Part of building a successful business is being able to let other people tell you how to do it better. Companies that set up mechanisms to learn from their employees, particularly those at the base of the company who do automated work and aren’t brought into weekly meetings to voice their say, see economic gain […]
Why It’s Good Business For Levi’s To Care About What You Do With Your Jeans at Home
Your next pair of Levi’s might come with a clothesline or shoebox-sized dryer. After a recent lifecycle assessment, Levi’s realized that 60% of the climate impact of a pair of jeans comes after the jeans are made and sold; nearly 80% of this is from drying the jeans in a dryer. The presumed and easy […]
Don’t Choose One Tactic and Expect Success
It takes more than one action to empower your employees. As simple (and obvious!) as that sounds, it’s what struck me the most while writing yesterday’s post on enabling your employees. Maybe a better way to structure the post would be to highlight tactics by company since each of the companies I included–King Arthur’s Flour, […]
Paid To Quit, Allowed To Surf: 5 Ways to Empower Employees
Employees are the crux of your company. Successful leaders have known this for years. Take away my people and leave the factories, and soon there will be grass growing on the factory floors, but take away my factories and leave my people, and soon we will have bigger and better factories. –Andrew Carnegie When you enfranchise your […]
How Transparency Can Benefit Your Company (There’s More To Be Gained Than Consumer Trust)
“If you’re not scared by what you’re revealing, than you’re not being transparent enough” –Jeffrey Hollender, Seventh Generation If real transparency is scary, why create it? Like with most things that bring real value (and take real effort), there are several benefits of having a glass-walled company. A note before the benefits: transparency isn’t a […]
Do Gooding Isn’t a Substitute for Marketing: 3 Low-buck Tactics to Get You On Your Way
This point is often overlooked. Your do-gooding and good deeding aren’t a substitute for marketing. Customers can’t love you for what you do if they don’t know you. At this point you might be thinking: But Wait! One of the benefits of a social mission is the visibility it brings to my company. I’ve even […]
Can You Crowdsource Your Sustainability?
Smart business talk today revolves around meeting stakeholder interests. But it can be daunting for companies to do that. Whereas before they were primary liable to shareholders, they’re now pressed to satisfy consumer demands for products that are sustainable as well as affordable and durable; they’re expected to take the environment and the community and […]
The Total Impact of Great Beer–With New Belgium Brewing’s Kim Jordan
Click the player to listen to my conversation with Kim or right-click and save for the MP3. Either way, you should listen. I’d bet good money that most of us would love to have Kim Jordan’s job as New Belgium Brewing Company’s intrepid leader of good beer and good business. Beyond making (and tasting) great […]
Confused About L3Cs and the Rest? Me Too. Jenny Kassan, Esq. Helps Us Out
Click the player or right-click and save for the MP3. Business structures for Triple Bottom Line ventures are my Bermuda Triangle. I’m whipped around to end up confused about the benefits of each structure (L3C, LLC, Special Purpose Corporation, hybrid for-profit and nonprofit) and its respective requirements and restrictions. So I asked Jenny Kassan, managing director at Katovich […]
How to Leverage Your Advisory Board (Because Their Name Isn’t All They Can Offer)
You have your board. Now what? I wrote before about when and how to assemble your advisory board. If you already have an advisory board though, what can you realistically expect from the people who comprise it and how do you best leverage their skills and commitment? The first part–what you can realistically expect from […]
I'm Olivia Khalili. I created Cause Capitalism to show you how to grow your business by incorporating a social mission. I've worked extensively with both nonprofits and for-profits. I found that when you combine the two, you grow your profits, impassion all your stakeholders and do good in the world. Read more. Email me.
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