Vicki Sandler, CCAZ Board Member, is passionate about developing personally fulfilling corporate cultures within the organizations she serves and shares her key takeaways from April’s National Conscious Capitalism Conference.
Conscious Culture Observations:
- Purpose and values practiced over time by people = culture. A leader’s job is to release their workforces incredible gifts. What you do matters, not what you say.
- Competition is consistent with CC culture as it helps all strive to improve, IF it is based on win-win intent and not, “I win, you lose.” Ex. Whole foods made Trader Joe’s better as long as the competition is done with respect and transparency.
- HOW things are done is a competitive advantage. SW Airlines decided not to charge for baggage despite it potentially costing them foregone revenues of $300 million. The airline ended up earning an additional $1 billion!
- The proverbial corporate ladder is dying. It’s been replaced by a jungle gym. People should experience different roles; different levels and different departments within an organization to better understand how it all works.
- Biomimicry (conscious emulation of nature’s genius, of life’s principles; nature has sustained for 3.8 billion years; it is adaptive and regenerative, as should be the evolved, conscious cultures/leaders). Examples … Develop cooling designs similar to a dirt termite tower; Design a fan that turns like a whale fin; Asian bullet train created a sonic boom and the noise was subsided by copying the aerodynamic nose-efficiency of a kingfisher bird diving for its prey; Columbia hardwood flooring designed a natural glue without using formaldehyde by using the underwater muscles’ secretion, called Pure Bond; Emulating the swarm intelligence of fish, prototype robotic cars of the future are being created that do not collide. Entropy created easy to remove carpet tiles based on the randomness of leaves that fall on top of each other.
- Question: When was the last time you reconnected with the natural world and were deeply inspired: How did it feel? INspire means it has to come from within.
- Culture is critical in a knowledge-based environment. The leader must make him or herself small. Companies can compete on flexibility and the growth opportunities the employee has. Hire for character and for culture fit, not just skills.
- When people describe brands, they are describing peoples’ behaviors in the company.
Hire A players. C players do not have values that match. B players need more time. Zappos pays $4000 for you to leave if you don’t think you fit into the culture. - Become self-aware. Our strength is always an indicator of our weakness. Hold people accountable for the right behaviors. Give a year for self-compliance or they must eject.
- Ask, “What does your company stand for? How will I be treated?” Then ask, “What am I paid?”
- Rate your and have your employees’ rate their behaviors of trust, acceptance, openness, responsibility, integrity—both at work and home. Then have them rate how this applies to the self.Example …. Until you accept yourself, you cannot openly accept others.
- Question: If I have $1 and 1 hour, how do I best spend it to reflect my values?
- Conscious means to live an integrated life, mind, body and spirit.
- A company’s leaders can have employees assess their professional fit: personal, cultural, training, mentorship, recognition, financial and score each of them. A company can have director in each area assigned as a cultural leader who works with individual employees on this assessment.
- Employees are asking more culture related questions such as, in good bad times what is layoff and pay policy?
