Strategy

Though corporate matching gifts and employee giving programs are not unique to Microsoft, what is unique is how Microsoft has organized its employee giving as a campaign.

Sun Tzu called for single-purpose focus for his armies to be successful. Small businesses need this focus, too, if they are going to be market dominators.

What is community building? Beyond bringing people with similar interests together, a community serves a variety of other purposes. 

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 a $30,000 loan and grew it to a company worth more than $30 billion, breaks down the steps to a successful startup.

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. 

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. 

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.