Do you need to leave your existing business or role to become a social entrepreneur? No. In fact, the best strategy is to add social entrepreneurship activities to your current role.
A social entrepreneur is someone who desires to impact social value through economic activities. Business owners, corporate leaders and employees can all claim to be social entrepreneurs. To start down this path, here are three suggestions:
1. Read – This Inc. Magazine article provides a nice overview and references several other reading sources: http://tinyurl.com/3dgjlrn. Two other good books include:
- Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know by David Bornstein and Susan Davis (Apr 16, 2010)
- The Social Entrepreneur’s Handbook: How to Start, Build, and Run a Business That Improves the World by Rupert Scofield (Mar 23, 2011)
2. Engage – Find a social entrepreneur in your community and engage with him/her or find a social enterprise and volunteer. The Social Enterprise Alliance (https://www.se-alliance.org/) is a national organization with local chapters that will lead you to several individuals and organizations.
3. Pick a cause - What trips your triggers? gives you energy? Of course reading and visiting with others will help you define a path. Takenote of your past volunteer and philanthropic endeavors. Which did you enjoy? What was their cause? Can you build upon that elsewhere in your role as a social entrepreneur? Any synergies that you can create in your life helps you to be more successful. For example, in my history, my volunteer work always focuses on women and girls and/or poverty relief.
Stay tuned to this blog as we explore more ways to become a social entrepreneur and social enterprise organizations.
Social entrepreneurship is a trend being carried into the business world by two generations, the baby boomers and Generation Y. The former group wants to leave a legacy; the latter group hopes to put society ahead of personal wealth. What is a social entrepreneur?
A social entrepreneur places high value on achieving social and environmental value, sometimes in concert with economic value. Understanding the different forms of social entrepreneurship helps to clarify how social entrepreneurs operate. The three main types of social entrepreneurships include:
1. A for-profit organization that promotes both social value and economic value. Examples include Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, a corporation that endeavors to close the gap between executive salaries and employee salaries by limiting the ratio to 5:1. Or, Tom’s Shoes, which donates one pair of shoes to a child in Africa for every pair that it sells. Or, another example is the Grameen Bank started in Bangladesh, which supplies microloans to sole proprietors who have no collateral.
2. A non-profit organization that either imitates a cause, such as child abuse, or innovates a cause. In the latter case, a new cause arises that drives the need for a new organization. An example includes New Profit Inc., which provides venture-capital-like funding to social ventures/entrepreneurs. The Internal Revenue Service determines if a social venture can operation as a tax-exempt, non-profit. If it does, then it may raise funds with tax-deductible donations as well.
3. A hybrid of a non-profit and for-profit. Two scenarios exist here: a) A corporation may create a non-profit that it governs under its umbrella, such as a food distribution company that also operates a non-profit food bank or b) a non-profit that derives a portion of its income through ‘earned income,’ such as the Women’s Bean Project in Denver that manufactures soup products while training recently incarcerated women to return to the work force.
In my next blog on May 8, I will explore how businesses can become more involved as social entrepreneurs.
Peak corporate performance incorporates social responsibility as part of the daily fiber of organizations. Research shows that organizations with three or more women on their boards are also credited with raising awareness and activity for social responsibility. Catalyst, for example, found that companies with three or more women on their boards contributed 28 times more to philanthropic causes that corporations with fewerr directors.
In addition, research published in the Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies finds that when female directors are present on a corporate board, the companies show higher incidences of community involvement, emphasis on policies to support the environment, and more employee-friendly policies. Catalyst concluded in its report, “When leaders spotlight gender issues in their corporate social responsibility strategies, they often position their organization for sustained growth and the payoff extends beyond the company to society.”
Underlying all of this…the importance of promoting board and leadership diversity for the betterment of our community.
Pam Watson Korbel
Baby boomer-aged executives need to pay attention to an important trend within the millennial generation, those up-and-comers who are filling critical job roles in their companies. Millennialsdemand that their employers act with social responsibility; it’s not an option like it was for the baby boomers.
The children of the baby boomers have looked around and noted that the wealth their parents created came at a family and social expense…and they do not want to live the same lifestyle. So in their workplace roles, they are demand employer policies that promote personal balance; sustainability; a community spirit and philanthropy. The scope of Philanthrocapitalism as promoted by President Bill Clinton will take new roots at all levels of business and society as a result of the millennials social responsibility attitude.
Here’s a great article from the Washington Post that expands on this trend.
“In the end, if it’s not fun, it’s not sustainable,” according to Kim Jordan, co-founder and CEO of New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, CO. At the Association for Corporate Growth luncheon in Denver on Tuesday, Jordan expounded on philanthro-capitalism, a hallmark of her firm. The media generally focuses on her people, profits, planet theme, which her firm lives with integrity. Here are some of my other takeaways not so robustly reported by others:
- Regarding her statement, “If it’s not fun, it’s not sustainable.” Yes, every employee has a stake in your sustainability and you have a stake in theirs.
- “Let your life speak to you” – Jordan quoted George Fox on this saying that often the intuition of the leaders at New Belgium tells them where to go before the facts and figures. They’ve successfully take risky first steps into co-generation, wind energy, employee ownership.
- “Codify who you want to be.” – She noted that their mission, vision and values can be recited by every co-worker because it’s written down and posted everywhere. She acclaims often that the other people who work at New Belgium are her co-workers.
- “Admit to where you’re falling down. It’s liberating.” – It’s refreshing too. Hopefully Jordan is leading a new era of CEOs who are transparent and lead transparent companies and teams.
- Adver -cacy – New Belgium has adopted a marketing strategy of advertising for matters for which they advocate, such as water preservation in Colorado, new energy solutions.
Hats off to New Belgium Brewery for sustaining their energy and enthusiasm for work and the community.
Pam Watson Korbel
PS For a free copy of my eBook “The Little White Book on Business Growth: how to enjoy more money, less work, more fun and still increase your business value,” go to www.smartgrowth.com.
I’m happy to share, reblog, a post from Author Simon Sinek about his recent trip to Afghanistan and what he learned about purpose and leadership – “Officers East Last.”
http://blog.startwithwhy.com/refocus/2011/11/the-definition-of-purpose.html#
Thank you Simon.
Pam Watson Korbel
For a free copy of my eBook “The Little White Book on Business Growth” please go to www.smartgrowth.com
Hardly an American has not heard about the child molestation case that has headlined the news all week via Penn State. While this is not a specific business issue, it illuminates a business leadership issue that needs to be confronted. Specifically, how do leaders address integrity issues within their organizations.
Unfortunately, in this situation, while the facts were exposed years ago, they were swept under a rug in hopes that no one would find out. And then, as we often find in today’s information world, the facts became available. Your first obligation as a leader is to promote transparency and to expose facts as early as possible in cases of integrity.
The second issue revolves around doing the right thing. Someone famous once said, “managers do what’s right; leaders do the right thing.” In other words, managers follow the policies and procedures; leaders know when to break the rules to do the right thing. At Penn State, the administrators did followe the policies and procedures. They did not act as leaders and rise up one level to do what was right.
Think about it…we live in a more transparent world every day. It challenges your view of integrity, and standards are being raised constantly. Embrace this evoluation…Be a leader…not a manger.
Pam Watson Korbel
PS Check out my free eBook “The Little White Book on Business Growth” and get your free copy at www.smartgrowth.com
The leadership lesson I observed from the movie “Moneyball” was simple…I love the segment where Billy Beane is sitting in the room with the baseball scouts saying, “Tell me something I don’t already know” and “Can’t we come up with a better system?”
In this scene, Billy challenges his crew to think of a new way to do business. I could personally relate to the situation having sat through several of the “same old meetings with the same old agendas.” And he was pushing his team to consider whether their competitors did business the same way, whether there was new technology, whether they should change things up just to make them more interesting. The entire plot of the move demonstrates how change rolls out – the good results and bad results.
What are you doing to change things up in your company? It can be as simple as changing meeting routines to as complex as a full-day creativity session for your key executives. The bottom-line, there is a better way to do business now. Think about…you can do a better job.
Pam Watson Korbel
Go to www.smartgrowth.com for a free copy of my eBook “The Little White Book on Business Growth.”
Can leadership be shared? Motorola, California Pizza Kitchen and Aeorpostle all have co-CEOs leading the charge. (See Business Week article: http://tinyurl.com/yzbfbdd.)
Here’s my 5 tips to make this arrangement work:
1. Both parties have to be excellent communicators – This relationship is as difficult as marriage. Set up regular rhythms to talk – huddle every morning, management meetings, retreats away from the office. Business habits are essential.
2. You need to have complementary skills – Generally they will divide into money and marketing.
3. Executive staff needs to buy-in and show high levels of maturity – No playing “mom and dad” where they pit you against each other like your kids.
4. Trust – To maximize the benefits, you need to know when to work separately and when to come together.
5. Fun – You need to enjoy each other.
Personally, I can see this working in several companies. But it is alot like marriage.
Pam Watson Korbel
Go to www.smartgrowth.com to download a free copy of my eBook: “The Little White Book on Business Growth: how to enjoy more money, less work, more fun and still grow your business value.”
Founding a company requires a unique skill set – creativity, risk-taking, vision – that does not reside in business people. And as the company grows and reaches pinnacle points in revenue – $5 million, $10 million, $50 million – then the skill set for the CEO leader must change.
If you are the founder of a company who wants to transition out of the CEO role, here are 3 tips:
1. Put a Board of Directors in place five years in advance of the transition. A Board helps to transition power from one individiual to a group. And the Board members bring contacts to identify the next CEO.
2. Replace yourself from within. Typically, the new CEO can be developed through the Chief Operating Officer, General Manager,Chief Financial Officer or Chief Marketing Officer roles.
3. Succession planning is not just for publicly-traded companies. And this requires a 5-year runway as well. Take the standard succession plan template for a larger company and boil it down to a plan that works for your company.
Pam Watson Korbel
For a free copy of my 62-page eBook “The Little White Book on Business Growth” go to www.smartgrowth.com
