3 Ways Neuroscience Can Help You to Build a Powerful Team

The NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI) is a leading global research organization and a pioneer of bringing neuroscience to leadership. NLI advocates “using hard science to transform leadership effectiveness.” In my words, they make organizations more powerful. Neuroscience can help you build a powerful team, too.

Listening to Joe Wittinghill, GM Talent, Learning, and Insights at Microsoft will give you a glimpse of the organization-wide impact that other companies including Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Disney, Marriott, Prudential, United Technologies, KPMG, and Travelers are seeing as members. These organizations rely on NLI not only to supply great research, but also to apply key findings to create powerful organizations.

NLI applies research in three key areas to help companies answer important questions:

Performance Management

  • What truly motivates people?
  • What drives better conversations?
  • How does ‘no ratings’ really work?
  • How do we fix feedback?

NLI advocates the importance of focusing on a growth mindset, which emphasizes progress over time as opposed to a fixed mindset, which is primarily/totally focused on a final result. Their research also indicates that intelligence (and power) can be expanded over time and refutes the view that intelligence is static.

Diversity and Inclusion

  • Why are diverse and inclusive organizations smarter?
  • How can we reduce bias?
  • What truly lifts inclusion?
  • How do we hire “the right fit”?

NLI advocates that bias is natural, normal, and part of the non-conscious. To mitigate bias in decision making, research shows it is important to not only create awareness, but also to label biases when they surface and develop behavioral habits to offset them, particularly given their non-conscious nature. Teams become more powerful with varied behavior.

Leadership and Change

  • What is the science of behavior change?
  • How do we foster a growth mindset in everyone?
  • How do we drive effective learning at scale?
  • How do we fix leadership development?

NLI advocates that fostering a toward/reward state of mind versus an away/threat state is essential to motivating others and creating psychological safety. In other words, the strategy of managing by “FUD” (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is demotivating and not effective in helping an organization grow.

Truly powerful organizations manage human capital with the same rigor and intensity that they manage financial capital. These organizations understand that the “softer side” of people management is really the “hard stuff” that matters most. Companies that rely on hard science to optimize their human capital will continue to lead the rest.

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12 Ways All-In Leadership Increases the Value of Any Team Meeting

The biggest opportunity for growth in any organization is to harness the power in its people.

Here are 12 tips that any leader (I call leaders ‘Chiefs’) can use to increase the value of any team meeting. All team members are Chiefs, and when they are treated as such, the potential within the team is amplified. Here’s how to concentrate that power:

Diversify – Chiefs with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives working together deliver the most value. Could your teams be more diverse?

Balance – Gender-balance increases the chances that a group will produce optimal decisions. Where is the balance in your organization?

Decentralize – Empowering teams that are closer to the issues to actually make decisions, as opposed to recommendations, will increase the energy in a meeting. Who makes decisions in your organization?

Organize – Establishing clear objectives with adequate time for thoughtful input from all participants will produce expansive and productive discussions. How organized are your strategies? Do all participants have time to give input?

Educate – Make sure new employees and extended team members (customers, vendors, strategic partners, and other guests) understand expectations about how your organization conducts meetings when they are asked to participate. Do you make it easy for newcomers to fit in?

Communicate – Acknowledge that a transfer of knowledge requires active participation from both the speaker and the listeners. Does everyone both listen and speak in your organization?

Accommodate – Group chats alone may inhibit great input from introverts. Do you get one-on-one input from introverted team members?

Integrate – Assimilating different perspectives to find common ground can move a group forward in their work together.

Mediate – Recognize when tensions arise and deal with them directly. Do tensions ever get ignored among your team members?

Document – Capture and distribute the action items and agreements from a session to ensure accuracy. How well do you document your plans and intentions?

Recognize – Bring attention to, and show appreciation for, individuals who go above and beyond in their support for and contribution to the team. Who do you recognize, why do you recognize them, and how?

Evaluate – Regularly assess not only the quality of the output of a meeting but also whether or not improvements can be made in the governance of the meeting. How can your meetings get better for all involved?

In my experience working in different industries with groups of different sizes, these simple habits contribute greatly to unlocking the potential for All-In teams and creating a powerful organization.

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CO’s, COO’s, and You!

The term Commanding Officer (CO) has long been associated with military hierarchy. At the top of the military ladder is the position of Commander in Chief. Commanders at each level are often referred to as the “superior” of levels below. In my experience dealing with the best and the brightest who serve our country, very few commanders see themselves as superior.

In fact, effective COs celebrate the equality of those in their charge. They know success comes when everyone feels empowered to lead and take their share of responsibility. Further, they believe in humility, respect, empathy, and integrity every bit as much as discipline. The same is true in business.

A Chief Operating Officer (COO) could be viewed as the business equivalent of the military CO. In some companies, the COO is the individual in charge. But the best COOs (and CEOs) also know they need to create a culture where everyone shares the attributes of a strong COO.

If you don’t have a Chief or a commander title, you can choose to act like a COO or a CO no matter where you are on the ladder. Here is what great COOs and COs do, according to four Chiefs, Alexander Tuff, Ryan Caldbeck, Jeremy Bromberg, and Mark Hamade.

  1. Ask good questions
  2. Be transparent and open
  3. Strive for alignment with effective communication
  4. Be a life-long learner
  5. Surround yourself with life-long learners
  6. Plan the work and work the plan
  7. Improve everything you touch
  8. Focus on details
  9. Control your ego
  10. Be data driven
  11. Lead by supporting
  12. Keep your cool
  13. Prioritize
  14. Be resourceful
  15. Be practical
  16. Be unassuming
  17. Be a great listener
  18. Be a free thinker
  19. Be a clear communicator
  20. Be strong with numbers (analysis, metrics) and letters (writing)
  21. Have an appropriate sense of urgency
  22. Develop a great eye for detail
  23. Be passionate about company success, and know that personal success is an outcome of company success, not the other way around
  24. Advocate for employees at all levels
  25. Advocate for good ideas, regardless of where they come from
  26. Be energetic, even if quietly
  27. Be a master integrator
  28. Champion continuous improvement in everything
  29. Don’t let allow perfect to get in the way of progress
  30. Be a team player
  31. Build trust

Their advice is spot on, and in line with everything I know and teach about being Chief. Who needs the title anyway?

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Building Powerful Organizations

Powerful organizations drive sustainable growth—healthy growth that lasts. But how does an organization become powerful, and what does power really mean?

We love to list and rank the powerful. My friend Stefan Swanepoel just released a list of the 200 most powerful people in U.S. real estate. Other lists include the world’s most powerful people, the world’s most powerful brands, and the world’s most powerful countries.

But you won’t find many lists or ranking criteria for powerful companies or organizations. Instead, companies measure other attributes, like the world’s largest companies and the world’s most admired companies.

There are three reasons why rankers have stayed away from attempting to list and rank truly powerful organizations.

First, there is confusion around the definition of power. Too often the word power is used as a synonym for authority or the ability to control a market. In fact, powerful entities are more accurately defined by the exceptional and ever-increasing levels of ability, influence, and energy that enable that authority or (perceived) control.

Second, power is often confused with the prerequisites for power created when management builds effective, integrated strategies in six areas—customer, competition, financial capital, cost, community, and climate. Each strategy must include specific plans and measurable objectives. While critical to establish a powerful organization, successful strategies in each of these areas simply create the conditions for true power.

Finally and most critically, the core of an organization’s power is solely found in its people, and their ability, influence, and energy. As Jim Collins offered in his book Good To Great, “First who, then what.”

The ability to assess or measure the human capital in any organization continues to be the limiting factor in ranking powerful organizations in the world.

So, how do organizations become powerful?

Leaders build strategies and deploy plans in the six areas above AND the following areas below:

Measure and improve employee engagement; ensure diversity and gender-balanced leadership; consistently assess, improve, and expand employee “hard and soft” skillsets; add new skillsets when necessary; align team members around a values-based vision for the future; and build a change-adaptive culture to meet accelerating changes in market needs tied to management’s strategic decisions.

Those organizations that come closest to these targets are the most powerful organizations.

There is no limit on organizational power because there is no limit on the power of human capital.

Building powerful organizations is what I do.

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How Business Can Restore America’s Greatness – Part 4 of 4

Part 4 – A Business Plan for America*

Bill Knudsen was president of General Motors and knew that only business could prepare America for victory in World War II. He understood the role of business in facing global challenges and restoring America’s greatness. That kind of business-led effort is needed again, but to unlock it, CEOs need the story that enables such bold action while delivering real growth.

That story is looking us in the face. Today, the challenges are different but the threat to our country and to the world is arguable every bit as dire:

  • Three billion people are pounding on the gates of the global economy.
  • Climate change and ecosystem depletion are degrading Earth’s carrying capacity and disrupting human communities, with the high potential for much greater disruption to come.
  • Income inequality is accelerating, resulting in social unrest.
  • And global infrastructure, systems, and supply chains are fragile and prone to shock and disruption.

As we ricochet from crisis to crisis, the country is not fixing the fundamentals while international order is unwinding, and Americans are getting increasingly concerned, impatient, and angry.

It’s time for action.

In The New Grand Strategy: Restoring America’s Prosperity, Security, and Sustainability in the 21st Century, authors Mark Mykleby, Patrick Doherty, and Joel Makower tell the story of this strategic moment in which business must lead.

Bottom line, the authors lay out a clear “prosperity formula” rooted in historical precedent: Demand + CapitalStranded Assets = New Growth Scenario. Looking at the fundamentals of today’s economy, they detail massive demand for new products and services, huge amounts of private sector capital available, and substantial assets where innovative thinking can avoid value destruction and unlock sustainable wealth potential.

It’s already started.

In the book, the authors point to specific examples of success stories in which alignment of business, social, and environmental priorities is generating triple bottom-line returns (for people, profit, planet) today, including companies ranging from Walmart and Steelcase to Panera Bread, Target, and US Steel. They also cite the statistic that 84% of CEO’s in a recent survey believe that business has to execute a “step change in ambition and action” through “innovating new systems, markets and structures.”

But more needs to be done, and now.

Quarterly analysts and uncertainly are often cited as reasons for avoiding large-scale, decisive change. But in February 2016, Laurence D. Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $5.5 trillion under management, wrote to the CEOs of the Fortune 500 whose revenue of $12.5 trillion equate to 66% of U.S. GDP. Mr. Fink’s message: “The effects of the short-termist phenomenon are troubling . . . for our broader economy,” and he asked each company for their strategy for long-term, sustainable growth.

Fink’s dire reality—no real growth on the horizon—is the real driver that CEOs need to focus on. And by saying he’ll protect CEOs who develop sound strategies for long-term growth, Fink takes away the excuse for inaction. But CEOs need a framework in which all their individual strategies are reinforcing.

They need a Business Plan for America. That’s what The New Grand Strategy delivers.

Their proposal identifies 10 sectors of our economy that are developing new business models, each a part of this new story. Together, they form the new economic ecosystem we need, drawing not on government subsidies but on historic pools of pent up demand.

Oil & Gas

  • New business model: Natural Gas Bridge & Advanced Materials
  • Story: From Burning to Building

Transportation

  • New business model: Multimodal Mobility Systems
  • Story: From Vehicles to Mobility

Real Estate & Infrastructure

  • New business model: Walkable Communities
  • Story: From Sprawl to Smart Growth

Farming

  • New business model: Regenerative Agriculture
  • Story: From Depletive to Regenerative

Natural Resources

  • New business model: Ecosystem Service Markets
  • Story: From Extraction to Stewardship

Electricity

  • New business model: Distributed Renewables
  • Story: From Centralized Combustion to Distributed Renewables

Telecom/Mobile

  • New business model: Gigabit Networks & Internet of Things
  • Story: From Megabits and Phones to Gigabits and Sensors

Retail

  • New Business Model: Small Footprint & e-Commerce
  • Story: From Big Box to Bricks & Clicks

Manufacturing

  • New business model: Distributed Production
  • Story: From Outsourcing to Advanced Manufacturing

Health Care

  • New Business Model: Team-Based Wellness
  • Story: From Hospitalization to Primary Care

Importantly, in each sector the authors show us how companies can align their immediate economic self-interests with our mutual long-term interest of generational and environmental well-being. They show us how companies can do well by doing good. Add it all up, and it puts capital back to work and America back to work, all solving the greatest challenges facing our nation and our planet.

Perhaps most importantly, by being rooted in real demand, the story of this success need not be delayed by government bureaucracy. The economy won’t change because of elegantly-designed policy but by a practical web of contracts large and small that create lasting value.

And as Bill Knudsen knew first, contracts are more powerful than regulations in solving the global challenges of today.

 

 

*This blog series is intended to prompt readers to fully explore The New Grand Strategy, a book I believe is one of the most important books available to any CEO. All content in this blog series is adapted from The New Grand Strategy: Restoring America’s Prosperity, Security, and Sustainability in the 21st Century with permission from authors Mark Mykleby, Patrick Doherty, and Joel Makower. Mr. Mykleby and Mr. Doherty currently serve as co-directors at the Strategic Innovation Lab (SIL) at Case Western Reserve University, as part of The Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. Full disclosure: I proudly serve as a strategic advisor to the SIL.

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All-In Leadership—NOW!

A lack of engagement is cited as costing U.S. business over $500B annually according to Gallup. Arguably, the cost to our country of a lack of engagement could be a lot higher.

In our last presidential election, an estimated 97 million eligible voters chose not to vote. Reports indicated that some didn’t think their vote would matter while many attributed their decision not to vote to a belief that “others” were better able to decide their future.

I believe many of those who chose not to vote are now rethinking their choice. Further, I believe it’s time for those who are not satisfied with their local, state, or federal government—and are sitting on the sidelines—to rethink their choice as well.

Consider this quote from American critical thinker and author Werner Hans Erhard:

“The problems we have now in communities and societies are going to be resolved only when we are brought together by a common sense that each of us is a visionary. Each of us must come to the realization that we can function and live at the level of vision rather than following some great leader’s vision. Instead of looking for a great leader, we are in an era where each of us needs to find the great leader in ourselves.”

Erhard is sounding the same theme offered by Ralph Waldo Emerson over 175 years ago in his book Self-Reliance.

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of . . . sages. . . . There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better.”

I believe both Erhard and Emerson are arguing for their respective contemporaries to step up to the responsibility of individual accountability.

“All in” is a term often used to describe an individual giving 100% effort. With the challenges we face in our towns, states, countries, and in the world at large, I concur with Erhard and Emerson, and I suggest that all-in leadership must start now.

As I offered in October of 2011, all-in leadership starts with accountability. Each of us must act with discipline, creativity, and support for others consistent with the insight of who we are and with our values. We each have a responsibility to continue our education and to ensure our voice is heard, and our vote is counted.

We are all Chiefs when we are all in.

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How Business Can Restore America’s Greatness – Part 3 of 4

Part 3 – Finding the Money and Optimizing Assets*

Bill Knudsen saw the opportunity in 1940 for new orders—and new profits: If he and his fellow industrialists could transform existing supply chains and product lines to meet the demand for arms, munitions, ships, planes, and trucks generated during the second global conflict in the century, he knew it would be good for American companies. He also knew it was the way we could win World War II.

But Knudsen also saw two things others had missed. First, he saw the need for a massive infusion of money to fund company retooling efforts, and he saw a way to access that necessary capital with the passage of the universal income tax. And importantly, Knudsen identified a number of stranded assets that were available to be utilized and optimized that together would provide the building blocks of his audacious strategy. Specifically, remnants of the Great Depression included excess factory equipment and capacity as well as a huge labor pool on which to draw. All the pieces were in place.

In The New Grand Strategy, authors Mykleby, Doherty, and Makower crystalize Knudsen’s “prosperity formula,” as Demand + CapitalStranded Assets = New Growth Scenario. Part 2 of this blog series overviewed the book’s description of huge near-term demand that exists today. Equally compelling is the availability of more than adequate capital as well as a new set of assets to be optimized.

Unlike Knudsen’s need to rely on public-sector capital, idle private-sector capital sits today at an all-time high. Specifically, recent estimates by The Federal Reserve place the amount of cash on the balance sheets of non-financial U.S. companies as exceeding $3.5 trillion. In addition, $10 trillion in private equity and hedge fund is available and seeking growth opportunities. The authors also point to the accessibility of funds associated with the largest transfer of wealth in history of the world as $17 trillion is passed from the WWII generation to baby boomers and $30 trillion is transferred from boomers to millennials. Importantly, investors are also increasing their focus on sustainability. The so-called sustainable and responsible investment segment now has $13.5 trillion under management globally, according to the World Economic Forum. In short, necessary capital is not only available, it’s plentiful.

Less abundant are ideas around how to deal with the challenging issue of “stranded assets.” For many innovative and bold business leaders, the challenge is often to help others think differently. Opportunities do indeed exist, however, and many are presented in the book. Today, perhaps the biggest opportunity for transformational thinking is in the area of hydrocarbons, a.k.a. oil and gas.

The International Energy Agency estimates that to stay within two degrees Celsius of atmospheric warming, the global economy will have to avoid emitting the carbon from 80 percent of the world’s proven oil and gas reserves. Many environmentalists believe the only option is to write off this estimated $20 trillion stranded asset. The authors of The New Grand Strategy see things differently. They posit that instead of burning hydrocarbons, we can build with them. This shift will reduce the amount of lumber, cement, aluminum, and steel used, substituting them with advanced, petro-based materials with superior characteristics. The good news is several oil and chemical companies are already preparing for a future in which advanced materials are a larger part of their business.

As was the case for Bill Knudsen, unskilled labor is another stranded asset yearning to be optimized. And like hydrocarbons, solutions require bold and innovative thinking. As we restore our manufacturing base, we can serve a significant percentage of the workers currently un- or underemployed, without waiting on Washington to act. Companies could concentrate initial investments in places where the opportunities for construction, manufacturing, and food processing jobs are greatest and where real estate processes are affordable. This profile matches the many interior cities in America, with their legacy manufacturing capacity and expansive agricultural belts.

Taken together, the availability of capital and the ability to optimize assets thoughtfully will enable business realize a new market demand estimated at $1.3 trillion, consistent with full-spectrum sustainability.

The book outlines current success stories in which alignment of business, social, and environmental priorities is generating triple bottom-line returns (for people, profit, planet) today. Companies ranging from Apple and Blackrock to Google, Target, and Tesla are demonstrating the path forward. Many more examples are offered.

The final blog will both make the case that the world needs the next set of Bill Knudsens to step up, and offer a specific recommendation as to how.

In summary, this blog series is intended to prompt readers to fully explore The New Grand Strategy, a book I believe to be one of the most important books of our time.

 

 

*All content in this blog series is adapted from The New Grand Strategy: Restoring America’s Prosperity, Security, and Sustainability in the 21st Century with permission from authors Mark Mykleby, Patrick Doherty, and Joel Makower. Mr. Mykleby and Mr. Doherty currently serve as co-directors at the Strategic Innovation Lab (SIL) at Case Western Reserve University, as part of The Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. Full disclosure: I proudly serve as a strategic advisor to the SIL.

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Sustainability Needs Leaders Motivated by a Compelling Purpose

Rick Miller featured in GreenBiz.com:

In business school, the classmates who stood out fell into three categories: investors; combiners; and entrepreneurs. Visionary investors could see what capital owners needed and when they needed it. Visionary combiners could see the efficiencies possible through unexpected mergers and acquisitions. And visionary entrepreneurs could see a market earlier than anyone else, and create a new category to go after it.

To thrive today, CEOs need all three skills plus one more: They need to give purpose to their employees and to their business model.

My friend, legendary agency founder Roy Spence, wrote the book on purpose a few years back. His core concept is still spot on: “It’s not what you sell, it’s what you stand for.” At the time, purpose was found within the category, such as BMW’s focus on creating the “ultimate driving machine.” But today, a visionary purpose is increasingly tied to solving an intertwined pair of global problems.

In other words, it’s no longer enough to be best in class. Today, best in class means best for the planet and the people as well as best for profit. Tesla illustrates this ideal perfectly. Volkswagen illustrates the opposite. Walmart is executing what may be perhaps the most dramatic 180-degree turn, from a company that accelerated social and environmental depletion to one that champions sustainability and employee engagement. Walmart is boosting wages and exiting the supercenter footprint that gave it such unparalleled economies of scale.

For CEOs, two issues are causing the biggest consternation as we move into 2017: climate change; and sustainable, long-term growth. Just last year, CEOs from more than 400 of the world’s largest companies urged world leaders to adopt aggressive climate targets in the Paris Conference of Parties. Two months later, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, wrote a chairman’s letter asking every Fortune 500 CEO to send him a strategy for sustainable, long-term growth.

Waiting on Washington

Not too many CEOs got A’s on Fink’s homework assignment. Understandably, CEOs are finding it impossible to chart a long-term growth strategy when all the incentives in the system are pointing in the opposite direction. Instead, CEOs have been waiting for Washington to create the level playing field in which climate change and long-term growth can be addressed. Those CEOs are happy to lend their name to a campaign just as long as they can get on with the business of business.

Except the 2016 election delivered a roadblock. At the risk of understatement, the new power in Washington is not focused on climate change nor on long-term growth — yet.

So CEOs need a plan B. This week a group of chiefs are gathering at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, to talk about climate change against the backsliding signaled by the new U.S. president. From where I sit, they, and hundreds of others, need to rise to the occasion. In doing so, there is no better role model than Bill Knudsen.

Knudsen was CEO of General Motors in the perilous years before America entered World War II. He recognized two things: the unavoidable threat of the day, fascism; and that as Henry Ford’s former mass production wizard, Knudsen himself had unique talents the nation would need to defeat two wealthy industrial enemies. Before Congress had the nerve to act, Knudsen started to re-organize American industry, giving FDR the term “arsenal of democracy.” Knudsen gave business new purpose.

For some CEOs, taking a stand is already in their DNA. Groups such as The B Team, Focusing Capital on the Long Term and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development have been grinding away for years.

But at the dawning of 2017, sustainable growth has taken on new urgency. CEOs no longer can set aside some corporate social responsibility funds to support incremental advocacy efforts. Now the CEOs — and the big institutional clients of Fink — have to roll up their sleeves and figure out how to design and implement a new grand strategy for sustainable growth that addresses people, planet and profits.

The business case for strategic leadership is a no-brainer. For the United States, “The New Grand Strategy,” by GreenBiz Executive Editor Joel Makower and co-authors Mark Mykleby and Patrick Doherty, lays out a pragmatic strategy for extraordinary growth. Overseas, the Business & Sustainable Development Commission’s new report does the same. The challenge lies in transitioning to the new economics of sustainable, long-term growth without help from government.

As CEOs know, the problem never has been about finding the right ideas. It’s all about leadership motivated by a compelling purpose. The purpose is now clear. We just need some Knudsens.

 

source

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How Business Can Restore America’s Greatness – Part 2 of 4

Part 2 – The Prosperity Formula and Three Pools of Demand*

When Bill Knudsen jumped into the leadership position that led to our victory in World War II, he knew that business leaders could both serve our country and do what was right for the shareholders at businesses like General Motors.

Knudsen saw great opportunity when three forces were aligned: demand, capital, and assets. Specifically, he knew that if he and his fellow industrialists transformed supply chains and product lines to meet the new demand for arms, munitions, ships, planes, and trucks that there were actual orders to be filled, and profits to be made filling them.

With the mind of an opportunistic business leader, Knudsen also saw a path to adequate funding resources as well as a set of assets others missed that together would provide the building blocks of his audacious strategy.

In The New Grand Strategy, authors Mykleby, Doherty, and Makower crystalize Knudsen’s “prosperity formula,” as Demand + CapitalStranded Assets = New Growth Scenario. They assert that today, as in 1940, the equation starts with demand.

Further, they see a similarly massive market opportunity currently being missed by American businesses, specifically in three pools of demand—walkable communities, regenerative agriculture, and resource productivity.

Walkable communities are the hottest properties in real estate. American tastes have changed, from the splendid isolation of the suburbs to what authors call the “half-mile lifestyle”—work, school, transit, doctors, restaurants, playgrounds, and entertainment all with a short walk from the front door. Between now and 2030, baby boomers and millennials will unite in their demand for a broader range of housing types (single-family, townhouse, live-work, condo, apartment) in “new urban” communities. The financial impact of this shift is estimated at approximately $225 billion annually in residential sales alone, before including another $23 billion in annual savings for avoided public-service expenditures like roads, sanitation, water, and other infrastructure. More broadly, walkable communities simultaneously address several other big issues including decarbonization, social fabric, and health and wellness. Meeting this demand is a winner on every level.

Regenerative agriculture describes our opportunity to meet the growing global demand for food. To meet rising population and income levels, according the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the world needs to increase global food production by 60 percent by 2050, and 100 percent of that will need to use farming techniques that restore soils and cleanse waterways. For American farmers, the increase in demand for food is already translating to record prices, but meeting this demand could translate to approximately $190 billion annually in additional revenue to farm operators, and end hunger worldwide.

Finally, resource productivity describes the incredible market opportunity to meet the energy and material needs of bringing three billion new middle-class aspirants into the global economy. The required revolution in resource allocation will power innovation in material sciences, engineering, advanced manufacturing, and energy production, distribution, and consumption. Embracing and hosting the resource productivity revolution would deliver a boost of more than $850 billion annually, or five percent of US GDP. America would be capturing the savings from reducing and eliminating waste, and producing a new era of innovative materials, goods, and services for domestic and global markets. America will also get back to making things again, as it dramatically reduces the potential for worldwide conflict based on scarcity.

Taken together, these three pools of demand alone generate an annual revenue opportunity of $1.3 trillion and create opportunities for true full-spectrum sustainability.

The book outlines current success stories in which alignment of business, social, and environmental priorities is generating triple bottom-line returns (for people, profit, planet) today. Companies ranging from Dupont and GM to PepsiCo, GE, and Whole Foods are demonstrating the path forward. Many more examples are offered.

Bill Knudsen knew that businesses with real orders for real things with real specifications offered a real start to long-lasting economic growth—a start more effective than any law Washington could pass or policy they could adopt. Yet, two more critical components of the prosperity formula needed to be addressed.

The next blog will review those elements while the final piece will make the case that the world needs the next set of Bill Knudsens to step up, and will offer a specific recommendation as to how.

In summary, this blog series is intended to prompt readers to fully explore The New Grand Strategy as what I believe is one of the most important books of our time.

 

 

*All content in this blog series is adapted from The New Grand Strategy: Restoring America’s Prosperity, Security, and Sustainability in the 21st Century with permission from authors Mark Mykleby, Patrick Doherty, and Joel Makower. Mr. Mykleby and Mr. Doherty currently serve as co-directors at the Strategic Innovation Lab (SIL) at Case Western Reserve University, as part of The Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. Full disclosure: I proudly serve as a strategic advisor to the SIL.

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How Business Can Restore America’s Greatness – Part 1 of 4

Part 1 – Introduction*

Bill Knudsen was president of General Motors when he decided that only business could prepare for America’s victory in World War II. He understood the role of business in restoring America’s greatness. With our country facing forces on several fronts that could have forever changed our democratic republic, thankfully Bill Knudsen stepped up.

As Arthur Herman noted in his 2012 book, Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II: “If the country was going to make itself seriously ready for war, neither the politicians nor the generals nor the admirals were willing to take the lead. American business and industry would have to figure it out on their own.”

Today, forces on multiple fronts again threaten our way of life domestically and around the world. This time the four antagonists are the rapid economic inclusion of three billion people, climate change and the depletion of our natural capital, the contained depression supporting income inequality, and the crumbling infrastructure at the foundation of our worldwide economy.

Taken together, these four fused and interlocking dilemmas comprise the global challenge of our time. It will require focused and determined leadership. Today, only America possesses the capacity, weight, and cultural wherewithal to lead change of this magnitude.

And once again, American business and industry need to figure it out. But how?

In The New Grand Strategy: Restoring America’s Prosperity, Security, and Sustainability in the 21st Century, authors Mark Mykleby, Patrick Doherty, and Joel Makower answer that question.

Specifically, the book offers lucidity about a viable path forward based on proven and important historical precedent. They outline a clear “prosperity formula” for business leaders to follow, including where the money will come from to fund the strategy.

Importantly, the authors also provide a new framing of full spectrum sustainability and what’s required to achieve sustainable growth. They offer a view that the old concept of sustainability as green (only) is problematic. Too many Americans associate sustainability with the notion of sacrifice in the name of Mother Earth, rather than how we might align our immediate self-interests of personal well-being with our long-term interest of generational and environmental well-being. The New Grand Strategy shows us how companies can do well by doing good.

The book outlines current success stories in which alignment of business, social, and environmental priorities is generating triple bottom-line returns (for people, profit, planet). Companies ranging from Bank of America and BASF to Cisco, Dow, and Ford are demonstrating the path forward. Many more examples are offered.

In the three blogs that follow this introduction, we will review the case offered in The New Grand Strategy:

In summary, this blog series is intended to prompt readers to fully explore The New Grand Strategy as what I believe to be one of the most important books of our time.

The world needs the next set of Bill Knudsens to step up, and we need them to do it now.

 

 

*All content in this blog series is adapted from The New Grand Strategy: Restoring America’s Prosperity, Security, and Sustainability in the 21st Century with permission from authors Mark Mykleby, Patrick Doherty, and Joel Makower. Mr. Mykleby and Mr. Doherty currently serve as co-directors at the Strategic Innovation Lab (SIL) at Case Western Reserve University, as part of The Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. Full disclosure: I proudly serve as a strategic advisor to the SIL.

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“We Change Best When We Are Strongest”

David Cooperrider is teaching an important course at Case Western Reserve University. As part of the school’s continuing education program, The New Change Equation: The 10 Most Powerful Change Management Tools offers an influential experience to help leaders bring out the best in human systems, rapidly and naturally. In The New Change Equation, David asserts, “We change best when we are strongest.” A key indicator of a company’s strength is the level of engagement of its employees.

David is a faculty director at the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. But he is perhaps best known as the author of Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change.

Then Secretary General of the United Nations, Nobel Laureate Kofi Annan, called upon David as an advisor and used appreciative inquiry to bring over 500 CEOs into a world summit at the UN. He shared, “Without your methodology of Appreciative Inquiry, it would have been very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to constructively engage so many leaders of business, civil society, and government.”

A UN leaders report for the Global Compact’s 8,000 corporations said, “Appreciative Inquiry is the best large group method in the world today.”

In our work at Being Chief, we have similarly focused on the conditions required to establish change-adaptive cultures as a prerequisite to create sustainable growth. Companies can only achieve sustainable growth when employees achieve it too.

The key is to help Chiefs at all levels to be fully engaged in their work, which will unlock their power. At their strongest, they will then be ready for change.

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