Accelerate Business Impact

Core Values Interview Guide

Required Materials:

To create a Core Values Interview Guide, you will need to visit several websites. You will also need Change Accelerator© and the Culture Map you and your team developed in the previous Deliverable. Also, you will need the Statements of Core Purpose and Values and Vision Story of Sustainable 10X Impact developed in Module 2 of Business Impact Accelerator©.

To Do List:

There are five actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Visit the ZapposInsights website to learn more about the innovative work culture at this unique and high-performance organization.
2. Review interview questions and assessment tools used by Zappos and other organizations to hire team members aligned with your organization’s core values.
3. Download and review the Behavior Targeting tool from Change Accelerator and review your Culture Map, Statements of Core Purpose and Values, and Vision Story of Sustainable 10X Impact.
4. Create a structured Core Values Interview Guide appropriate for your business or social enterprise.
5. Review, test, and deploy your Core Values Interview Guide as you begin hiring team members to help your enterprise scale impact and grow sustainably over the next ten years.

Coaching Tips:

In 2009, Mark Livingston had an opportunity to hear Mr. Tony Hsieh, CEO of  Zappos, speak to an audience at the Net Promoter® Conference in San Francisco. Amazon had just purchased Zappos, and Hsieh captured the audience’s attention with stories about the unique culture of his organization.

Hsieh talked about the importance of workplace culture in a book he wrote the next year titled Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. Here’s one important point he makes about the link between your enterprise’s brand and culture:

“What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term? In a word: culture. At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff—like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers—will happen naturally on its own.

Your culture is your brand.”

Several years ago, the team at Zappos began sharing their expertise with the world through a website called ZapposInsights. When you visit ZapposInsights, click on the video from Tony Hsieh on the Home page. Then, click on the Start Here button to learn more about this innovative, progressive, and profitable enterprise.

One of the processes used by Zappos to reinforce and sustain their core values is the Core Values Interview. They use a set of structured questions based on the ten core values of their progressive organization. You can do this for your organization as well. Here is a list of eighteen interview questions to begin applying this strategy to your new hire selection process.

Your Core Values Interview Guide

To create a structured Core Values Interview Guide for your enterprise, bring the entire team together to discuss the approach used by Zappos. Make sure everyone has reviewed the ZapposInsights website as well as the article from thebalance.com. Then, facilitate a discussion about the pros and cons of using core values and culture fit interview questions in your business or social enterprise.

One of the first questions you may receive from your team is whether these core value questions are the only ones to ask during a new hire interview. The correct answer is “of course not.” However, Zappos is sending us a powerful signal that organization culture matters. So yes, ask different types of questions during the new hire job interview, but why not funnel the design of these questions through the lens of your Statements of Core Purpose and Values, Culture Map, and Vision of Sustainable 10X Impact? In essence, that’s what Zappos and other organizations committed to hiring the right people are doing.

The question we recommend you and your team answer is this: how can we create a version of the Zappos Core Values Interview process for our enterprise? You may only replicate 50% of what Zappos has achieved at the start, but they offer an excellent blueprint for how to build a culture of high engagement.

If you want to learn more about the approach Zappos uses to build a high-performance culture and organization, we recommend reading Delivering Happiness and subscribing to ZapposInsights.com. We also recommend a recent publication titled Conscious Capitalism Field Guide: Tools for Transforming Your Organization.

Alignment is a Beautiful Thing

One of the key elements Zappos incorporates into their Interview Guide is the “behaviors we are looking for.” These behaviors are defined for each of the ten core values of the Zappos organization. In practical terms, these behaviors are evidence of the Zappos core values in action. As with any behaviorally-based interview, Zappos interviewers are looking for evidence from candidates that core values have been demonstrated in past jobs and employment experiences.

Here are two examples of question sets you can apply to your organization:

• Culture Fit Interview Questions and Answers
• Values-Based Interview Questions

Why is this important? Well, think about the times you’ve supervised an employee or worked with someone who was the proverbial “square peg in round hole.” Not very productive or fun, was it? If you’re going to accelerate the growth and impact of your enterprise, then you must have a team that is “ready, willing, and able” to set sail with you on a ten-year journey of sustainable growth, change, and transformation. You can’t afford to have less than 100% commitment, alignment, and engagement. The stakes are just too high.

So, what are the key behaviors driving your Core Values, Purpose, Vision Story, and Culture Map? And, how can you use these to create an Interview Guide to identify the right people aligned with your enterprise’s values?

To help you and your fellow team members flesh this out, go to the Change Accelerator toolkit and download the Behavior Targeting tool. You may have already used this tool previously in Business Impact Accelerator. But if you haven’t, this tool will help you identify specific actions and behaviors that support (or detract from) the core values of your enterprise.

Ask change coaches to plan and facilitate a workshop of 2–3 hours following the steps outlined in the Behavior Targeting tool. Refer back to all previous documents and Deliverables created or developed in Business Impact Accelerator to compile a list of “the behaviors we’re looking for.”

Then, identify a small team to develop a set of interview questions supporting each of the values and behaviors you’ve just identified. Be sure to involve frontline team members in this process, as they will have the most relevant insight and experience. And, make sure your questions align with the Culture Map, Statements of Core Purpose and Values, and Vision Story of Sustainable 10X Impact. Remember–alignment is a beautiful thing!

Bring the draft questions back to the entire team for review before test and validation. You’ll want to assess the impact of your Core Values Interview Guide on the engagement and performance levels of your work and project teams. One final tip: take small steps as you begin to develop this Guide. A Core Values Interview Guide is not an item on your “to do” list to be accomplished in six months and then forgotten. Building a high-engagement culture is a long-term proposition that is never finished.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. Did we create a Core Values Interview Guide aligned with our Culture Map, Statements of Purpose and Core Values, and Vision of Sustainable 10X Impact?
2. Are the behaviors supporting our Core Values described?
3. Did we create an action plan for testing and improving our Core Values Interview Guide?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 2–3 hours to conduct a mini-workshop focused on the behaviors supporting your Core Values. It will take about 8–16 hours (over several sessions) for the small team to develop interview questions. It will take around 1–2 hours for the entire team to review and improve the Core Values Interview Guide.

Featured Certified B Corporation:  

Endeva

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about building high-engagement and high-performing workplace cultures, we recommend the following:

• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.
• Conscious Capitalism Field Guide: Tools for Transforming Your Organization by Raj Sisodia, Timothy Henry, and Thomas Eckschmidt (see Chapters 11–13).
• Uncontainable: How Passion, Commitment, and Conscious Capitalism Built a Business Where Everyone Thrivesby Kip Tindell, Chairman, and CEO of The Container Store.
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras.
• Invisible Advantage: How Intangibles Are Driving Business Performance by Jonathan Low and Pam Cohen Kalafut.
• Exemplary Performance: Driving Business Results by Benchmarking Your Star Performers by Paul Elliott and Al Folsom.

Next Step:

Increase Change Management Capability

Change Assessment Profiles

Required Materials:

To create Change Assessment Profiles, you will need Change Accelerator as well as your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan and One Page Strategy Map and Plan.

To Do List:

There are five actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Download, review and individually rate all 21 questions of the Change Assessment tool found in Change Accelerator.
2. Develop consensus ratings for the team and create a Change Assessment Profile using the spreadsheet provided in the tool.
3. Analyze results for each of the six phases of the ACT Model using discussion questions in the Change Assessment tool.
4. Identify opportunities for improving change management skills and develop a plan to address these priority areas; schedule another round of assessment in 3–4 months to track and update progress.
5. Identify other teams in your business or social enterprise who could benefit from a periodic assessment of their change management capability.

Coaching Tips:

There are five change management tools we’re highlighting in Module 5 of Business Impact Accelerator. We introduced you to the Change Accelerator Project Dashboard in the previous section. Here, we focus on the Change Assessment tool and Profile.

To create a Change Assessment Profile, download the tool from the Change Accelerator platform. Be sure to print out both the instructions and spreadsheet for recording assessment scores. The tool is an individual assessment to begin with; follow the steps and rate all 21 questions of the assessment on a scale of 1–10 (1 is a rating of “strongly disagree” and 10 is a score of “strongly agree”). For each of the 21 items in the assessment, list the 1–2 reasons for that score.

Then, schedule a meeting with your entire team to compare and discuss ratings. Your colleagues will have done the same analysis. Ask change coaches to moderate the discussion and facilitate a consensus rating for each of the 21 questions. Remember the definition of consensus: “a decision we can all live with.” If there’s a score you can’t live with, then speak up and make your case.

Be sure to enter consensus scores (not average scores) into the Change Assessment spreadsheet. After entering all items, generate a Change Assessment Profile similar to the example provided in the instruction sheet.

Analyze the results for each of the six phases of the ACT Model using the four discussion questions found on the last page of the instruction sheet. These questions are:

1. What are our strengths? How do we leverage them?
2. What are our deficiencies? How do we eliminate or overcome them?
3. What consistencies/inconsistencies exist across groups (if comparing more than one team). Why are the perceptions of our effectiveness different? Do we need to address these inconsistencies? How?
4. What is the single most serious threat to our success of assuring our solution/results are accepted and implemented? Who needs to address this threat, when, and how?

Are You Taking Responsibility?

There is one more question we’d like you to add: Are we taking responsibility for leading the change management and business transformation process within our enterprise?

If you are one of the leaders of an impact-driven business or social enterprise, then it is your responsibility to ensure any low-scoring items on the Change Assessment are addressed and resolved promptly. Learning how to think and act more systematically when it comes to leading yourself and others through change is a critical skill. Because of the challenges posed by change, you and your team need to summon the courage to start addressing issues, concerns, challenges, or pain points that lie below the surface. Remember the iceberg example from Dave Gray’s webinar on Culture and Change?

Prioritize your list of improvement opportunities and develop an action plan (use the Action Plan template from Change Accelerator). Set a date to retake this Assessment in 3–4 months and continue the process throughout the ten-year journey of sustainable growth, change, and transformation. This action plan may also need to become a strategic project or initiative on your One Page Strategy Map and Plan.

We encourage you to implement one of the tips provided by the Change Assessment tool. This tip relates to posting your Profile during meetings and/or quarterly strategy reviews. You could even take it one step further and create a space within your work environment to display results on a bulletin board. By doing this, you send a strong signal to your organization that you’re serious about achieving the Vision of Sustainable 10X Impact and delivering on 3X-in-10™ Revenue Sharing Offer commitments to women and HeForShe investors.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. Did we have an honest, authentic discussion about our change management strengths and deficiencies?
2. Did we reach consensus on our Change Assessment Profile?
3. Do we know how to improve our change management capability and skills during the next 3–4 months?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 3–4 hours to implement the Change Assessment process, create/update/review Change Assessment Profiles, and develop an action or improvement plan.

Featured Certified B Corporation:  

Osana

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about Emergent Consultants, change management, and strategic business transformation, we recommend the following:

• Emergent Journal
• Emergent Newsletter
• Blueprint for Building an Internal Change Management Capability

Executive Sponsorship Assessments

Required Materials:

To implement Executive Sponsorship Assessments, you will need to visit the HBR.org website. You will also need Change Accelerator© as well as your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan and One Page Strategy Map and Plan.

To Do List:

There are five actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Watch a short video on change management and review an article from HBR.org on effective sponsorship of change.
2. Download and review the Executive Sponsorship Assessment tool from Change Accelerator.
3. Develop a plan to pilot test the Executive Sponsorship Assessment in your business or social enterprise with strategic owners identified on the One Page Strategy Map and Plan.
4. Implement and evaluate this test; incorporate improvement suggestions into the next rounds of deployment in your organization.
5. Meet with strategic owners, executive sponsors, and project leaders 1–2 times per year to review assessment results and identify opportunities for increasing change management capability.

Coaching Tips:

In this part of Module 5, we examine the role of Executive Sponsor more closely and introduce you to a tool from Change Accelerator called Executive Sponsorship Assessment.

Many enterprises realize the need for this role to navigate change and implement major strategic investments. However, some of these same organizations will not spend the time or resources to identify key behaviors required for success or provide feedback and coaching to improve performance in the role. If you’ve ever been a project lead working under the direction of an ineffective executive sponsor, then you understand the stress and frustration this situation can create. In study after study over the last twenty years, “lack of effective executive sponsorship” has been cited as the primary root cause for failure of major organizational change or business transformation initiatives.

To provide more context about this important role, take a few minutes to review this short video on change management and to read a short article from HBR.org:

• “McKinsey on Change Management”
• How to Be an Effective Executive Sponsor

Executive Sponsorship Assessment

After reviewing this information, download the Executive Sponsorship Assessment tool from Change Accelerator©. Be sure to review the ten key sponsor behaviors on the third page of the tool’s instructions. Consider the Steps and Tips sections carefully. We agree with Change Accelerator that the Executive Sponsorship Assessment needs to be carefully managed by you and your team before deployment.

However, we also know from years of experience in facilitating strategic transformation efforts that senior leaders of an enterprise need authentic feedback if they’re going to improve performance and effectiveness. Just as you learned in other Modules of Business Impact Accelerator that customers will “say one thing and do another,” it’s the same with you and your fellow team members. Hey, we’re all human beings with strengths, weakness, and foibles. Obtaining honest and authentic feedback from others in your organization is invaluable. Do you think top-performing athletes like Mia Hamm or Michael Jordan never received honest and direct feedback from their coaches?

Next, schedule a meeting with your fellow team members to discuss the Executive Sponsorship Assessment and develop a plan for pilot testing with owners identified on the One Page Strategy Map and Plan. Moderate this discussion and help develop an action plan for the test. You want to keep it simple at this stage and consider all of the issues (pro and con) for proceeding down this path. As always, keep the six-phase ACT™ Model in mind.

Lead by Example

Perhaps the first place to start with piloting the Executive Sponsorship Assessment is with you and your team. You’ve been working with Business Impact Accelerator for some time now. Have you asked the rest of your organization for feedback on “how” you’ve been leading and managing this business development and improvement effort?

However, before going down this path too far, remember the mantra “be careful what you ask for.” You and your team will need to establish a clear set of standards or ground-rules for the administration and processing of assessment feedback. Keep the list of standards short and sweet, but everyone needs to stay focused on the ten sponsor behaviors and evidence discussed in the Executive Sponsorship Assessment tool.

After implementing this initial test, meet as a team to review lessons learned and plan for the next round of deployment. Be aware it gets easier over time as people learn they can speak directly and authentically to each other in a spirit of collaboration and continuous improvement. Also, use the opportunity to call a summit 1–2 times per year to talk about your overall level of effectiveness in sponsoring and managing change. This is a session where you should ask all of your strategic owners, executive sponsors, project leads, and process owners to talk about what’s going well and what needs to be improved.

One final tip. Keep your Vision of Sustainable 10X Impact in plain sight as you implement the Executive Sponsorship Assessment. This Vision Story is your “True North” and any behavior not in alignment with the purpose, vision, and values of your business or social enterprise needs to be called out and discussed. No repercussion. No retaliation. No penalty. No hard feelings.

If you want to learn more about the mindset and behavior of senior leaders in building a high-performing enterprise, we recommend Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras (Collins is also the author of Good to Great). In particular, read Chapter 9 (Good Enough Never Is).

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. Did we establish a clear set of ground-rules or standards for administering the Executive Sponsorship Assessment?
2. Did we pilot test this process on ourselves first?
3. What did we learn about our sponsorship behavior and overall change management skill? Do we have a plan to improve?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 4–8 hours for implementation of the first pilot test, including time to provide feedback and review lessons learned.

Featured Certified B Corporation: 

Wehlers

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about Emergent Consultants, change management, and strategic business transformation, we recommend the following:

• Emergent Journal
• Emergent Newsletter
• Blueprint for Building an Internal Change Management Capability

Team Effectiveness Assessments

Required Materials:

To conduct Team Effectiveness Assessments, you will need Change Accelerator©. You will also need your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan and One Page Strategy Map and Plan.

To Do List:

There are four actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Watch four short videos about team development and organizational effectiveness.
2. Download and review the Team Effectiveness Assessment tool from Change Accelerator.
3. Develop a plan for deploying the Team Effectiveness Assessment tool, starting with strategic project and process improvement teams identified on the One Page Strategy Map and Plan.
4. Keep track of and review assessment results to determine opportunities for continuously improving team effectiveness in your business or social enterprise.

Coaching Tips:

Over the years, Mark Livingston has worked with many teams at all levels of large and small organizations. Some were more effective than others, and then there were a couple that … well, we won’t go into details.

Every one of these teams had one or more “issues” that needed to be addressed and resolved to improve team performance and effectiveness. Even if you think a team is functioning well, sustainable growth of 5–10% or more per year for ten years can and will throw you and your colleagues a few curves. And these positive and/or negative impacts will cascade down and throughout your business or social enterprise.

If you’re going to accelerate impact and navigate change effectively, then you must improve your team’s effectiveness first and then improve the effectiveness of each strategic project or process improvement team in your organization.

To ensure you and your team are on the same page regarding team effectiveness, schedule thirty minutes of individual study time to watch four short videos on this subject. All of these videos are from the free Alanis Business Academy Channel on YouTube:

• “Episode 157: The Benefit of Teams”
• “Episode 158: Tuchman’s Stages of Team Development”
• “Episode 155: Establishing Creative Work Environments”
• “Episode 112: Introduction to SMART Goals”

We have used Tuchman’s Model for forty years and can verify these stages of team development. Your aim is to accelerate through the stages as quickly as possible, without taking shortcuts, to reach the performing stage. This a critical task for you and your colleagues if you’re going to accelerate the sustainable 10X impact promised to stakeholders, including women and HeForShe investors on your funding portal-of-choice.

A Failure to Launch

We have seen far too many project teams come together to work on One Page Strategy Map and Plan initiatives and waste time getting through the first three stages of Tuchman’s Model. It negatively impacts progress and makes it difficult to execute strategic priorities. We label this situation a “failure to launch.”

Also, be aware that when you add new individuals to a team that has progressed through the Tuchman Model, the team will “start over” through each of the four stages. This is not right or wrong, it just is. You and the strategic owners, project leads, and process improvement owners in your organization need to orient and bring new team members on board as quickly as possible to maintain team effectiveness. When this doesn’t happen, you lose time and momentum as the team works once again through the phases of forming (reforming), storming, norming, and performing.

You Must Address Team Dysfunction

Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, identified major issues that teams must deal with, including (1) absence of trust, (2) fear of conflict, (3) lack of commitment, (4) avoidance of accountability, and (5) inattention to results.

To address these and other barriers, go to the Change Accelerator toolkit and download and review the Team Effectiveness Assessment tool. Note the twelve elements in the tool separated into four categories (Goals, Roles, Processes, and Interpersonal). In a way, you can look at the Team Effectiveness Assessment as a “competency model” describing the expectations and standards for high-performance. As 50% of performance problems inside teams and organizations occur because of a lack of clear expectations and standards, then the Team Effectiveness Assessment can light the path to high performance.

The twelve expectations and standards measured by the Team Effectiveness Assessment are:

1. Purpose and Outcomes: We understand and agree on our project mission and the desired outcomes.
2. Project Scope/Definition: We understand and agree on what is in/out of our project scope and tasks; the project scope is “set.”
3. Customer’s Needs: We know who the project stakeholders are, what they require and why this project is needed.
4. Goals and Deliverables: We have identified specific, measurable and prioritized project goals and deliverables, linked to our business goals.
5. Roles and Responsibilities: We have defined and agreed on our roles and responsibilities and on the skills and resources the project team needs.
6. Authority and Autonomy: Our team knows and has the degree of authority we need to meet our project mission.
7. Critical Success Factors: We know are focusing on the key factors needed to meet the project goals and mission.
8. Plans and Activities: We are following an effective game plan that includes the right tasks, clearly defined and assigned to the right people.
9. Monitoring and Measures: We have an effective monitoring process and specific metrics linked to progress and goals.
10. Schedule and Milestones: We have defined our project schedule and know what the key phases and milestones are.
11. Team “Operating Agreement”: We have shared expectations and agreed upon and follow guidelines to how our team works together.
12. Interpersonal: We have the necessary relationships, trust, openness, participation, and behaviors for a productive team.

Putting the Assessment into Action

To put the Team Effectiveness Assessment into action, meet with your entire team to discuss the assessment tool as well as the four videos. Facilitate a discussion about the pros and cons of using the Team Effectiveness Assessment with teams identified on the One Page Strategy Map and Plan.

Then, develop an Action Plan for deploying the Team Effectiveness Assessment, using your group as the “guinea pig.” Follow the steps in the assessment tool and use the 1–10 rating scale. Be sure to average the scores for each category. Use the Net Promoter® approach by segmenting scores into three groups: (1) scores of 9–10, (2) scores of 7–8, and (3) scores of 6 and below.

Focus on the reasons for the scores, especially if a category score is six or below. Identify any opportunities for improving team effectiveness and create an action plan using the template from Change Accelerator.

Next, discuss how you will deploy the Team Effectiveness Assessment across your organization, starting with teams identified on your One Page Strategy Map and Plan. This is where strategic owners or process owners need to think through the best time and place to introduce this assessment. Be sensitive to the fact that people interpret “assessment” in many different ways, sometimes negatively.

You will also need to develop a process for keeping track of Team Effectiveness Assessment results. The aim here is to track progress of teams toward the high end of the scale (scores of 9 and 10). This will be one indicator, along with results from Progress Reviews, Change Assessment Profiles, and Phase Health Checks, that your project teams are moving through the Tuchman Model and arriving safely at the performing stage.

We’d like to share one final tip with you on the topic of team effectiveness. Now and then, there is a team that just doesn’t click for one reason or another. The team can’t seem to move through the storming and norming phases and about the only thing they generate is “drama.” So, how do you handle this difficult situation?

In our experience, you need to carefully diagnosis the reason or reasons for why the team is not in alignment. Typically, it comes down to conflict and a lack of trust between the team and its leader or between two individuals on a team (maybe the team leader and a team member). You need to work very diligently through each of the twelve categories of the Assessment to determine the root cause or causes.

And, it may be the case that you just can’t build the trust or resolve the conflict. In this situation, you will need to take action to get the team back into alignment. And that may involve making a change in team membership. Hopefully, you can transfer that individual to another role in the organization. At other times, you may have to bite the bullet and make a hard decision about employment.

But before you go to DEFCON 5, use all of the tools in Change Accelerator to preserve the relationship and rebuild trust. It’s not impossible, but you will have to be patient and resolve not to give up on others (or yourself). In the end, you’ll have a stronger relationship and more reliable team who knows how to work through adversity. And yes, you will experience adversity during a ten-year journey of sustainable growth, change, and transformation. This is one thing you can count on!

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. Do we all understand the Tuchman Team Development Model?
2. What did we learn about our team’s level of effectiveness?
3. Did we create a plan for conducting the Team Effectiveness Assessment with groups identified on the One Page Strategy Map and Plan?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 2–3 hours for you and your team to review the four videos and conduct a Team Effectiveness Assessment. It will take your strategic project and process improvement teams 1–2 hours per quarter to conduct Team Effectiveness Assessments.

Featured Certified B Corporation:   

Patients Know Best

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about team development and effectiveness, we recommend the following:

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.
• Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen.
• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.
• Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, & Working Smarter All Day Longby David Rock.

To learn more about business and management in general, we recommend the following:

• Alanis Business Academy YouTube Channel

Conscious Capitalism® Simulation

Required Materials:

To participate in the Conscious Capitalism® Simulation, you will need to visit the website of Conscious Capitalism®. You will also need to visit the website of Marketplace® Live to watch a short demo.

To Do List:

There are four actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Watch five short videos on the core principles of Conscious Capitalism®.
2. Visit the Marketplace® Live website to watch a short demo of the Conscious Capitalism® Simulation.
3. Identify the individuals and teams to participate in the Conscious Capitalism© Simulation.
4. Follow-up with participants between decision rounds to reinforce and link learning with the strategy and operations of your impact-driven enterprise.

Coaching Tips:

Is business only about profit and the financial return to investors or shareholders? Or does business serve a higher purpose and create social and economic value for stakeholders (including investors, customers, employees, community, and society)?

The Social Impact Foundation rejects the premise behind the first question and embraces the second. That is, we embrace the “stakeholder theory” of business and believe business and social enterprises create enduring value by generating compelling social and financial returns for all stakeholders, not just a few shareholders or investors. As explained in Gender Wealth Strategy Key Finding #1, this “X and Y” thinking is driving significant growth in impact investments which aim to produce a competitive market return while generating positive impact.

But as Gender Wealth Strategy also explained, our finance and investment system is biased toward the “10X profit” mindset. And in our experience working with profit-only enterprises over the years, this mindset is very difficult to change. That is, unless you work diligently to reinforce your Core Purpose, Values, Culture, and Vision of Sustainable 10X Impact at every level of the organization.

One way to enhance and sustain the entrepreneurial, impact-driven culture you aim to build is to give your people an opportunity to participate in the Conscious Capitalism® Simulation. The team at Innovative Learning Solutions has created this simulation in collaboration with the nonprofit Conscious Capitalism® organization. This simulation challenges participants to start and build a new venture that operates as a Conscious Business instead of profit-only or a profit-at-all-cost enterprise.

But what is Conscious Capitalism and how do you know a Conscious Business when you see you? To answer these questions, we recommend you bring the entire team together to watch five short videos on the core principles of Conscious Capitalism® and then watch the Conscious Capitalism® Simulation Demo from Marketplace® Live. Then, moderate a discussion about the principles of Conscious Capitalism®.

Here are the video links:

• “Conscious Capitalism Overview”
• “Conscious Capitalism: Higher Purpose”
• “Conscious Capitalism: Conscious Culture”
• “Conscious Capitalism: Stakeholder Orientation”
• “Conscious Capitalism: Conscious Leadership”
• Conscious Capitalism® Demo

Organize Your Simulation Teams

The Conscious Capitalism® Simulation consists of six “decision rounds” of 2–3 hours each. You’ll compete in this simulation against other teams of four members each. The Conscious Capitalism® Simulation brings together all of the business and financial decisions that need to be considered when you start, launch, and grow a profitable venture driven by impact. But, there’s one big difference. You’ll not only receive a Balanced Scorecard at the end of the simulation reporting standard business results, you’ll also receive a Conscious Scorecard that describes your impact on stakeholders.

As you progress through decision rounds, the simulation automatically adjusts and provides new information about what profit-only firms are doing to compete against you in the marketplace. Make no mistake; this simulation will get your juices flowing and test everything you’ve learned in other Marketplace® Live Simulations and throughout your career.

How do we know this? Mark Livingston participated in a three-day Conscious Capitalism® Simulation Train-the-Trainer in 2016 with twenty business and marketing professors from around the United States. To describe it as “intense” would be an understatement (yes, professors are very competitive!). Plus, it was a sobering experience, as we all faced the challenges and difficulties entrepreneurs and business owners experience every day in growing a successful enterprise driven by impact.

Scheduling Your Online Experience

You will need to identify the teams to participate in the Conscious Capitalism® Simulation. You can have up to four people on a team and have as many as six teams. You’ll need to schedule the six decision rounds in advance to allow teams to complete rounds within the allotted time, generally one week per round.

We have one final tip about this learning experience. You can use the Conscious Capitalism® simulation as a team-building exercise too. Allow the competitive juices of teams to emerge (within reason)! At the conclusion, have change coaches moderate a “debrief” session about lessons learned, challenges, and how to bring learning back into your business or social enterprise. Without linking the Conscious Capitalism® Simulation to the work you’re doing to build a sustainable, high-impact enterprise, it’ll be just another training experience with no lasting impact on the entrepreneurial mindset and spirit of your enterprise.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. What did we learn about building a Conscious Business?
2. How would we approach decisions differently if we could do it all again?
3. How do we link the learning from this simulation to our One Page Strategy Map and Plan, Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan, and 3X-in-10™ Revenue Sharing Offer?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 12–18 hours to complete all six decision rounds for teams of 2–5 participants.

Featured Certified B Corporations:  

 The One Brand

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about using business as a force for good, we recommend the following:

• “Episode 150: Social Responsibility Perspectives – The Shareholder and Stakeholder Approach”
• “Business is About Purpose”
• “Stakeholder Theory – R. Edward Freeman” (free series of 19 YouTube videos from one of the most engaging and respected professors in the United States).
• “TEDx Philly – Jay Coen Gilbert – On Better Business”
• Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey (Co-CEO of Whole Foods Market) and Raj Sisodia.
• Conscious Capitalism Field Guide: Tools for Transforming Your Organization by Raj Sisodia, Timothy Henry, and Thomas Eckschmidt.
• Conscious Capitalism® Website