jeanne's dual bottom line here. Now I'm hearing Paul Saginaw, co-founder of the very successful Zingermans community of businesses in Ann Arbor talk about founding Food Gatherers, feeding the hungry in Ann Arbor. Quite the point. Photo above: Jeanne Bell, Steve Zimmerman and Jan Masaoka (left to right in photo) are all former nonprofit CFOs and they all appreciate the environmental aspects of sustainability as well. Jeanne is now CEO of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services.
Is it wise to be so obsessed with speed? Businesses are forever saying that they need more creativity. Dithering & tinkering can help. In praise of smart procrastination:
..."slowing down makes us more ethical. When confronted with a clear choice between right and wrong, people are five times more likely to do the right thing if they have time to think about it than if they are forced to make a snap decision.
Organisations with a “fast pulse” (such as banks) are more likely to suffer from ethical problems than those that move more slowly.
More context in the original article here:
Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21558218?goback=%2Egde_1935110_member_133370249
"'Innovation campuses' are springing up everywhere" especially in the Midwest. ...the intentional cohabitation of academics and industry is key to all of them, something university leaders say made the ambitious and expensive projects palatable to legislators and voters even as the economy and higher ed appropriations shrunk. Here's sampling of what is under contruction, via Inside Higher Ed: ...many [are] in the Midwest and almost all involving fancy new buildings and partnerships between public colleges and private corporations. Public research universities have long had ties to state industries, and technology transfer is widespread in higher education.
The new innovation campuses include: - Kansas State University’s Olathe Innovation Campus, which was funded with a county sales tax and built on land donated by a municipality in the Kansas City suburbs.
- across the state line sits Missouri Innovation Campus, which is being built by the University of Central Missouri and has the enthusiastic support of Democratic Governor Jay Nixon.
- Nebraska Innovation Campus is under construction on the former state fairgrounds in Lincoln.
- One state away is South Dakota State University’s Innovation Campus.
- In Ohio, there’s Akron Innovation Campus.
- Even the Aussies are getting in on the fun. The University of Wollongong is home to its own Innovation Campus.
Via Society for College and University Planning (SCUP)
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"I’m sure you have, by now, heard the news."
It was the demands of the union, so many say. However, there are other perspectives to the Hostess story. It's time for a reality check on what's happening to the furture of the nostalgic Twinkie. ~ D
_______________________________ Time for a reality check. _______________________________
Excerpts:
More than a few observers say they know who to blame: the union representing thousands of striking Hostess Brand workers who have refused to accept a new contract that would do everything from slash their salaries to their retirement benefits. Time for a reality check. - Hostess has been sold at least three times since the 1980s, racking up debt and shedding profitable assets along the way with each successive merger.
- The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004, and again in 2011.
- Little thought was given to the line of products, which, frankly, began to seem a bit dated in the age of the gourmet cupcake. (100 calorie Twinkie Bites? Really?)
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Little thought was given to the products, which, seem a bit dated in the age of the gourmet cupcake. _______________________________
Hostess Brands’ management gave themselves several raises, all the while complaining that the workers who actually produced the products...were grossly overpaid... So now an estimated 18,500 workers will join the nation’s unemployment rolls. But ...it’s unlikely such a fate awaits such signature products as Twinkies. Company executives have already asked for ...permission to ...selling off their famed product lines to other companies.
Read the full article here.
Here's also a related, current article by Deb as arising out of failure offers great lessons from the wise:
Detroit & Vegas – A Tale of Two Cities as Our Comeback Kids
2 billion jobs disappearing (approx. 50% of the world's jobs) it was intended as a wakeup call about how quickly things are about to change. Academia ~ the battle ahead will be taking place at YOUR doorstep.
A search for comments on The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin reminded me of Bob Johansen, Futurist and also led me to another Futurist, Thomas Frey.
Here are excerpts from Frey's TEDx talk:
The article includes a brief overview of five (5) industries – where the jobs will be going away and the jobs that will likely replace at least some of them – over the coming decades.
1) Power Industry
Jobs Going Away - Power generation plants will begin to close down.
- Coal plants will begin to close down.
- Many railroad and transportation workers will no longer be needed.
- Even wind farms, natural gas, and bio-fuel generators will begin to close down.
- Ethanol plants will be phased out or repurposed.
- Utility company engineers, gone.
- Line repairmen, gone.
New Jobs Created - Manufacturing power generation units the size of ac units will go into full production.
- Installation crews will begin to work around the clock.
- The entire national grid will need to be taken down (a 20 year project). Much of it will be recycled and the recycling process alone will employ many thousands of people.
- Micro-grid operations will open in every community requiring a new breed of engineers, managers, and regulators.
2) Automobile Transportation – Going Driverless Over the next 10 years we will see the first wave of autonomous vehicles hit the roads, with some of the first inroads made by vehicles that deliver packages, groceries, and fast-mail envelopes. 3) Education - ...courses are becoming a commodity. Teachers only need to teach once, record it, and then move on to another topic or something else.
- ...we are transitioning from a teaching model to a learning model. Why do we need to wait for a teacher to take the stage in the front of the room when we can learn whatever is of interest to us at any moment?
Teaching requires experts. Learning only requires coaches. Jobs Going Away - Teachers.
- Trainers.
- Professors.
New Jobs Created - Coaches.
- Course designers.
- Learning camps
4) 3D Printers
Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands of items and thus undermines economies of scale. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did during the Henry Ford era.
5) Bots
We are moving quickly past the robotic vacuum cleaner stage to far more complex machines.
Read more, Thomas Frey - Futurist Speaker (http://s.tt/1imN0)
Read about Deb's perspective on change planning, facilitating, organizing, implementing or sustaining especially when dealing with demanding deadlines and short staffing via a recent blog posts here (key word search-able.)
"How’s your leadership working on in your VUCA world (Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous)? "
Liz Guthridge has written a great post on leading in a VUCA world; VCUA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, a term coined by the US Army War College in the weeks before September 11, 2001.
Liz & I discussed the need for collaboration and community across disciplines to succeed in a VUCA world in connection with our recent panel + Open Space presentation we did for a global change conference on Success Secrets of Trusted Change Advisors.
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VUCA can provide threats [and] offer opportunities, especially if you translate VUCA as “vision, understanding, clarity and agility.” ~ Dr. Bob Johansen __________________________
Here are some excerpts of her take on the insightful presentation by one of our keynote presenters:
"Leading in a VUCA world" is a popular phrase with Bob Johansen, a distinguished fellow and former president of Institute for the Future.
According to Dr. Johansen, who shared his 2020 forecast at the Association of Change Management Professionals global conference this week, our VUCA world is not going away. In fact it’s just going to spin faster during the next decade.
In his talk “External Future Forces That Will Disrupt the Practice of Change Management,” Dr. Johansen noted that VUCA is not necessarily doom and gloom. While VUCA can provide threats, it also can offer opportunities, especially if you translate VUCA as “vision, understanding, clarity and agility.”
As for his two big 2022 predictions for organizational change agents, they are:
1. “The digital natives (now 16 years or younger) will create new practices to make change through gaming.” (The other key phrase besides gaming in this sentence is “make.” Dr. Johansen predicts that a culture of makers will drive the next generation of change. And as a result, leaders need to show the “maker instinct” trait.)
2. “Reciprocity-based innovation will focus on the economic, social and psychological value of reciprocity.” (Two important traits for leaders are smart-mob organizing and commons creating. Think Creative Commons.)
Dr. Johansen challenged the 825 of us in attendance to figure out how to help people and organizations adapt to these changes and others.
To do this, we should watch our terms and our questions. Read Liz's full post here.
Summary: From Michael Fullan’s session, Leadership for All, - The question: What practices lead to effective leadership in change? 9 insights of leadership. 1. Relationships first (too fast/too slow): The art of change is hitting that sweet spot — don’t come in so fast that you put people off, nor so slow that you get absorbed by culture. >> Careful entry to new setting >> Listening to and learning from those who have been there longer >> Engaging in fact finding and joint problem solving >> Carefully (rather than rashly) diagnosing the situation 2. Honor the implementation dip 3. Beware of fat plans 4. Behaviors before beliefs 5. Communication during implementation is paramount >> Pair-Share in meetings: generating ideas & problem solving. 6. Learn about implementation during implementation 7. Excitement prior to implementation is fragile 8. Take risks and learn 9. Its okay to be assertive
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