Newton Was More Right Than He Knew “…an object in motion remains in motion unless acted on….”

In Minneapolis for a convening to help build “an Intersectional Philanthropic Approach: Climate Change, Agriculture, and Healthy Rural Communities”, I am reflecting on a film we made in 2009. Hope in a Changing Climate premiered at Agriculture and Rural Development Day at COP 15, the goals of which are described below in the report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

“The key objectives of the meeting were to build consensus on ways to fully incorporate agriculture into the post-Copenhagen climate agenda and to discuss strategies and actions needed to address climate change adaptation and mitigation in the agriculture sector.”

Tom Vilsack, The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, both then and now, addressed the group and “underscored that food security and climate change are linked and one cannot be addressed without the other.” The film went on to be broadcast globally by BBC World, received numerous awards, and was the impetus for gatherings and guided discussions in over 30 countries.

And now we are approaching COP … 29.

I thus can’t decide whether I am proud to be a part of this important meeting or dismayed that it has taken us so long to have such a joint convening of funders. Probably both. Congratulations are due to the leaders and staff of all the sponsoring organizations: Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders, Climate and Energy Funders Group, Funders for Regenerative Agriculture and the Health and Environmental Funders Network. Putting together something like this takes a ton of thinking, planning, coordination, and execution. And as has been the case with all previous SAFSF gatherings, I am sure it will be enlightening, spawn collaboration, and help move not just one but multiple needles.

But why has it taken so long to do this – to act? Surely it is not because participants don’t know one another. And while there is always some competition for members among philanthropic affinity groups, we are a generally collegial group and don’t operate in the “free” market that many would likely agree is the cause of serious environmental, climate, health, food, and agricultural challenges. And although resources are always scarce, it is also not for lack of funds.

The last 18-months has seen a host of positive announcements from USDA, ClimateWorks, Acumen and others; and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Rockefeller Foundation and additional organizations are pushing for deeper collaboration in advance of COP 29. Yet the question persists; why the lag from COP 15 to COP 29? I’m not sure of the answer, but I think it is important to reflect on how we arrived where we have, at the moment we have.

I propose for consideration what I think is a major obstacle that we need to overcome. Most of us are not trained as systems thinkers. Most of us don’t know the underlying principles that are used to design, understand, and fix systems. Many of us work in organizations where we encourage others, or are ourselves encouraged, to think outside the box. But very few of us have been charged with thinking about the systems that connect the boxes.

Despite our commitment to drive systems change, how many foundations have a ‘program officer for systems’? A member of SAFSF for quite a few years, I have been a regular irritant on this matter – and am excited that Clare Fox, the new head of SAFSF, spoke to the importance of systems in her opening remarks. While the language of systems change can seem opaque, it’s no more daunting to understand system dynamics and hierarchy or mental models than it is to come to terms with carbon sequestration, glyphosate, or nutritional deficiencies. It is helpful when trying to change systems to understand the differences between a fulcrum, a lever, and a leverage point. Whether our vocabulary defines our thinking or our thinking defines our vocabulary, it’s hard to change systems unless we understand them.

Let’s set some targets.

• A webinar series for foundation trustees and leaders on the fundamental of systems thinking;

• Advanced training in systems design for a staff member;

• Guest speakers at annual conferences who focus on systems design and change; or

• A digital and curated library of materials on systems thinking.

I am sure other folks will have better ideas for how to overcome this obstacle. But, please, let’s not wait for COP 40.

Watch the full-length version of "Hope in a Changing Climate"
(Courtesy of Plant for the Planet)

Middlemen or Distributors?

Council Fire *  

Now we all have personal experience with the collapse of supply chains: toilet paper, produce, meat, flour.  They are more fragile than we knew, for many reasons. Whether in conversation with my consulting colleagues at Council Fire or with my clients such as the Equitable Food Initiative, supply chains are front-of-mind – as they also are in many everyday conversations.

Supply chains manage ‘betweens,’ the spaces between activities that otherwise would be disconnected. They connect the farm to the packing house, packing to trucking, truckers to warehouses, and so forth. When working properly, these supply chains are tightly connected, like individual railcars that together make up a train.

While the couplings that keep a train together are obviously critical, do we need all the couplings in our supply chains? When families go berry picking on a local farm, there is no fresh produce supply chain. However, when a farmworker in New Zealand picks a kiwi for sale in Detroit, the chain is long and winding (more of a web than a chain, in fact).

Distributors and consolidators are either essential to keep supplies humming or they are middlemen squeezing growers or producers without adding enough value to warrant the cut they take. Especially today, they seem critically important. But as we rebuild, should they play the same traditional roles or not? Fishmongers are now making a go of it in the UK selling straight to customers at the dock; no distributors. Restaurants have become community pantries in the Washington, DC, area; new distributors.

Size and distance are dispositive. We can't have lobster in the winter in Oklahoma without a complex system of suppliers carefully coupled together. While most of us are not going back to the farm, or to lobstering, maybe the real innovation obscured by the much bandied about idea of ‘scale,’ is that smaller might be better than bigger. We misuse scale as a synonym for bigger, when it actually means proportional or appropriately sized.

As we rebuild better, size and distance must be central to planning. Going from the bedroom to the home office is a shockingly short commute for many people. And we don’t even need to embrace Small Is Beautiful as a principle to wonder; what really is the optimal size for the most efficient economic system?

Before we scoff at alternatives that emphasize regions and internalizing costs, sharing economic value more fairly and better alignment with our personal values, we would do well to remember that what is dismissed today as ‘unworkable,’ is tomorrow’s patent and next year’s most successful IPO.

Especially today, be careful betting against big changes.

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* Council Fire is a global management consultancy that helps purpose-driven organizations thrive by creating lasting economic, social, and environmental value.

Phones and Nuclear Power: The Network Effect Collides with the Tragedy of the Commons

The technologies we embrace reflect social and business values. But whether they embody our personal values is another question entirely. Contrary to decades of myth-making about the inherent neutrality of technology – it is only a question of how we use it – values are embedded in many technologies, reinforcing some values while undermining others.

This realization is awkward. It challenges the core idea that technology is a benign force that springs freely from the minds of scientists and engineers and is an inherent element in the steady march of social advancement and progress for all.

While the evolving Facebook debacle puts this in the public eye today, I had the opportunity some years back at the Aspen Ideas Festival to engage with Eric Schmidt (the then CEO of Google) about this question of technology and values. After claiming that key functions of our cell phones operate “by their nature,” he backed away graciously from this its-only-a-neutral-tool perspective. But his instinctive reliance on that claim reveals an all too common tendency among purveyors of technology; we just build the tools, how they are used is someone else’s problem.

(For commentary on this discussion, along with video of the entire panel discussion and Q & A session from the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival Channel, please see my blog Autonomous Technology.)

That the tech community still largely claims it can ignore the social consequences that attend the appropriate and intended use of its devices is stunning. We are in an age when corporate social responsibility, the circular economy, and supply chain management are expanding “cradle to cradle” responsibility. But leaders in the technology sector are drawing from the playbooks of the tobacco and firearms companies; it's the users not the technologies themselves creating negative consequences.

The warning signs are everywhere for tech leaders who can see them.

How about nuclear power? Is this a neutral technology or is there something inherent in the technology itself that ineluctably pulls us in a certain direction? Whether in North Korea or North America, the use of nuclear materials demands, without exception and regardless of the intended use, a high level of secrecy and security. From uranium mining through to nuclear waste it demands security perimeters, special handling, and so forth. Whether you like concentrated nuclear or prefer distributed solar, the values embedded in the two technologies are profoundly different.

Before we opine on how unfair it is to compare the phone to nuclear power, and before we appeal to the democratizing impact of smart-phones and social media, let us please remember that Facebook was conceived of in 2004 as a means of ranking babes at Harvard. The baby-faced depiction of it as a neutral, social platform that just lets people connect seems to be under assault as Facebook squirms in social quicksand made up in equal parts of hubris, duplicity, and market power.

There is a deeper new reality lurking beneath questions of privacy, net neutrality, data-sharing, and how we have become accustomed to accepting “free” services with impenetrable terms of use. There is no longer a meaningful distinction between content providers, advertisers, and the architects of distribution systems. The neat distinctions and firewalls between “the pipe,” platforms, and producers of content have given way to a wickedly complex web (sorry!) of interlinked technologies.

We are in a moment of historic reckoning that is playing out in the most personal places. It can be heard in dinner table arguments about phone usage; in school yards filled with kids looking at screens; in therapy office discussions of rising anxiety and loss of emotional connection; in medical offices and skyrocketing diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD); in bedroom conflicts about where to put the phone.

But this moment also signals a profound conceptual clash between “The Network Effect” and “The Tragedy of The Commons.” The network effect speaks to one reality we all experience. The value of a network is closely related to how many people are in it; each new additional member adds value to the whole. Facebook as a tool limited to Harvard undergraduates was not so interesting. Add another school, and then another and another and after a few million people the network effect is clear.

Powerfully captured by Garret Hardin in his masterful essay from 1968, The Tragedy of the Commons explains what happens when too many people overwhelm a resource on which they all depend. When individual farmers use a common and limited grazing space for their herds everyone benefits when there is an equilibrium between the space and the number of animals. But if unbridled self-interest leads one farmer to enlarge his herd, thus consuming more of the commons, other farmers will be drawn to do the same thing. In the ensuing tragedy the commons is degraded and eventually destroyed. Private choices, public consequences.

Expanding the social media “commons” through the power of the network effect seems to have no limit. No technical limit, perhaps. But it is we, humans, who represent the limit. How much technology can the human commons absorb and still survive? No one wants to go back to living in caves. That is not the point. This is not a Luddite argument about smashing machines. But can we as a species manage our appetite for technology such that we don’t push past our own human carrying capacity?

Our fate may be in our hands. Literally.

A Fair Chance at Work: Employment Pathways for Excluded Individuals

A staggering 70 million Americans have a criminal record. Despite a tightening labor market, this forecloses for them - by rule or by discrimination - most employment opportunities, even though stable work is crucial to avoiding recidivism. Research from NELP suggests that removing barriers to employment for people with criminal records has been successful in numerous ways.To address this, several fair chance hiring initiatives have emerged, such as ban-the-box.

And previously incarcerated individuals are but one group that is traditionally excluded from employment opportunities: think of people experiencing homelessness or with language barriers.

An especially interesting model to counter exclusion is Open Hiring: the practice of filling jobs without judging applicants or asking any questions. Open Hiring creates mainstream work opportunities and supports individuals in succeeding at those jobs.

Exclusion from employment opportunities touches racial justice, criminal justice reform issues, and human capital management, and investors can play a role.

In this webinar Transform Finance Investor Network presents the Open Hiring model pioneered by Greyston (famous for supplying brownies to Unilever's Ben & Jerry's) over the last 35 years. We will hear from Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs; and Mike Brady, Greyston CEO. Greyston is now looking to fund a new initiative to make Open Hiring a universal practice and support other companies in its adoption

The Leading Good Podcast: Rod Arnold hosts Jonathan Halperin

Rod Arnold hosts Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs for Greyston. Greyston has been changing lives for 35 years through radical inclusion. A pioneering social enterprise, Greyston practices Open Hiring™ – providing jobs to individuals who face barriers to employment – in its world-class bakery and supports its employees and community members with a range of community programs.

On Purpose and Profit

Much has been written since Peter Drucker observed that “profit is not the purpose of business, but rather the test of its validity.” Yet, many corporate leaders still wonder both what purpose looks like operationally and whether it really generates value.  Recently, a host of firms have sought to unpack this challenge: from E&Y(link is external) and Accenture to Sustainable Brands, Conscious Capitalism, Ogilvy, and the Arthur W. Page Society.

For some executives, the sustainability agenda and its cousin, corporate social responsibility, remain challenges.  For others, carbon disclosure remains problematic.  But if Unilever CEO Paul Polman is right that purpose-driven brands within Unilever’s $61 billion ecosystem are growing “50% faster than the rest,” then brand managers, board members, investors and executives all need to quickly get their heads around this next phase of corporate evolution.

To advance the conversation, let’s first take a quick look in the rear-view mirror to understand how we arrived where we are today.

• In 1602 the Dutch East India company was chartered and granted a trading monopoly across a vast area of the Indian Ocean and southern Africa.

• In 1811 New York State passed the first statute facilitating the formation of limited liability manufacturing operations, a landmark event in defining corporate form.

• In 1889 Andrew Carnegie published “Gospel of Wealth,” imploring his wealthiest peers to share their wealth to improve society – a precursor to the 2010 Giving Pledge launched by Bill Gates and others at the urging of Warren Buffett.

• Fast forward to 2012 and Greyston Social Enterprise becomes the first “benefit corporation” to be registered in New York State, identifying Open Hiring™ as the social mission that it would pursue on par with its fiduciary responsibilities.

While humans have been bartering and trading for a very long time, corporate form as we know it today is relatively new.  And the current way we practice philanthropy in the United States is also a modern construct.  The typical pattern involves, first, the accumulation of great wealth through commerce and then some of that wealth being returned to society to meet various social needs.

It is this fundamental sequencing – extraction of profits followed by giving back – that is challenged by purpose-driven corporations.  In the case of Greyston, the scale of profit-taking is moderated by balancing the necessity to not only generate profits but to also achieve a social purpose at the same time.  Benefit corporations bring purpose inside the corporation, thus fundamentally changing its culture.

Greyston’s two-part mission is to create thriving communities and produce delicious brownies. To this end, it operates a world-class bakery in Yonkers, NY, baking 35,000 lbs. of brownies a day for Ben & Jerry’s, and for sale in retail markets.  The kicker is that the Greyston bakery production line is staffed entirely of people brought into the mainstream economy through Open Hiring™.  Anyone who wants a job is offered the opportunity to experience the dignity of work at Greyston: no questions asked, no resumes, no references, no background checks. (Please see this link for more on our work with Greyston).

In codifying this duality of profit and purpose as equally important we enter an entirely new stage of corporate evolution.  Purpose is where self-interest and service meet.    Survival of the fittest, in the jungle, and profit maximization, in competitive markets, have in common what Chris Houston identifies as the fatal flaw of panarchy.   In his provocative book, For Goodness Sake (with Jordan Pinches), Houston extrapolates from systems analysis and ecology to set forth the panarchy principle: any system designed exclusively to optimize just one variable is self-limiting precisely because single variable optimization eventually destabilizes the system.

BCorps are among a few new forms of corporate structure designed to transform business from the inside, rather than through external regulation. These new corporate forms are early efforts to rewrite the rules and codify the opportunities and obligations for corporations to create value for everyone, beyond returns for shareholders. Tempering short-term profit maximizing behavior with the creation of long-term social value benefits may enable capitalism to avoid panarchy.

Such mission-drive corporations now operate in the US across virtually all sectors of the economy – from brownies to banking.  The Co-CEO of Beneficial State Bank, Kat Taylor captured the importance of this evolution in her remarks congratulating Greyston on its 35-year history as a purpose-driven commercial bakery: “I know there’s this popular notion that somehow the capital markets were put here by some cosmic force, and they’re perfect and universal and they always produce the right outcomes.  But they’re actually just a series of rules that we human beings wrote….”

While legal license to operate is still granted through government agencies (as it was in 1602), the more important and broader issue for companies today is around social license to operate.  When the purpose and behavior of a corporation is fundamentally extraction – mining the environment, harvesting time and talent from employees, maximizing profit over all else, squeezing suppliers and vendors – then it is not surprising that over time discontent bubbles forth.  When the richest 10% of the population own 88% of global assets (according to Credit Suisse), the system spawns the seeds of its own destruction.

Minimal licensing requirements, social and regulatory, will not going to forestall short-term profit taking or panarchy.  Licensing is, after all, the low bar of corporate behavior.  Rules requiring placards in elevators, anti-discrimination posters in break rooms, safety codes on wet floors are the absolute minimum.  “Do no harm” may be a useful guide for doctors, but does not take a business very far forward in pursuit of higher social purpose.

Beyond licensing and compliance, and recognizing that competition is fierce, how then are corporations finding competitive advantage in purpose – and simultaneously redefining what it means to be a business? Watch this space.

"Bottom line, fair chance hiring is about the dignity of work."

Plenary Presentation: Greyston Bakery and Open Hiring

Businesses Doing Good (Online Registration)

Businesses Doing Good -- Jonathan Halperin "Open Hiring at Greyston Bakery and Beyond"

Make it stand out

Event to be held at the following time and date:

Thursday, October 19, 2017 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (CDT)

From Sustainable to Flourishing Businesses and Communities

Today businesses are going beyond "sustainability" which reduces the ecological footprint, to "doing good" in the communities where they are based and in places where they offer their products or services. This is a movement toward flourishing businesses and communities.

This series of conference calls on the third Thursday of each month at 10 a.m. Central Time lifts up examples of business as an agent of community benefit. Dr. Glenn Barth, our host, will interview the guest in the first half of each conference call and then open the lines for callers to ask questions in the second half of these highly interactive one hour calls. 

Conference Call Number and PIN will be provided in Registration Confirmation.

Our guest on the October 19 Conference Call is Jonathan Halperin of Greyston Bakery. The interview topic is "Open Hiring at Greyston Bakery and Beyond". 

Greyston Bakery has been working at the intersection of social inclusion and business innovation for 35 years. Open Hiring is its proven and transformative business practice now being adopted by small as well as multinational companies.Today, Greyston produces 35,000 lbs. of brownies every day for Ben & Jerry’s.

JONATHAN HALPERIN

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Jonathan Halperin serves as the Head of External Affairs at Greyston—with responsibility for communications, development and digital assets. He is founder and President of Designing Sustainability, a strategy consultancy.  He has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit and commercial organizations such as SustainAbility, Ltd., Resources for the Future, and FYI Resources for a Changing World.

In collaboration with international executives, nonprofit leaders, public officials and creative media producers he designs and executes projects to drive systemic changes in thinking and behavior.  Recent projects include research and design of communications on agricultural risk with The World Bank, creation of SNAPAlumni.org with Participant Media to dispel myths about hunger in America, and design of TeachFood! at Mundo Verde PCS which brings celebrity chefs to an inner city school in Washington, DC.

He serves as a trusted source for journalists, a regular public speaker, meeting facilitator, panel moderator, writer and diplomatically disruptive provocateur.  He is a graduate of Duke University and lives with his two young children near Washington, DC.

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Upcoming Interviews in the Businesses Doing Good series:

November 16: Pablo Guevara of Epoch Pi in Cleveland on the topic of "Purposeful Investing."

December 21: Guest in process of responding.

January 18: Paul Turek and Brett Struwe of Caribou Coffee on the topic of "Rainforest Alliance Certification."

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We hope you can make it! Glenn Barth, GoodCities GoodCities

The Capitol Pressroom: A WCNY Radio Production

This New York Bakery Thrives by Hiring Anyone Who Wants to Work, No Questions Asked.

Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in Entrepreneur (August 18, 2017)

Bakery Thrives by Hiring Anyone Who Wants to Work, No Questions Asked.

Full-text of the article appears below.
Kira Halevy - Guest Writer

Dion Drew was reluctantly but seriously considering returning to the drug trade -- a life that had landed him in prison for four years in New York. Nine months had passed since his release, and despite his best efforts, he couldn’t find honest work. At every turn, employers, leery of his felony record and criminal past, had turned him down for job opportunities.

Then the phone rang. It was Greyston Bakery.

A few days earlier, Drew had put his name on a list at the small, Yonkers, N.Y.-based company, which embraces a unique “open hiring” model. Anyone of legal working age can get a job at the bakery, regardless of his or her experience or background. No questions asked. No resume needed. Applicants simply have to put their name on a list and wait for a job to become available.

“After I applied, it took about three to four days for them to give me a call back, which was tremendous,” Drew says. “I was riding around with a friend and I was ready to start selling drugs again, to be honest with you. I got that beautiful call, and it’s been glorious ever since.”

One promotion after another, Drew has worked his way up into a management role at Greyston. He’s able to provide for his family without ever again flirting with the wrong side of the law.

“Now I’m able to take care and provide for myself on my own,” said Drew, who has since become a father, as well. “I have a beautiful daughter, I have started a family since I’ve been at Greyston, and I’m able to take care of them -- legally,” he says.

Located just outside New York City, Greyston is best known for its delicious brownies, 35,000 fragrant pounds of which its workers bake, cool, cut and package every day. The sweet, fudgy treats are sold online and at Whole Foods Market grocery stores throughout the country.

You may have even tried them without knowing it, as Greyston’s delicious brownies can also be found crushed up and folded into Ben & Jerry’s popular Half-Baked and Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream flavors.

Beyond Greyston’s superb baked goods, the for-profit B Corporation heralds a larger mission through its groundbreaking open hiring model. Core to its social stewardship values, the community-focused company affords eager, would-be workers from all walks of life -- including ex-cons like Drew, the homeless, the long-term unemployed and veterans -- jobs, paychecks and hope for a better future.

“You don’t need no resumes. You don’t get asked questions. You don’t need to know anything about working,” Drew says. “You just need to come here and show that you want to work.”

Like the chocolaty confections that abound at Greyston (4 million pounds of them are baked there annually), Drew’s story has a sweet ending. With gratitude and tears in his eyes, he’s unafraid to express his emotion as he shares his story, something he often does at conferences and other events, including during a recent TED Talk.

Imbued with the independence his position at the bakery has provided, Drew speaks with joy about his young daughter and the ability to properly care for her after leaving behind a life of crime in favor of honest work and a reliable income at Greyston. He beams with pride at having the opportunity to support himself and his loved ones legally.

Inspiring stories like Drew’s -- and Greyston’s unique approach to hiring that make them possible -- show how business owners, community leaders and local officials can work together to everyone’s benefit, potentially reversing generations of unemployment and poverty.

That sweeping social impact shines through in the bakery’s mission.

As longtime Greyston spokesperson Jonathan Halperin notes, “We don’t hire people to bake brownies; we bake brownies to hire people.”

“We create job opportunities for everyone who’s willing to work, regardless of their background, regardless of their prior criminal record,” he says. “That model creates an opportunity for people who have often been excluded to become a part of the mainstream fabric of economic and cultural life in this country.”

Beyond giving anyone who’s willing to work a job, Greyston bakes in the right infrastructure to make its distinctive open hiring model work in practice.

“I wouldn’t have been able to come back to work without the option of having daycare through Greyston,” says bakery account manager Sunitha Malieckal. “What is amazing about Greyston is that when they try to provide these add-on services, it becomes so much more than just a job.

“I have a lot of friends still in jail, I have a lot of friends that are still selling drugs, I have a lot of friends who died at a young age, and I’m tired of that,” he says, adding: “You’re changing a person’s life by helping them get a job.”

Watch the video above to get a glimpse inside the bustling Greyston Bakery facility in New York and to hear from the folks who’ve benefited from open hiring.

Brownie-Makers Wanted, No Application Needed

Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in beyond (June 21, 2017)

Brownie-Makers Wanted, No Application Needed

Full-text of the article appears below.

There are no job applications at Greyston Bakery. No background screenings, no interviews, no reference checks. Instead, getting a job at this 35-year-old bakery in Yonkers, New York, requires nothing more than a name and a phone number on a no-frills list. When a job comes up, the next person in line gets a call. No questions asked. 

“We don’t hire people to make brownies,” said Jonathan Halperin, the bakery’s head of external affairs and founder of consulting firm Designing Sustainability. “We make brownies to hire people.”

It’s called open hiring, and it holds the promise of providing equal access to employment for all, including those often excluded from the job market like formerly incarcerated individuals, immigrants and refugees. Speaking to an audience at this month’s Fourth Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, Halperin described how this “hybrid social enterprise” has operated an open hiring model since its 1982 founding by Bernie Glassman, a former aeronautical engineer who became a Buddhist monk. The company is currently led by CEO and president Mike Brady. 

“As businesspeople, that means that we are people doing business,” Halperin said. “But the people part does have to come first. Having a purpose is essential for us in so many ways. At a species level, we are wired to create, to make, to build.”

Greyston was the first certified Benefit Corporation (B Corp) in the state of New York in 2008, and in 2017 received 138 out of 200 on its impact assessment report, well above the average score of 80 and qualifying it as a “Best for the World” honoree. The company churns out 35,000 pounds of brownies a day that supply Ben & Jerry’s — where you’ll find Greyston’s brownies in the Chocolate Fudge Brownie and other ice cream blends — and Whole Foods. 

The next step in Greyston’s evolution, said Halperin, is “moving from a place-based company to a practice-based company.” It’s fostered a community around the business that includes low-income housing, an early learning center, workforce development programs, internships and a community garden. “It’s where business innovation and social inclusion come together,” he said. 

Now the company is creating a Center for Open Hiring, which it describes as a “collaborative learning space facilitating the widespread adoption of Open Hiring and supporting innovation in the delivery of community programs for employees and neighbors,” as well as an Association for Open Hiring to set standards and promote best practices in the field.

Halperin pointed to the example of Dion Drew, a Greyston Bakery trainer who regularly speaks about his experience there. Drew grew up in the projects, turning to the streets to make ends meet and spending his years in and out of prison from the age of 17. After his last release, he searched for a job, but he was constantly turned away because of his criminal record. Now six years into his employment at Greyston, Dion spreads the word whenever he has an opportunity that the job saved his life.

“If Dion can do what he has as a man,” Halperin challenged the audience, “think of what we can do as business leaders.”

- Jennifer Keirn

Jonathan J. Halperin Keynotes at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit

Leaders, change agents and entrepreneurs from the business, academic, nonprofit and government sectors gather June 14-16 at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.  (And artists who captured the presentations with creativity and accuracy.)

Monday Monday

Pondering the categories and labels that we come to accept as fixed and true. My daughter, intellectually inquisitive at 12, was asking, “Who decided Monday was going to be called Monday?” And as we were driving from DC to Maryland, who decided “about state borders anyway?” After groping with various fact-based answers, I paused and realized that this was more than anything a question of metaphysics rather than geographic history.

As Pope Francis completes his US visit in the city of brotherly love, I am traveling through Philadelphia en route to a meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) with a copy of the Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality. How is it that for so many years the issues of global climate stability, poverty and inequality were largely disconnected from one another? As we teach at Mundo Verde PCS, “habits of mind” are critical.

Looking over the EGA members, I think of the work I have been doing with Greyston: NYS’s first benefit corporation, supplier of brownies to Ben & Jerry’s and the pioneering social enterprise that has made open-hire a viable business practice while also providing jobs to the structurally unemployable. Is Greyston a business or a nonprofit; what is one to make of the social good movement?

The business structures we assume have been around for a very long time are, in fact, reasonably new creations. Although we have come a long way from 1602 when the Dutch East India Company was formed, and even from the passage in 1811 of the New York State statute governing corporations, clearly the overall pace of change is not slowing. And yet amidst change, inequality persists and even worsens: today the 85 richest individuals manage wealth equal to that of the poorest 3.5 billion people.

The notion of socially responsible business we can date to maybe 1953, sustainability to 1987, the triple-bottom-line to 1994, and benefit corporations to 2006. And in America, philanthropy tracks a not dissimilar course, and one closely connected to business: from Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913, to the UN Global Compact in 2000 that seeks to set ground rules for responsible business behavior on the global stage.

We seem on the cusp of rewriting the fundamental rules and definitions around how we define returns on investment, what makes a business a social enterprise, and where responsibility rests in the efforts to address challenges that cut across the operational and mental boundaries we have created to help us understand a dizzyingly fast and complex world.

This Pope clearly is different, but how much of a difference do his words make? The work we need to do to reset the core frameworks and systems can seem as daunting as ever.

And, by the way, how did we select names for the days of the week?

2014 A Happy New Year

I am comforted by the awareness that changes we dismiss today as inconceivable are often viewed by historians as having been inevitable.

A Happy New Year might thus include news of the following momentous changes.

• Following in the reconciliation footsteps of Nelson Mandela, President Salva Kiir of South Sudan and his former Vice President Riek Machar reach an accord to prevent this newest of nations from sliding into tribal anarchy.

• Noting that even Al Queda can apologize and take responsibility for being in the wrong for allowing one of its own to attack a hospital in Sanna, Yemen, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney apologize to the American people, admitting that they were in fact grievously wrong about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

• In a surprise announcement in Davos, CEOs Paul Pohlman (Unilever), Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Larry Page (Google), Mark Parker (Nike), Sam Walsh (Rio Tinto) and Norbert Reithofer (BMW) confirm rumors that beginning in 2016 they will base executive pay, including their own, not only on financial performance but also on sustainability achievements.

• Following copy-cat revelations in China and Brazil from whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden, the permanent members of the UN Security Council announce that they have begun implementation of a global intelligence gathering consortium to combat terrorism; and in a stunning move Republican leadership in the Senate vows to push for quick passage in the U.S.

• Finding common purpose in sustaining the long-term vibrancy of American democracy, Bill Koch, Bill Gates, George Soros, and Robert Reich (Board Chair of Common Cause) call for an end to all private funding for U.S. political campaigns.

• Recognizing the immensity of the self-inflicted economic damage that ripples through the economy from hunger and poverty, Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi announce a determined bi-partisan effort to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour.

• In an equally unexpected outpouring of bipartisan concern for the future of the country, House and Senate leaders pass of a carefully constructed carbon tax that is progressive, avoids stranding assets, and creates a truly level playing field; the US Chamber of Commerce and ExxonMobil push for passage, arguing that a stable climate is essential for long-term business investment.

• In response to questions posed to President Putin at the Sochi Olympics, he admits knowing next to nothing about the other twenty thousand prisoners he released along with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the members of Pussy Riot.

• In a continued effort to introduce competition in the energy sector, House Energy Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI) and his fellow Michigan Representative, Democrat, John Dingell, propose legislation to repeal the Price-Anderson act, which indemnifies the nuclear power industry for any losses exceeding $12.6 billion.

• And in a stunning announcement cheered by consumers around the world Samsung, Apple, Google and Microsoft agreed to provide their unique mobile applications and services via a common platform and with fully compatible plugs, cords, and charging devices.

Hope springs eternal. Happy New Year!

Buses and Sustainability

I have buses on my mind – lots and lots of school buses sitting in parking lots all over the world. In the United States about 480,000 yellow school buses take kids to and from school, and on fields trips. And are then parked.

What I have come to like about buses is that they are a form of sharing. Whether in public or private use, buses embody the notion of a shared need – a common route. They are thus aggregators, of commuters or students, or in innovative settings much more. But in aggregating, they also preserve an individuals particular need.

Verizon, for example, now uses buses to deploy technicians in New York City, in addition to individual trucks and vans. The buses are packed with equipment, some mobile and some fixed, and drop technical staff where they are needed to address customer problems and then pick them up when they are done. Saves a lot of time (looking for parking spaces, fuel, vehicle maintenance and so forth). In retrospect, seems like a no-brainer.

In the national capitol region around Washington, DC, another bus has been repurposed as a green market. Run by Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture, it also follows a set route but this repurposed bus collects fresh produce and meats from area farmers and delivers them to underserved neighborhoods. Customers can use government SNAP, WIC, and SFMNP funds to buy healthy, local, fresh food. Another no-brainer, in hindsight.

As I head to the CERES conference “Igniting Innovation, Scaling Sustainability”, I wonder how we can more effectively use such underutilized assets: school buses that spend more than half their useful lives parked, offices that are empty for as many hours as they are occupied, and school kitchens and lunch rooms deserted after students go home.

What is the Modern Corporation?

Howard Schultz, founder and CEO of Starbucks, shared his thoughts this morning at Aspen in discussion with Joe Nocera of the New York Times. His was an impassioned, articulate, unwavering championing of the view that long-term business value is created and protected only by having a focus beyond profits. Not excluding profits – but surely not only profit.

It was a tour de force presentation mixing values and passion with hard-nosed investment and business strategy. Responding to a comment from Joe Nocera about Howard’s unique background, both as the company founder and a kid from Brooklyn who grew up in public housing, I reframed the question back to the link between organizational and leadership values – and perceptions of time.

Autonomous Technology?

In a filled tent at the Aspen Ideas Festival today, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, described smart phones as devices that “by their nature” collect information. This brought me back to my days in graduate school at MIT where Langdon Winner wrote a remarkable book, “Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought.”

I questioned Schultz about this (see below) and he corrected himself, but also went on to explain that phones, in fact, do need to collect and send data beyond what users may want in order to provide GPS services and 911 calling capabilities. The question of responsibility and autonomy is central to a raft of questions: from pledges taken by many radical republicans to never raise taxes regardless of circumstance, to defining the limits and expanse of corporate responsibility for supply chain and product recycling, to the rising concern about the impact of using electronic devices on cognitive development of kids.

For video of the entire panel discussion and Q & A session,
visit the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival channel on FORA.tv.
(The exchange above appears at 44:18-45:30.)

(In another discussion with Jim Steyer, founder of CommonSense Media, we discussed what it means to be obsessed with digital devices, whether this was addictive, and what to do about it to maintain a society based around civil human interactions.)

I think a longer discussion with Schmidt would reveal that devices are designed with certain functions to meet customer, regulatory, and corporate needs. But the systems that emerge both intentionally and inadvertently from the conflation and integration of these discrete devices, entwined technical ecosystems, do grow to have biases and embedded values that are very powerful drivers of social values and culture. And who takes responsibility for these systems and their consequences?

Cities of the Future

The mega-cities of the nearest future are either hubs of innovation and creativity, as outlined by Richard Florida at the Aspen Ideas Festival), or overrun slums without electricity, transit access to center city, running water and the most basic urban services.

Or maybe they are both? 

Check out the forthcoming The Misfit Economy: Innovation on the Fringe by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips (www.misfiteconomy.com)

Capetown photo by Kyra Maya Phillips, co-author with Alexa Clay of the forthcoming
The Misfit Economy: Innovation on the Fringe

Florida has a fascinating project that seeks to assess economic development not through conventional surveys and data collection that lead to traditional computations of GDP, but rather through satellite imagery and calculations of energy use as derived from light emissions seen from space at night.

While intriguing, Florida acknowledges key shortcomings in his innovative approach. I asked him about these yesterday.

Markets, Governments and People

The notion that “what’s good for General Motors is good for the country” is actually a misquote of more complex 1953 testimony from Charles Erwin Wilson; “ …for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa…" At the time, Wilson was president of General Motors and President Eisenhower’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. Fifty-nine years later, 25% of General Motors’ stock is held by the US Government as a result of the financial crisis. But even absent crises, the neat dividing lines between governments and free markets is more dotted than it is bold. And it is likely to become even more squiggly in coming years. That shift, though needed, is fraught with risk and there are very diverse ways of re-blending responsibilities, markets and government.

At the just concluded Global Philanthropy Forum in Washington, DC, there was much talk of the need to harness the power of markets to improve the world (see the full agenda and video of the proceedings).

A terrific panel on impact investing (see "A Different Kind of ROI: The Role for Private Capital" to the right) championed this as a mechanism for blending and integrating charitable missions and investment strategies. The question being posed, rightly, is why focus so much on grants (generally 5% of foundation assets in the US) but not on the assets themselves as a means of driving change?

The lure of the market, with all its attendant risks, is strong. And as articulated by Jed Emerson, Executive Vice President of ImpactAssets, to have impact foundations need to stop “acting like trout,” mostly hovering motionless in swirling water and only occasionally jumping to catch a bug as one passes overhead. Impact investing is needed, is a good idea, and is sure to expand in coming years.

From another vantage point, markets can undermine governments and cripple their ability to serve citizens. Privatization of government assets in the former Soviet Union was largely a massive transfer of wealth from the public trust into private hands. As a businessman in The Soviet Union throughout the 1980s and 1990’s it is clear to me that (despite some very serious efforts at fairness) the give-away of state assets was wholly corrupt, took place in a modern economy and resource rich country on a scale never before imagined, and will continue for generations to undermine public trust in state institutions while enriching a small elite. So while communism was vanquished, the structure of political and economic power in Russia today is perhaps more akin to what it was in Tsarist times than to that of a European or North American modern state.

Beyond the Russian experience, devolving public goods such as water into the hands of private firms, with the positive intention of attaching prices to increasingly scarce resources as a means of protecting them, have also run into major problems in countries around the world.

Markets may well be the most finely tuned mechanism we have for allocating resources efficiently around short-term costs and prices. But absent a robust framework of social and cultural values and priorities to channel market operations these efficient markets will lead to vast inequity and depletion of critical resources. That markets alone will protect and allocate scare resources such as water in a manner that is equitable and socially acceptable is a pernicious fantasy. When we dislike the role of government we refer to it disparagingly as the regulatory morass, command and control, and bureaucracy. When we favor it, we champion the level playing field.

But as we reorganize the social contract – changing the dynamic relationships between governments, markets and societies – the need for sound policy and effective government intervention is central to effective strategies for change. We live in a time where it is fashionable to trash government (bureaucrats, all), mock politicians (idiots, all), and demand that leaders be entertainers.

Through their terrific work with social entrepreneurs, organizations like Ashoka, The Skoll Foundation, Acumen and many others are empowering individuals to harness markets to meet pressing social needs. The winners of the Vodafone Wireless Innovation awards  presented at the Global Philanthropy Forum were inspiring to all of us. Who would imagine mobile phones as a key imaging tool in diagnosing cancer? But to empower entrepreneurs and harness market forces is not to delegitimize government from its still central role in ensuring opportunity, freedom, and dignity for everyone -- regardless of the extent to which anyone can or cannot participate in the marketplace.