Every year, bestselling author and social media visionary Chris Brogan challenges his huge reader base to come up with three words to provide focus for the coming year. This year, I decided to take the challenge for the first time since 2016. And this time, I’m going to emblazon them on a printout in huge type, and post it where I can see my words every day. My three words are:
Clarity
Justice
Healing
Clarity
I’ll discuss Justice in Part 2 (with lots of links(), and Healing–including a deeply personal experience that happened to me this month–in Part 3.eye chart reminds me of having clarity in this year of 20//20 Clarity, 2020 AD
The year 2020 reminds me of 20/20 vision: seeing with perfect clarity. While I don’t expect to achieve perfect clarity, even with the new glasses I’ve just been prescribed ;-), I do want to focus on seeing and acting as clearly as possible.
It’s been several years since I changed the focus of my business toward helping other businesses (and other types of organizations such as nonprofits) find the sweet spot where profitability intersects with environmental and social good.
I now market myself as the person who can help any organization discover opportunities to do go in the world by creating, identifying and re-purposing, and/or marketing profitable products and services that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.
I’ve gotten a lot clearer in my messaging since starting this quest in the summer of 2013, since giving my TEDx talk in 2014, and even since publishing my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, in 2016 (which Chris Brogan endorsed, along with Seth Godin, Jack Canfield, and many others).
But I’m still nowhere near as clear as I need to be about:
Who wants to pay me to do this work?
Which services they most want, and to achieve what goals?
How to set a price structure that’s fair both to solopreneurs and large corporations?
Who do I most want to serve?
I’m beginning to figure out the answers. I’ve settled on pricing based on the size of the organization, which seems reasonably fair because larger organizations are more complex and therefore a task such as a marketing plan our outlining a product development campaign will take a lot more of my time–but I’m not sure I’ve got all the bugs worked out yet. I’ve realized that I’d rather work with small entities than large ones, but I am very open to being farmed out by a larger entity to their smaller customers, suppliers, or business units–and to the larger entities sponsoring me in other ways, such as funding my speaking to organizations that can’t otherwise afford me.
Hopefully, seeing that message of clarity on the wall of my workspace every day will inspire me to figure all this out, and to make my message so clear that everyone understands exactly how I can help and why it’s important.
I’ll discuss Justice in Part 2 (with lots of links), and Healing–including a deeply personal experience that happened to me this month–in Part 3.
50 years ago today, October 15, 1969, my life changed forever. That was the day I became an activist, for real.
Yes, there was a time when as a toddler, I destroyed the cigarettes my parents’ party guests left lying around on the coffee table to protect the air quality of our apartment. Yes, there was the one-kid boycott I started that summer of 1969 of a movie theater that charged me for an adult ticket and made me sit in the children’s section (and I have still never been back to that theater). Yes, I grew up in a social change household and my mom dragged me around with her as she campaigned for Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Yes, I had already decided to become a vegetarian, although my mom had extracted a promise to wait until I stopped growing. So I was predisposed. But I wasn’t an activist yet.
But that day, I participated in the national Vietnam Moratorium Day—which is why I still remember the date—and went to my first peace rally. Alone, I walked the few blocks from our apartment building on Loring Place at Tremont Avenue to NYU’s Bronx campus (now Bronx Community College), where I listened to the speakers.
Marching at the Women’s March on Washington with my wife and children (from left: son-in-law Bobby, daughter Alana, wife Dina, me, son Rafael)
I was 12 years old, and had just started 9th grade.
One of the speakers, who was probably only about 6 years older than me, proclaimed, “The Vietnam war is an undeclared war.”
I hadn’t known that.
And with this statement, my whole world came crashing down. All my faith in the checks and balances of the American system of government that I’d learned from social studies teachers turned out to be a lie. I started questioning everything I knew.
I still show up at many demonstrations. In the photo above, I’m holding a sign that says “Patriots Protect People and Planet” that I made for that protest: the Women’s March counterinaugural on January 21, 2017. A few days later, I turned it over and wrote “Another Jew for Human Rights,” and brought it to protest the administration’s first attempt at a Muslim ban. Both sides of that sign have gotten quite a workout the past 2-3/4 years.
But I learned early that showing up at demonstrations isn’t enough.
When my carefully constructed world fell apart on that October day in 1969, I started looking for ways to make a difference. To find that path back to the democracy I’d been promised, to make sure the system worked so the next time the US went to war, it would have at least been vetted by Congress (little did I know how THAT would play out! Most American wars since then have also been undeclared.) And to work for peace.
So peace and democracy were my first causes. A few months later, the first Earth Day added the environment to my focus. Over the years, I took up many others: human rights/opposing discrimination, safe energy, affordable housing, food and transportation justice, social change journalism, dialogue across differences, and many subsets and intersections of these.
Before long, I was joining organizations, writing and publishing about social change actions (starting with articles in an alternative paper at my high school when I was 15), planning events from speakers to rallies to the safe energy “swim-in” where I gave my first TV interview dripping wet in my bathing suit, building coalitions, doing the hard work of helping to build movements–and making tons of friends, by the way. In fact, I’m going to a meeting of our Western Massachusetts Jews for Immigration Justice meeting this afternoon, where we’ll debrief a successful mass rally we held last week and plan our next steps.
Many of these were just as accidental or based on a random insight as my original peace activism.
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
My paths to human rights and opposing discrimination came in part from being told I was too young to count when I was an early activist, in part from my own coming out as bisexual as a 16-year-old college freshman, in part from being hired at age 22 for my one and only paid organizing job—charged with building a near-defunct Gray Panther chapter in Brooklyn (as a VISTA Volunteer with pay the first year of $82 a week in NYC!), in part from a growing awareness of disability issues as a 6-year member of Northampton’s official city Disability Committee, and in part from seeing the urban poverty all around me in the various cities I lived in as a child or during college internships—such as the ghetto neighborhood in Washington, DC I walked through on my way to work, or the one I biked through to visit my then-girlfriend (now wife of 36 years) in Brooklyn.
But it also comes from inserting myself into situations where some people might think I don’t belong—whether attending poetry gatherings in black neighborhoods or staying in Arab and Druze villages in Israel or visiting a colleague in Ramallah (Palestine).
Founding Save the Mountain was an accident of geography. I had only been living in the neighborhood we saved for just over a year when a developer announced plans to destroy it. And my work this past summer on immigration justice was also an accident.
Yet, after all these years, I am still deeply involved in those first three issues that found me: peace, the environment, and democracy. I’ve changed the way I participate—for instance, speaking to the business community on how social change and environmental healing can be profitable—but they are still very much a part of who I am.
I am grateful to that long-ago young man, and I wish I knew his name to say thank-you. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without his speech.
When I started, I was told I was too young to make change, and now, at 62, I’m beginning to hear that I’m too old, But as teen activist Emma Gonzales would say, I “call B.S.” on both claims. Like many of my friends and mentors, I expect to continue being an activist into my 90s and even 100s, if I live that long.
Greta Thunberg on the cover of GQ, with commentary by Marisa Murgatroyd (Instagram screenshot)
It attracted a lot of comments, many of them expressing thanks for a great post–but others, far too many, dissing Greta and her work. Here’s my comment, in italics.
Thanks, Marisa, for posting this. Shocking how many people are posting to tear this young woman down because she’s changing the world. She will probably grow out of her extremism but if the world is lucky, she will keep her passion. I ask every person who is putting Greta down: what have you done in HER lifetime to make the world better, and what are you doing now toward that goal? Why is it important to you to spend your good energy attacking someone who is making a difference in the only ways she knows how?
And before you attack ME for using the word, “extremism,” remember this:
This was a response to people who see her as an extremist. I used their own talking point to perhaps be listened to–to increase the chances that I might change a mind or two.
Greta is acting out of deep despair. She does sound extreme at times. But let’s remember how hard it is to act out of despair, even if you don’t have Asperger’s (as she does). Positive motivators tend to work much better. To act from a dark place in a positive way is itself remarkable. In time, she will learn (as I did) that the world can be a very positive place, and we get the fun job of making it more positive, harnessing and amplifying the trends in the good directions, doing our best to neutralize the haters and the planet-killers. And that while the pace may seem glacial, we are actually winning.
As a supporter of Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign (and a resident of Massachusetts who’s seen the positive impact she has had on the state she represents), I got asked to do a survey of what issues I felt were most important.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
While it was tempting to check every choice, I limited myself to 12 of the 32 options.
And then there was an open question: “Is there anything else you’d like to share about why you’re in this fight?” This is what I wrote:
I see the two biggest challenges as peace and climate change. The US has a major role to play in both, starting with STOPPING our support for repressive governments around the world. To get there, we have to have meaningful electoral reform to secure our own democracy, meaningful gun policies that make it at least as hard to get a gun as it is to get a license to cut hair, and policies/tax codes that eliminate all subsidies for fossil and nuclear while encouraging a rapid transition to solar, wind, hydro, and other true clean renewable technologies–including a deep conservation retrofit program. I’ve been a supporter of yours since your first run in Massachusetts (where I live) and an activist for 50 years starting at age 12.
Multicultural contingent at a climate march. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
You won’t normally see me starting a blog post with a bible quote, but…I’m quoting an article that quotes the Bible:
In Genesis 1 God commands humanity: “Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (1:28). “Subdue” and “rule” are verbs of dominance. In Genesis 2, however, the text uses two quite different verbs. God placed the first man in the Garden “to serve it [le’ovdah] and guard it [leshomrah]” (2:15). These belong to the language of responsibility. The first term, le’ovdah, tells us that humanity is not just the master but also the servant of nature. The second, leshomrah, is the term used in later biblical legislation to specify the responsibilities of one who undertakes to guard something that is not their own.
–Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
The Jewish year divides the Old Testament into weekly portions that stay the same year after year.
Joe knew I would like it. He didn’t know I’d be fascinated enough to write a whole blog post about it. I will share my takeaways from this article–but let me provide some personal background first.
My Back Story
I was a convert of the very first Earth Day, back in 1970, when I was 13. By 1971, I had joined my first two environmental advocacy organizations (one in my neighborhood, the other at my high school). That activism (and the lifestyle choices that support it) have been a strong part of my life ever since.
But my motivations back then were entirely secular. Three years earlier, my mom and dad had split up, and both parents had stopped being religious. I had moved from a yeshiva (religious school) with half the day in Hebrew to the regular public school. And as someone who’d not only been very frustrated with the many social and activity limits of Orthodox Judaism but who independently had questioned the existence of God by age 9, I welcomed those confusing changes in my life.
It was only many years later that I began to make space for a sense of faith. My image of God is very different from the classic image of the old man with a beard, throwing lightning. I don’t consider myself religious–but I can’t truthfully call myself an atheist.
In 2017, I began a process of reading major religious texts, starting with the Five Books of Moses, then continuing through the Four Gospels of the New Testament and now the Qur’an (Koran). So I’ve read Deuteronomy fairly recently. Of those nine books of the Old and New Testaments, I found Deuteronomy the most tiresome and challenging by far. It is largely a regurgitation in Moses’s voice of Leviticus and Numbers. As my secular side perceived it, it was a collection of random rules that made no sense in the modern world and maybe not much sense in the ancient world either.
Putting the Parsha in Context
But Rabbi Sacks reaches back from the week’s Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9 parsha (“Shoftim”) to the second chapter of Genesis, to show how the sages over these centuries have placed the commandment not to destroy your enemy‘s natural resources during a siege into a broader context of planetary stewardship, and even planetary healing.
The Sages, though, saw in this command something more than a detail in the laws of war. They saw it as a binyan av, a specific example of a more general principle. They called this the rule of bal tashchit, the prohibition against needless destruction of any kind. This is how Maimonides summarises it: “Not only does this apply to trees, but also whoever breaks vessels or tears garments, destroys a building, blocks a wellspring of water, or destructively wastes food, transgresses the command of bal tashchit.”[1] This is the halachic basis of an ethic of ecological responsibility.
Lessons and Takeaways
Specifics in the Torah (and by extrapolation, other holy texts from other traditions) can be extrapolated to determine sweeping codes of social behavior/social responsibility.
The texts support an earth-friendly interpretation that provides defense against the argument that the Bible commands us to subdue the earth and its other inhabitants.
More than that, if we take these texts as the word of God, we are commanded to treat the earth as God’s creation, to treat it with great respect, and to maintain its abundance and its health for future generations.
Given this imperative and the rapidly-closing window to solve the climate crisis, if we agree with #3, we have to support a political and business structure that encourages action. Presently, we face not only a global climate crisis (which I believe is still solvable through a combination of innovation and regulation), but a bunch of governments around the world, from the US to Brazil to the Philippines, that are actively attacking measures to preserve the environment (and, not coincidentally, attacking human rights at the same time). Just as Pope Francis’s climate encyclical provided impetus within the Catholic community, Rabbi Sachs’s interpretation can perhaps light a nonpolluting, non-carbon fire among religious Jews and even among Evangelicals (who of course see the Old Testament as part of the Word of God).
The planet can’t speak up in front of a legislature or at the UN. So let’s get some movement going to get leaders who will speak on its behalf!
We always hear from conservatives that they don’t see how we can possibly afford universal health care, let alone the Green New Deal. Thus, as a public service, I’m listing five ways (among dozens if not hundreds) we can locate the funds. This is not even pretending to be comprehensive (or in any sort of order), and I’d love you to add your favorite in the comments.
Eliminate the private for-profit insurance system, which jacks up the price. According to The New Republic (2015), this is costing us between $375 billion and $471 billion per year. The savings in getting rid of the middlemen would more than cover the increase in taxes.
Cap doctors’ salaries at something reasonable and generous. I’ll pull a figure out of the air: 200K per year for generalists, 300K for specialists—but it could be higher or lower.
Eliminate the crazy subsidies and price protections in so many industries, and particularly fossil and nuclear fuel, Big Pharma, highways and bridges to nowhere, and chemiculture-based Big Ag. We are subsidizing all sorts of things that should not be subsidized! Our policies should support the changes we want society to make (but right now, our policies interfere with those changes.
Cut the military budget down to the expenditure of China (the country second on the list). Right now, the US is spending an obscene $649 billion per year (2016) to “defend” 329,345,285 people (more than the next seven countries combined). Yet China manages to protect 1,420,615,635 people, more than 4.3 times the US figure, with military spending of just $146 billion (2016), or less than a quarter overall, less than a sixteenth per capita. So if the US slashed military spending by 75 percent to match China’s, it would still be spending more than four times per person than China does. Surely that would be enough to protect ourselves!
So next time you meet someone who wonders how to pay for the world we want, this article gives part of the recipe. Readers, please add your own favorite ways to find the money for these improvements, and please include a source for your data.
I recognize the political difficulties of impeaching with a hostile Senate. Until the Republicans–as they did when Nixon was president–find their outrage, impeachment will fail in the Senate, and removal for incompetence under the 25th Amendment will fail in the Cabinet.
However, what the mainstream Dems continue to ignore is the political cost of NOT impeaching–and the political opportunities in calling out the GOP hypocrisy.
Marching to Impeach the 45th President
Yes, I know: the failed impeachment of Bill Clinton came back to bite the Republicans, hard. But the situation with Bill Clinton is not analogous, because Clinton’s trial was caught up in lying about one incident that had nothing to do with the way he governed, and the whole country knew it was a railroading. This does not excuse Clinton’s consistently icky behavior nor his lying about it–and if the Republicans had been smarter, they would have gone after stuff like the pay-to-play scandal that involved donations to the Clinton’s foundation. That really was a corrupt and impeachable offense. Lying about Lewinsky seems pretty tame by comparison.
But all of those moral guardians who were so quick to impeach back then are strangely silent about a man who stole the election, lied at least 9451 times since taking office (as of April 3, 2019), reeks of financial corruption, has been accused by 20-some women of sexual misbehavior (let’s remember that Clinton’s Lewinsky lie was about a CONSENSUAL act, although the original impeachment investigation that turned up that story came out of allegations of harassment that deserved a full investigation), has no idea how to govern, engages in hate speech constantly, has destroyed important ally relationships, and oh, yes, colluded with at least one foreign government.
How the Democrats Can Capture the Conversation
The Democrats have a moment to seize. This is our time to hammer home the idea that a crooked, venal, incompetent president in service to foreign powers and big corporations has no right to be in office, and the Separation of Powers principle gives Congress a moral obligation to enforce our right to a better government.
Just as Republicans were so quick to pillory Hillary Clinton for using private email servers (just as her Republican AND Democratic predecessors did), beating this message into our heads until it became part of the culture, so the Democrats must make reining in the runaway criminal in the White House part of the culture. And, considering that several key members of the current administration have also used private email servers–and, unlike Hillary, they can’t plead ignorance or precedent–hold these same Republicans accountable for their sudden strange silence when it’s a Republican who gets caught,
John Bonifaz and others have identified at least 10 different categories of impeachable offenses. Any one of these would justify starting impeachment proceedings. All 10 at once make it imperative.
The Democrats have to follow through on that moral obligation. Their messaging needs to focus on such talking points as:
The threat to our democracy, to our very Republic, from a president who is beholden not to the American people but to his corporate pals (Koch Brothers in particular) and foreign governments–not just Russia, but Saudi Arabia and Israel, at least, plus cozying up to dictators in places like North Korea and the Philippines.
The scary parallels between DT’s patterns of speech and action (including his un-American demand for unquestioned loyalty, attacks on the judiciary/press/racial, religious, and cultural minorities, threats of violence, to name just a few) and the dictators who have risen as our enemies: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein–and thus, our patriotic duty to remove this man from power before he turns the country into a fascist dictatorship (interestingly, in researching these connections, I came across DT’s repeated passionate defense of Saddam and Libyan strongman Kadhafi during the 2016 campaign)–much as he has continued to defend other of dictators, including Putin, Duterte, and Kim Jong Un, among others.
The wisdom of our Founding Fathers in spelling out a process to determine whether a president has acted illegally, and removing that president from office if found guilty, right in the Constitution
Their responsibility and duty as members of Congress to the American people to protect us from these numerous criminal behaviors by upholding the Constitution
This could build on the momentum of 2018 and give people reasons to vote FOR Democrats, rather than simply against DT or Republicans in general. This is the sort of issue that can turn someone into a lifetime supporter.
Consequences of Failing to Act
OK, those are the positive motivators. Now, let’s look at the baggage Democrats will carry if they continue to let DT get away with the rampant criminality and incompetence:
Far too many progressives will sit out the 2020 election, feeling that the Democrats are just “Republican Lite.” (Yes, I’m intentionally using the low-calorie, low-substance advertising non-word, instead of “Light”.)
Democrats lose the moral high ground and lose momentum, maybe even find themselves facing a serious third-party challenge that would culminate in DT’s re-election (since we don’t have Ranked-Choice Voting in national elections in the US). This would likely hand DT a majority in the house again and set progressive politics back years, even as the climate clock is ticking.
The message to the Republicans will be “we don’t care enough to engage you over these crimes. Go and do whatever evil you want.”
Especially if re-elected, DT will be emboldened to do even more criminal acts, encourage even more race and ethnic divisiveness, stock the courts with even more extremist judges, roll back environmental and human rights protections even faster, follow the footsteps of those dictators even more closely.
The message the Democrats must put forth is that we do care, we will hold him accountable, and we will keep the promises we made to represent everyone in the district. To get there, we progressives need to create a scenario where the Democrats see both the need to remove DT, hold him accountable for both his criminal behavior and his disastrous policies, and undo as much as possible of his anti-life, Profit Uber Alles legacy–and see the consequences to their careers and their party, as well as to the Constitution and the governed, if they fail to act.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Riffing on two of the nine, I wrote him this letter (I’ve done some minor editing for clarification since sending it to him):
Non-chronic–rationalization is our specialty, and the reason we learn to rationalize is so that we don’t go insane when faced with long-term, persistent issues. We bargain them down the priority list.
Solvable–see that earlier riff about rationalization and chronic problems. If a problem doesn’t seem solvable, we’re a lot less likely to stake our attention on it.
Maybe this is one key to why I haven’t yet really made a full transition to marketing myself as a consultant at the intersection of profitability and solving *chronic* problems such as hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. I have done some messaging on these problems being solvable even though they are millennia-chronic, other than climate change, which is only 200 years old as a major problem. But maybe they still feel too big and scary for most people to see themselves as part of the solution. And yet, in our brief lifetimes…
Legalized apartheid was eliminated in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and the American South. Discrimination still exists, of course, but the brutal government repression and the harsh laws are gone.
So here’s the question: What advice would you give me in marketing my consulting, speaking, and writing to a population that is so shut down about solving these massive problems that they don’t see the progress we’re actually making? (And may I quote your answer in the blog?)
Shel Horowitz – “The Transformpreneur”(sm)
<End of my letter to Seth>
I got back a one-sentence reply agreeing that we’re making progress and noting that the progress happens more easily when we tell those stories.
So, here’s your opportunity to go where Seth doesn’t go. Let’s get a nice discussion going on how we can convince people that we can–and should–solve long-term, systemic, chronic problems. Please leave your comments.
Have you thought about investing in solar energy? Perhaps you want to consider solar but just haven’t had the time to sort out your options. Or perhaps you began looking into solar only to face confusing choices and unanswered questions.
You are not alone. Some homes are perfectly suited for solar energy and yet the homeowner hasn’t yet made the switch. Up until now, homeowners felt okay waiting… for “better technology” or “lower prices”, or simply avoided thinking about it at all. But now, with solar panels appearing on one neighbor’s home after another, with neighbors bragging about saving energy and money, and with rumors about the phasing out of tax credits and incentives, they (and you) might wonder: is it too late?
You can stop worrying today… it is not too late to go solar and it is easier than you might think. In this book, award-winning renewable energy expert Denise Rushing shows you how to say goodbye to ever-increasing utility power costs… and go solar with confidence!
This book is a good fit for you if… • You wonder if you should make the switch to solar energy; • You definitely don’t want to create complexity, headaches or hassle for you or your family; • You worry that solar incentives are gone, that the advantageous utility solar rates are in the past and wonder if solar is still worth it economically; • You want to save money on your electricity bill and add thousands of dollars in value to your home and wonder if solar can help you do that; • You want to do what is right for the environment, but worry about making the wrong choice; • You wonder if solar energy is right for your situation; • You want to know how to go solar with ease and confidence. Today, switching from expensive, dirty, utility power to clean, renewable, solar energy is easier and more economical than ever before. Go Solar With Confidence takes you step-by-step through the process and shows you how to say goodbye to ever-increasing utility power costs and buy a solar energy system that is right for you.
Go Solar With Confidence is a clear and practical guide to: •Learn how you can save money on your electricity bill and add thousands of dollars in value to your home; •Determine if your home qualifies for solar; •Discover the most important things you need to know about solar systems before you buy so that you can go in with the best knowledge possible; •Understand what you need to expertly interview any prospective solar provider. •Empower you to take the first step towards going solar so that you won’t have to worry about electric bills going up ever again!
Imagine running your home, and maybe even your automobile, on clean, renewable electricity generated from sunshine. You can gain the confidence and information you need to take the first (and the next) step toward solar energy for your home. Visit: https://www.energyqueen.net to learn more.
A solar building at the Earthship Community, outside Taos, New Mexico. Photo by Shel Horowitz
We hear lots of talk about being customer-centric—but then we see far too many examples of companies that DON’T walk their talk. I still remember seeing a sign inside a Blockbuster Video store, maybe 20 years ago, talking about their empowered employees. I went up to the counter clerk and asked permission to snap a picture of the sign; I wanted to use it as a positive example in the customer service section of the marketing book I was writing—and the clerk said I’d have to call corporate headquarters. What kind of empowered employee is that? I was so disgusted I never set foot in another Blockbuster.
Most companies will need to make three shifts at the same time to become truly customer-centric. All three are challenging but bring very big returns.
Create a culture where employees feel valued and listened to—where what they do makes a difference. Empower them not just to fix customers’ problems but to harness their own creativity to create preemptive change. IN the trenches every day, employees often have the best ideas for improving things. But they will only share those ideas if they think management will pay attention and that they won’t get punished in any way. No matter how crazy an idea may seem, give it a full airing. Often, you can modify it to be practical, and implement those pieces. Consider implementing a reward system for any idea. The reward doesn’t have to be monetary. It could be as simple as naming the employee with the best idea, or with the most ideas, Employee of the Month. However, if the idea saves or makes the company a big pile, the originator should get a money reward too. For hierarchical companies, this means letting go of command-and-control and making line employees feel that management really wants their ideas—which can be discussed in public meetings/assigned to study/IMPLEMENTATION committees and NEVER dismissed out-of-hand by a manager either 1:1 or in public. This takes training, of course.
Really listen to your customers. Don’t just wait for them to complain. Go out and ask them what they love about working with you, and what they’d like you to improve—and why.
A woman on a customer service call, taking handwritten notes
Treat this seriously and publicize the way their suggestions become innovations (including honoring them by name, if they consent). Not only will this show how responsive you are, it encourages more people to jump in with their own ideas.
Align your company with a higher purpose. If people feel that you’re making both a difference and a profit, they will become much more enthusiastic Employee turnover drops while productivity goes up, customer retention increases, and you might even become a media darling. For instance, can you identify, develop, and market a profitable product or service that actually helps turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, or catastrophic climate change into planetary balance?
Bonus tip, because I like to overdeliver: shift from a scarcity to an abundance mindset. Replace “yes, but” with “yes, and”: expand the possibilities, build off that suggestions until you’ve co-created something wonderful. Then go implement it!
Need help? This is what I do in my consulting, writing, and speaking. I’m really good at finding opportunities for almost any company to “do well by doing good” (old Quaker saying): to find profitable niches that make the world better, and to create the products and services to fill those niches. Here’s my contact info. Want to learn more? Drop by https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/ and have an explore.
