New values are creating a shift in business

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Benita Matofska, Corbett Network, Generation Share, Global Sharing Week, Lady Val Corbett, Lady Val Corbett Network

Business is shifting into something that is not the old normal …  and it is being led by Change-makers, courageous individuals who are bringing the different values of caring and sharing to the commercial space once largely driven by wealth creation.  This was the assertion of the guest speaker Benita Matofska at Lady Val’s lunchtime Zoom meeting this month.

Lady Val Corbett hosted the group of women leaders from her network of supporters who donate to the Corbett Network charity for ex-Offender reintegration. This is actually a regular networking lunch but in these times, this means the fund-raising has shifted online, along with the conversation… we pay less for our tickets and make our own grub at home!  There is no travel and no need to dress up. That’s what it’s like for all of us these days .. adaptation is the key word. But wherever we are, in the dining room at Browns in London or in our own kitchens, it is wonderful to listen to a speaker who is passionate about her subject.

And Benita Matofska was passionate indeed sharing her purposeful life-calling of alerting people to how they can become change-makers themselves.  Interestingly, as she itemised a 4-step process that she takes businesses through to become a ChangeMaker organisation, it is reassuring to see that some of us are already running change-maker businesses but perhaps we have not thought about them in quite that way. Or we have not applied this new vocabulary to what we do. 

Benita is an international expert on the Sharing Economy.  She is the founder the global charity The People Who Share and created Global Sharing Week, an annual campaign reaching over 100 million people. Her unique insights to people and companies enable them to adopt new mind-sets and become ‘change-maker businesses’ fit for the future.  Benita has accomplished a great deal in her 30-year career and received many awards including Inspirational Woman of the Year and has spoken to audiences including: the European Parliament, European Cities Marketing Summit, Global Women’s Forum, Financial Times European Sharing Economy Summit, House of Commons, House of Lords,10 Downing Street, London School of Economics and TEDxFrankfurt. 

She has developed an expertise in the Sharing Economy, something that has taken root over the last decade and was seeded out of the global financial crisis. 

Of course the upside of a good crisis is the potential to create much needed change for without the impetus of that, things just roll on as normal. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention. So much has changed in the last four months that it is clear the world is not going back to normal.  In her capacity as a counsellor for the One Young World Congress she met Desmond Tutu, and she quoted him as saying “A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry. It gives a chance, an opportunity to choose well, or to choose badly.” Never has that been more pertinent than during this pandemic. It is time for us all to choose well. Benita highlighted the potential for business to thrive if choices are made around different values.

The swift arrival of the coronavirus crisis, meant that businesses had to change very quickly in order to survive.  Having become a spokesperson in the media and her increasingly high profile consultancy, Benita has been well-placed to see and draw attention to the potential for change in the pandemic. She said she has seen three types of sharing that has been taking place in the last few months. 

1. Shared action. We’ve had the biggest volunteer effort since the Second World War, 750,000 people came forward to volunteer for the NHS in just 48 hours.  There has also been another pandemic happening .. that of a kindness pandemic all over the world where people have come out in their communities to help feed others and to make sure that people receive the necessary supplies. It’s been an extraordinary time for action.  As well as individual volunteers delivering food, businesses have been taking action as well coming together and forming partnerships and collaborations across sectors, even with competitors. That shared action has been incredibly important for businesses to look at how can their normal products and services they sell commercially now be adapted to be of support in a time of need. Businesses have pivoted and changed to participate in this shared action, with for example perfume suppliers reconfiguring their businesses so they can make and deliver hand sanitizer. 

2. Shared understanding. COVID-19 has led many of us to reevaluate who we are, what we can contribute, what’s important in our world, spending more time at home, really starting to be grateful for, and value the things, that are important in life, and also to spend more time in nature.  There has been a shift in values with this whole idea of identifying key workers who are the people who are saving and transforming lives in our society. These are the people, many in low paid caring and cleaning roles who have previously been invisible.  Everyone has been forced to re-evaluate and take a really hard look at what value we bring. It is no longer the case that we can solely focus on commercial value, we need to be considering environmental value, and social value. 

3. Shared responsibility. We’ve been staying at home to protect lives. Social distancing was unheard of a few months ago.  We have all stepped into the collective responsibility that we need to protect each other and that we’re in this together. We really responded to the need to work together in order to consider the greater good, and to save millions of lives. We have witnessed this as an extraordinary effort around the world too. But what we’ve also seen is the shared responsibility in terms of business know-how, a business’s understanding that to survive in the future they need to adapt and change, and take on this collective responsibility for people and the planet. Benita urged that only those businesses that can and will do that, and become what she referred to as Change-maker companies .. they are the ones who will survive, not just this crisis but into the future.

Benita spent the last four years working on an extraordinary project called Generation Share. She wanted to find out more about ChangeMakers .. who are the people themselves, the social entrepreneurs, the innovators, the business people who all care about people and planet and want to transform communities and societies at large, and not just focus on wealth creation. Who are the people leading a shift in business? The resulting book Generation Share, is the world’s first collection of successful, new, impactful business models and initiatives that are transforming lives and became a best-seller last year. Through stunning photography, social commentary and interviews with 200 change-makers, Generation Share showcases extraordinary stories demonstrating the power of Sharing. She found a hugely diverse range of projects and people including a rebel supermarket, fashion library, low carbon logistics companies and trust cafes. 

Benita gathered a vast amount of intelligence on the who and how of change-making and during her fund-raising she was contacted via LinkedIn by a young girl in Mumbai.   

“I hope my voice will reach you.  My name is Aarti Naik. I’m a slum-based young girl Change-maker. I run, the Sakhi School, a slum School for Girls in Mumbai, India. We share knowledge and the chance of a positive future for girls. I would like to be part of your project because I am Generation Share. I strongly believe that because of you and your initiative my slum based girls voices’ will reach globally.”  Wow, how extraordinary, moving and inspiring to receive such a communication from a young girl across the world, working in a slum.  

Benita’s book project is becoming a powerful voice bringing visibility to extraordinary initiatives like Aarti’s.  She explained that the goal of Generation Share has been about changing the narrative. She read us an excerpt from the introduction to her book:

‘You only find things or people when you go looking for them. I went to look for Generation Share for the brave, positive change-makers. I intentionally sought out the positive stories, the stories of hope. Positivity is an important characteristic of the sharing economy, because it provides a much needed antidote to the disease of cynicism and negativity that’s destroying our world. It’s the language of the new economy. It offers people healing, and hope and inspiration, much needed at a time when hate, totalitarianism and populism are winning votes. We have a global crisis of responsible leadership, but to tackle complex problems, we need solution-focused socially-conscious, but above all, positive leaders …. change-makers.   I believe that by elevating the status of good, positivity and consciousness, we can begin to change our malfunctioning world.’

Benita asked a very simple question: “What does sharing mean to you?”  When she asked this question of Kenyan campaigner Nanjira Sambuli who enables women in sub-Saharan Africa to access digital resources, her reply was “Sometimes when we talk about sharing, it’s tangible stuff. We never talk about the softer stuff, your time, your energy, the idea of always showing up, being present.  There’s still that inequality. I can go into a room with men and be the only black woman but I have to keep showing up because unless I do, one day, that door is going to be locked. Even if you’re the person for the diversity poster. If you’re in a room and everybody looks the same, and they are making decisions about the world, it’s a problem. So keep on showing up, have a voice”. 

There’s a lesson to be learned for all businesses. What can we do to ensure that through our businesses, we are able to share that voice, that we’re able to offer that opportunity and ensure that we are more diverse? How can we reach out to help to redress that imbalance in the inequality that so clearly exists in our world?

The whole idea of dependence on others has become very apparent during the COVID-19 crisis, the idea that we cannot get through this pandemic without the support of others.

We are all surrounded by an invisible infrastructure of support

Jacob Berkson is an extraordinary change-maker who set up Thousand 4 £1000 a crowdfunding platform to raise rent for refugees. Jacob is a disabled man in a wheelchair. When asked what does sharing mean to him, this is what he had to say: “One thing that’s nice about being disabled, is that it makes you aware of your own dependence on other people. I can’t get dressed, go to the toilet or eat without assistance. Of course no one else can either, right. We invisiblise the sewage worker. We invisiblise the people who make the clothes. They are somewhere else, but your dependence on them is enormous.”

Sharing is just very visible when you’re disabled, and how interesting is it that during this crisis. These key workers have become so much more visible. As businesses, what can we do to increase that visibility? What can we do to share that value to enable people to be able to access the resources that they need. How can our businesses make a positive contribution?

Valuing the Milk of Human Kindness – literally

Another change-maker is an extraordinary woman a doctor called Natalie Schenker who set up the UK’s first human milk bank, sharing breast milk to enable sick or premature babies to survive. It’s estimated around the world that over 1.2 million lives of babies have been saved through the sharing of breast milk and milk banks. Benita asked one of the volunteers who works with Natalie about sharing and she said ”You have to imagine you’re in an ICU unit, your child is in an incubator, there are tubes and cables everywhere, and he can’t even breathe by himself. Knowing that my baby could still be fed by donor milk, was the moment I thought, I’m so thankful that somebody took the time to share their milk. It came through a chain of people who were willing to share. We need to get back to that and not be so engrossed in our own lives. All women who are able to share their milk are heroes to me”.

Lessons in exchange for football

Another young change-maker featured in Generation Share with whom Benita has kept in touch during the pandemic is Ashok Rathod, a football coach who founded the Oscar Foundation. They work with slum-based children to enable them to have an education, using football, as a way to entice those children into education.  The kids don’t get to play football, unless they have succeeded and attended various courses in maths English literacy, science and so on. During this pandemic, Ashok has been safely delivering food to over 5000 slum-based families in southern Mumbai. The team’s mission has been, how can we ensure that our communities survive, whilst at the same time being able to find ways to deliver education in a digital way so that those slum-based kids can stay safely at home. 

Buying the Book makes a positive contribution

The innovative Generation Share book co-authored with photographer Sophie Sheinwald is an inspiring read. Every single copy of the book, helps to feed and educate a girl in the slums in Mumbai, and also plant a tree through the Eden reforestation project. Benita believes that whatever type of business, charity or social enterprise we can all find ways to make a positive contribution to society. In the future, unless we become these Change-maker businesses and organisations, she says we simply won’t survive. So as businesses we need to become change-makers, in order to survive this pandemic, and the future crisises that will happen.  Buy your copy here.

Learnings from these Generation Share change-makers 

From the extensive research for her book, Benita identified six key characteristics that every single one of these change-makers had. Take these onboard and your business is more likely to survive further crises in the future.

1. The ability to share:  Change-makers show us that we need to ask important questions. How can your company share? What’s your collaborative advantage, because in the future, how well you can partner and collaborate will determine your future success. 
2. Bravery. Change-makers are brave. They reinvent the rules…. because what has now become clear … there’s no such thing as business as usual.
3. Adaptable. Change-Makers are adaptable.  Your company can only survive and contribute to the planet and society at large if you can change and adapt.  
4. Love. Change-makers put love at the heart of everything that they do,  love and care for people and the planet. They consider the impact of their actions. Businesses that do put more love into their operation will be the ones to thrive in the future. 
5. Positivity is an important characteristic of Change-makers.  They are positive and solution-focused. 
6. Future facing. Change-makers see the bigger picture. They consider the wider impact of what they’re doing. And they’re interested in systemic change. 

To weather the uncertainty that the world is clearly going through, even without the challenges from COVID-19, companies need to become Change-makers and learn lessons from these brave young people.  Benita works with companies helping them make this shift.  She takes them through a four stage process. She gave us a few highlights of some of the key questions she asks her clients. 

These are helpful for you to ask yourself about your own business endeavour

1. What does your business currently do that is needed in a time of crisis? 
2. Using your existing capability, consider what could your company do that is needed in a time of crisis?  
3. What do you do need in order to make that happen?
4. What aspects of your core business, could you deliver digitally? What we need to acknowledge is that technology has transformed the way we’ve been able to respond to this crisis. More and more businesses are now operating online because they have to, while before they could not see the possibility. Who would have though in just February of this year that you would be consulting your doctor on Zoom, court cases would take place online .. even the Prime Minister’s cabinet meeting would be online on Zoom instead of in Downing Street. Those are big shifts that people have had to adjust to, in just weeks and in some cases days.

Along with the many efficiencies that have been made we have had many important benefits in terms of our climate crisis too. It’s clear that your sustainable future as a business depends on you becoming a change-maker company, how well you can:

• share 
• be brave 
• be adaptable
• be positive 
• show love for people and the planet 
• consider the future impact of everything that you do. 

The power of a great question

Benita started out with the quest of finding out who are these change-makers and what does sharing mean to them. During this journey she discovered that sharing is everywhere….if we look for it. It’s in our homes or communities or schools or businesses or cities or villages, it’s an unlimited supply within each of us.

Sharing is something that goes beyond gender and culture. It’s simply a human thing. This Generation Share shows that to share is to be human. And these human values powering our businesses will make the difference that will help us all survive and ride out future storms.

To watch a video recording of Benita’s talk then click here. (Start at 15 mons 30 secs to hear Benita)

If you want to find out HOW your business could become a Change-maker company contact Benita.

The Paradox of Women’s lingering Inequality and the Power they hold in their hands for a New Future

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#LindaCrompton #TheLeadersClub

watch Linda’s talk recorded on Facebook Live 

The Leaders Club co-hosted a special event on transformational leadership with the University of Kent Business School in Canterbury in May. The second speaker was Linda Crompton from Dallas, Texas, an alumni of the Business School’s first MBA program.  Linda was the first woman to head a bank in North America and also to lead a bank that  pioneered responsible investment principles.   Now she is a leader in gender equality as the CEO and President of Leadership Women, the largest of its kind in the USA.

The Decisions you make have Consequences that Ripple Out

Key achievements for Linda were her initiatives in banking.  She started working for Van City Credit Union in Canada, the largest credit union in the world, an extremely progressive organisation. Van City’s particular focus was to help employees to connect their decision making to the community who would be impacted. This was highly novel at the time. They key was to fully realise the impact of your decision. 

Once you Connect the Dots .. Your Eyes are Opened and there is no Going Back

The bank encouraged her to return to the UK and study her MBA in Kent. This is where she came across the notion that business and finance and sustainability were all connected. It is arrogant to think that humans are the organising force when in reality, nature is the organising force. The MBA at Kent helped her to realise that it is an illusion to separate your banking decisions from the downstream impact. You cannot pretend those downstream impacts will not happen. This became a watershed moment in her career … she connected the dots to see the bigger picture and was instrumental in directing the rest of her career. She never took up a mainstream job after that … once you know what you know and see how things are put together  .. you cannot not know again!   

Asking Different Questions leads to Better Outcomes

When she returned to Van City she started to ask different questions, like why were the approval rates for women much lower than they were for men? The answer .. the women don’t just meet the criteria. Then you find out on looking that the criteria are all based on male criteria, which include higher levels of pay for longer periods of time, which of course do not include the interruptions of maternity leave. She could also see what it was costing the organisation when they let go of trained women who left to start a family. There was no provision for that. She set up a new program, copied from Europe, called Return to Work, to provide flexible support for women.  The rate of loss was cut down from 70% down to 20%. It was life-changing for so many women.

In 1996, within two years of taking her MBA at Kent she was inspired to create the first electronic bank, and the first one with a social mandate in Canada.  There were many obstacles and much resistance but she could see the ways the future would happen.  She was on the first Board of Directors for Ethical Investing, where mutual funds were ethically screened.  She could see this was the future. They started training people about money itself. When they surveyed their customers they found that people had no idea what happened to their money once it was in the bank …. these were the early days of impact investing. Founding the bank became a vehicle to put into practice the new ideas she learned in her Kent MBA.

Strong Ethics Emerging in Banking and Investing 

Linda was headhunted to run the Investor Responsibility Research Centre in Washington, DC. This had been a leader and influential in the anti-apartheid movement, and they continued to do ground-breaking research in climate change and human trafficking.  

Linda’s next move was to the oldest and most successful leadership organisation for women in the USA.  Latest World Economic Forum report says it will take another 118 years to achieve full gender parity around the world. She is preparing more women to take on leadership roles.

Massive Push for Change now happening in the USA

The hidden blessing of President Trump is that his election has been a catalyst for so many women running for public office. Perhaps Hillary Clinton may have been less of a catalyst in getting women forward!  She Should Run, a partner organisation in Washington DC reports a 150% increase in the number of women putting themselves forward for political office. This is a real moment for women in the USA. There is a renewed push for change.

In Canada, so very different to the USA, President Justin Trudeau appointed a 50/50 gender balanced cabinet and brushed off media questions about this with .. this is the way it should be in 2016. 

Women Still Lagging Behind

With regard to wage parity, the Financial Times recently reported that in the UK there is a median wage gap of 19.4%, two thirds of of the highest paid staff are men.. the trends are the same in the USA where for every dollar earned by a man, a caucasian woman earns 78 cents, an African American woman makes  64 cents and a Latina earns just 54 cents. 

The Workforce in Leading Edge Fields is Unbalanced 

The USA Bureau of Labour Statistics latest report shows that women now make up 51.4% of management and professional roles yet only 5% of CEOs are female and hold 16.9% of Board seats across the country. In Silicon Valley 86% of the engineers and 74% of the computer professionals who work there are men. Facebook, Google and Apple workforces are 70% male with no female board members. Wall Street is similarly unbalanced. Women of colour are statistically  invisible. 

A Crisis Point: Has Progress Stalled? 

The World Economic Forum says the world is going backwards, the parity gap in wealth, politics, education and the workplace has widened for the first time since records began in 2006. At this rate of progress the gender gap will not close for another 217 years.  Aside from human rights, continuing to omit women from the top ranks is the single most important factor in determining a country’s competitiveness in the market.  Women must be integrated, as an important force into their talent pool. In the UK, it is suggested that gender parity could add £250 billion to GDP. And closing the gender gap of economic participation by 25% by 2025 would increase  global GDP by $5.3 trillion. Social change is glacially slow.

A fourth wave is coming … progress will happen over the next decade.

Countries that have previously excluded women, like Saudi Arabia are starting to make major changes.  Generation X and Millennials are visibly energised around this issue. New generations will drive faster change.

The biggest transfer of wealth in history is happening over the next decade

Change will also be driven by women acquiring significant financial muscle. 45% of USA millionaires are women, 48% of estates worth more than $5 million are controlled by women and in 2013 60% of high net worth women made their own fortunes, rather than inherited. Projections show that by 2030 as much as two thirds of all wealth in the USA will be controlled by women. How will this shift in gender wealth influence philanthropy? Significant changes could take place …women’s funds are already working to address inequality with more women seeking to drive change by working at the legislative level and public policy as well as impact investing.  

Massive growth in Impact investing 

The field of impact investing has the power to bring about a lot of change including making faster progress on gender and race equality. Investment instruments that employ ESG (environment, social and governance factors) have grown 135% in assets under management since 2012, and it has now surpassed $9 trillion in the USA. It continues to grow exponentially, with rapid growth attracting more attention. 

Meeting Social Needs Ahead of Profits

She was on the Board of the World Business Academy based in Southern California, which had as its mission to help business to assume responsibility for the whole … recognising that business  is the most important force on earth. Nothing else works like business does and the drive for profit. Willis Harman,  founder of Institute of Noetic Sciences, was convinced that business needed to return to its roots and provide a public service or to meet a public need.  Business charters used to be granted on the basis that you would improve society or individual’s lives. Subsequently profit became the organising principle and that is where things really changed. Profit is good but profit maximisation can do real harm.

New Alliances are Emerging

Hybrid organisations where you not only make profit but achieve social impact goals are on the rise and are exciting.  It is in the interest of business to take on societal change because if nothing else, they need to protect their markets.

The way that all these factors are converging .. the rise and power of women, the changing nature of investment, the interest of younger generations in addressing global issues like refugees, extreme polarisation of wealth, the proliferation of drugs … all of which contribute to societal instability, which make the business environment more difficult. 

Different values will inform a new kind of leadership 

All of these things call for new era leadership meaning more human value systems than the current GDP which are meaningless. In a system that looks more profitable as more people get ill is crazy.  There are real limitations to this measurement.

New Era Leadership: Women have an Opportunity to Drive Change 

Just simply moving more women into leadership roles to continue to perpetuate all the problematic systems we have now, will not be the answer. Unless women move in there with a better sense of what change needs to be made, it is a huge missed opportunity. 

We can’t blame the men .. it is the system we have created. There are many men who are supportive and involved in redressing the gender balance.

The financial system is flawed and nobody has been held accountable for the crash of 2008. Many people are unhappy about this.

 There is an opportunity when women move into these positions of power to bring about some change. Women have an obligation to help other women when they have the power and the means. 

Linda’s Pearl of Wisdom: remind yourself of any blindspot you have. It is not what you don’t know, it is what you absolutely know with certainty that trips you up. What are the blindspots in your worldview.

Ask a different question

Rather than asking “How much money can I make when I have an MBA?” a better question “What kind of world do I want and what role can I play in making that world happen?”

watch the recording of Linda on Facebook Live

https://www.theleadersclub.org

https://www.kent.ac.uk/kbs/

https://leadership-women.org

People Want Companies to do Good – that requires Transformational Leadership

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#LindaMinnis #TheLeadersClub

Speaking at the Leaders Club event at Kent Business School, Linda Minnis, seen here (right) with Gina Lazenby, talked about how business is shifting with more organisations taking on responsibility for social change and using their global reach for good. Drawing on the long legacy of the chocolate barons’ foundations, todays’ younger generations are pushing their employers to take on and do more to close the global wealth gap.

Linda’s talk was captured on Facebook Live. Click here to watch

The Leaders Club co-hosted a special event on transformational leadership with the University of Kent Business School in Canterbury in May. The first of two speakers was Linda Minnis, Chief Executive of the Charities Trust, and a founder member of The Leaders Club.

The event was recorded on Facebook Live and is available to view at this link.

The World Needs Responsible Business

Linda started by highlighting the need for responsible business and said that this was not something that could simply be bolted on to an organisation, almost like an extra department but it had to be at the very heart of the operation for it to have any real meaning and impact. She gave examples of the inspiration and vision that many companies were bringing to their giving programs by leveraging their resources and creating alliances that were having real impact in the world. Big business has a big capacity to make big change in the world.

Global Goals Provide a Ready Template for Visionary Businesses

Linda talked about the Sustainable Development Goals otherwise known as the Global Goals, which are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.  These 17 goals were launched by the United Nations in January 2016.  Adopted by 170 countries, they contain 169 individual goals inside the 17 categories and represent one of the most ambitious programs in human history to create massive change. For companies and organisations seeking to make a difference in the world, there are plenty of opportunities for them to align their resources and vision. 

People Want Companies to do Good

Linda said there is a definite business case for doing this. A Nielsen study in 60 countries showed that 55% of online customers would pay more for goods and services supplied by organisations who demonstrated a commitment to positive social change and environmental impact.

71% of the world’s population live on less than $10 per day and the only way to make a significant increase in people’s prosperity, globally, would be for civil society, government and corporations to make alliances and use their combined powers to create change. One such initiative, the Global Vaccine Alliance has managed to prevent 9 million deaths though immunisation. Acting with other agencies, the private sector has enormous power that can be harnessed with the right vision.

Good Business has a Long History in the UK

The question is how to engage fully and provide the necessary leadership for projects of real transformation? Linda pointed out that in the UK we have a long history of business leaders doing good things. Joseph Rowntree established a foundation over 100 years to provide housing for employees, and this continues today to seek to understand the root cause of social problems.  The Cadbury Foundation also supported their employees and communities with housing. Today, Comic Relief is an example of successfully influencing the face of fundraising by making things fun to do while the organisation focusses on how to spend the money. 

UK private giving is an incredible £20 billion per annum, £12 billion of which still comes from individual giving and Trusts like the Wellcome Foundation, with money continuing to come in from foundation investments set up decades ago.  

How do we engage the business community of today?

Linda was involved in research five years ago that showed 4 key predictions about companies and giving. We can see now much of this starting to happen:

1 Commercialisation – Giving and Doing Good will be Woven into Business Planning

Companies will seek long term profits from their corporate giving. Community programs will be set up to deliver commercial value as well as meeting social needs. Their activities will be aligned with something meaningful. Corporate giving will continue but perhaps within the framework of for-profit ventures. The future is more Win-Win-Win-Win. HSBC is an example of a company investing tens of millions into social investment because they see it pays a greater return.

The social investment market is quite new but it is now worth about £2 billion across 4000 investments. Doing good is not just right it is profitable too.

2 Innovation Unleashed – Make it Easy, Fast and Painless for People to Give

New technology, innovative channels and interactive media, will cause an explosion in ground-breaking new practices. Digital technology will allow for real time tracking of impact and will allow giving to fit around busy lives. online volunteering by employees supporting digital causes will become more prominent. Look at JustGiving who raise half a billion a year. Make it easy for people to swipe their card at an event and give quickly.

3 Collaborative Coalitions – Rise Above Competition for the Greater Good

Large scale multi stakeholder coalitions will harness collective skills and drive transformational change. Corporate giving  will build loyal and effective working relationships between customers, suppliers, not-for-profit and government agencies. Collaborations including those with competitors will amplify impact and a philosophy of social action will emerge. Bigger businesses are going to be bigger stakeholders in fixing the world. The setting aside of competitive differences will benefit all organisations in terms of enhanced reputation. An example is a £25 million alliance of Tesco and the British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK to tackle major health issues.

4 Cause Related Movements – Campaigns become Exciting and Energised into Movements

Billions of customers will be mobilised to give up their time, second hand items and their fresh ideas for social campaigning.  Companies will facilitate large scale donations through movement fund-raising, and will create a truly engaging consumer experience around causes.  

Take on Causes that Excite the Employees

The Charities Trust, started from Littlewoods, is now 30 years old and administers £100 million of giving for 1000 clients, an amount that has trebled in the last eight years, a big achievement for the charitable sector.  Many of her clients lead the way in employee engagement to support communities that are dear to the staff, and not just the organisation itself.  Previously it was all about what the company was going to do … now, it is about the employees deciding and the company supporting that. It helps employee retainment and turns staff into good leaders. 

The Charities Trust works with the Costa Foundation which has supported 72 schools in nine countries, and not all in places where they trade. The Trust has also worked with Big Issue Invest who raised £50 million in the last five years to support the homeless agenda, attracting institutional investors and philanthropists.  Clients like Nandos might just sell chicken but they also really care about people dying where they source their chicken, particularly of malaria.

A New Philanthropy is Emerging

The next generation of philanthropists will emerge from these young companies and their younger demographic. 

For more details of other events hosted by the Leaders Club visit the site here.

See the next post for …… the second speaker was Linda Crompton, an alumni of the Business School’s first MBA program.  Linda was the first woman to head a bank in North America and also to lead a bank that  pioneered responsible investment principles.   Now she is a leader in gender equality as the CEO and President of Leadership Women, the largest of its kind in the USA………

Wise Leadership Dinner in San Francisco

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#runamagnus #ginalazenby #moniqueblokzyl #shayallie #brookscole #benjaminmaurice, #wiseleadership #wisdom2.0

 

Wise Leadership will come from a joint venture of the sexes to transform leadership in the 2020s

A special event in San Francisco brought together consultants and entrepreneurs from three continents during the international Wisdom 2.0 Summit in February. The dialogue was about “Wise Leadership in the 21st Century and the contribution of women and men in an era shifting towards the feminine.”  Thirty five leaders attended the event which was hosted by a delegation of four women from Europe, all founding members from ‘The Network for Transformational Leaders’. Their work connects them with leaders around the globe and each had come from countries where their Prime Ministers are women: Iceland, Germany and the UK.  That link led to the enquiry on how leadership styles might be shifting in a changing world.

Round table discussions were set up over dinner with one question about leadership on each table. There was an animated dialogue throughout the evening culminating in each  table sharing insights gleaned.  The questions provoked discussion on what made leaders wise,  how values are shifting in leadership and the kind of leadership that will be required to lead humanity into the future and navigate the massive waves of change that are affecting every aspect of society over the next decade.

When the group looked at what kind of future we wanted and what the world needs as it transitions over the next decade, the discussion pulled together a list of characteristics and qualities which were mostly deemed to represent the feminine aspect of human nature.  Even if women are not the leaders, these qualities are what men and women will need to exhibit.

• The ability to be open, receptive and listen, particularly paying attention to all voices so that everyone feels heard was high on all lists.
• The need to show genuine fairness and bring people together, being adept at growing relationships and building community.
• There is a sense that the future holds even greater complexity so a shared and diverse approach to problem solving will be our only chance of finding our way into potential solutions.
• That complexity is going to require an ability to think holistically and to really create an integrated approach so that we avoid many of the unintended consequences we see happening today as a bi-product of the advances made in technology.
• Emotional intelligence will be what sustains successful leaders and will therefore have a much higher priority than the task achievements accumulated on a cv. Character over curriculum.
• Gone will be the action hero archetype to be replaced by an individual whose strength is measured by their ability to be vulnerable, admit their mistakes and be open to learning new approaches.
• Ability to slow down: Being able to adjust speeds and valuing the need for pacing and slowing down. Fast-pacing is a highly prized modality but it not only risks mistakes, it can lead to burn-out. Being more measured and understanding the power of pausing will be the sign of a sustainable leader.
• Keeping back the ego .. the new mantra is less about “me” and more about “we”.
• More heart-centred: Learning to think and operate from the heart as well as the head.

During the discussion somebody quipped that it was going to be difficult to find individuals who have all of these qualities and who would be prepared to take on leadership in critical times. Co-host Gina Lazenby responded  “The idea that people are waiting for rare and capable individuals to step into high-ranking positions is in itself an old paradigm idea. 

Yes we will always need great leaders who lead teams, groups and movements but the nature of leadership itself is changing. What is emerging now is the need for everyone to step into their own leadership capacities and find these qualities within so they can bring them to the fore. More and more of us will have our leadership moment.”

Runa Magnus, the co-host from Iceland said that “The cross cultural discussions from this evening show a universal desire for a leadership with very different values to what has been normal practice but they are still all human values. In the future will need to draw on different capacities that may have been dormant and in this respect, perhaps women will be leading the way”.

Both Runa and co-host Gina Lazenby from the UK gave insights into the leadership styles of the high profile European female leaders. Gina spoke of the challenges facing the British prime minister Theresa May who swept into the vacuum left after the Brexit vote debacle with a massive mandate for massive change. Although she had many good ideas for decreasing the inequality in the country, somewhere along the line she listened to the wrong advice and called a snap general election which unexpectedly removed her majority.  Now she finds herself in the difficult position of being a negotiator and less of a visionary.  It is difficult too judge how well she is doing in the job since nobody wants to take on this poisoned chalice of Brexit.

On the other hand, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is a rare leader who is revered by her peers across the world and held in high esteem in her own country. She has also shown a pragmatic ability to change, setting aside her own personal beliefs, in the case of marriage equality, and allowing legislation through as she felt it served the greater good.  Despite her conservative stance and approach, she has also kept the Left and Right happy. Few leaders in history manage that. Runa spoke of the newly elected Prime Minster of Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, a mother of three who, even though she is a champion of left green politics managed to create a coalition with the far right party. Says Runa, “These kind of convening skills of bringing differing groups together are going to be a necessary leadership skill as we move away from either/or polarised politics of the left and right. There are more voices that need to be heard and brought together and these women leaders are showing great listening skills in finding common ground.”

There is no argument that a new type of leader is needed if humanity is to evolve, move forward and reach our true potential.  Few employees would want to spend more time at work and even fewer want to work longer hours.  Despite our advances in technology, medicine, education and communication; unhappiness, internal discontent and psychological exhaustion is the norm.

Our work, our research, our workshops have uncovered the need for a revolutionary kind of leadership.  We welcome you to join us in an adventure of courage.  A call to transform our old paradigm.  Women and men have done it in the past.  What can we do as “one” and “together?”

The event was co-hosted by Gina Lazenby, Runa Magnus, Shay Allie and Monique Blokyl, and supported by Benjamin Maurice and Brooks Cole, also from the Network for Transformational Leaders.

Each table gave feedback on their discussions