Strategy

How Does Microsoft Support So Many Causes? Through a Robust Employee Giving Program. by Akhtar Badshahauthor of Purpose Mindset Today’s employees increasingly look at a company’s mission before joining it. Prospective employees tend to focus not only on opportunities for professional growth but also on how they can contribute to something greater than themselves. In many ways, Bill Gates was ahead of his time when he started the employee giving program at Microsoft. In 2019, employees’ expectations that prospective employers will join them in taking action on societal issues (67 percent) was nearly as high as their expectations of personal...

Those of us who’ve worked for and in small businesses know it all too well. Very often a less structured and even sporadic culture can lead to lack of focus and poor organizational discipline. Its genesis is understandable, entrenched in the breakneck pace and constant change that’s required to keep up and to lead the pack. But as we all also know, this situation brings with it some unwelcome by-products that hinder small businesses and force us to play catch-up, duplicate efforts, and otherwise waste time. Sun Tzu called for single-purpose focus for his armies to be successful. Small businesses...

Executive Summary What is community building? Beyond bringing people with similar interests together, a community serves a variety of other purposes. Any community worth its salt was founded on a set of core trends. Good communities are characterized by their ability to provide access to global audiences, cheap tools, expertise, collaboration, and meaningful work. A unique combination of users, promoters, and content creators support the operation of the most successful communities. There is a bunch of opportunity buried in your common or garden-variety community, but . . .well . . . what exactly is a community? Fundamentally, they are groups...

Executive Summary When researching how to start a business from scratch, entrepreneurs become bombarded with complete guides and disjointed blog posts that deliver contradictory information. Tom Golisano, who started Paychex, Inc. with $3,000 and grew it to a company worth more than $30 billion, breaks down the steps to a successful startup. From understanding your business and how you’ll make money to determining who to hire and how to manage them, Golisano shares the 8 things you need to know before starting a business. While passion is important, especially to get through the beginning years (it took Golisano four years...

Executive Summary Organizational culture is like happiness. Everyone wants it, but few know how to attain it. Mark Sanborn believes there are specific elements of corporate culture that encourage leaders to think beyond concepts and towards implementation. The philosophy of an organization informs its hiring and firing practices, its approach to education and training, its utilization of incentives and reinforcements, and its degree of transparency between executives and employees. At the end of the day, leaders should design corporate culture to benefit everyone from yourself to your employees to your customers. There are five elements you can use to create,...

Executive Summary For too long, organizations have saddled themselves to the idea that creating a good corporate culture serves intangible goals. By believing the function of corporate culture is to cultivate employee happiness, they dismiss it in favor of more pressing issues like product and profit. Mark Sanborn argues that intentional leaders focus on providing tools to facilitate individual success. And if they don’t know how to improve corporate culture, they simply ask. The inability of most organizations to create and nurture a good corporate culture has become one of the greatest business dilemmas of the world as it is....

Executive Summary In the pursuit of a business that focuses on people over profits, surviving can become a daunting task. When you hope to live out your company values, but also have to face the realities that helping requires funds and other resources that aren't free, the path suddenly gets a little less clear and easy. Conscious Company magazine learned this lesson upon its inception. Not only did it fail numerous times, but it also strayed from its principles in order to grow. The founders of the print publisher only found its way back by taking care of themselves and...