For Purpose/For Profit Orgs

Who is advising the NY Jets Management?

August 19, 2009

Whoever it is, they are doing a good job! I’m not talking about rosters, game strategies or coaching assignments– I’m talking about using a deep understanding of how to support your whole organization in moving towards a goal. Last fall, I posted about the Jets’ new training facility, and how it was designed explicitly and [...]

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Can Walmart Earn the Girl Scouts’ Good Citizenship Award?

August 14, 2009

You don’t earn a merit badge for Good Citizenship by picking on the Girl Scouts. But what if Wal-mart wanted to? Commenters here and on other blogs that picked up my story that Wal-mart has chosen to compete with the Girl Scouts by knocking off the Girls Scouts’ two most popular cookies have criticized Wal-mart [...]

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Thin Mint-y Gate: Wal-mart’s Socia Media Opportunity

August 8, 2009

Where is Wal-mart’s social media outreach? This ongoing experience with “Thin Mint-y Gate” is raising a bunch of questions, for the audiences reading and commenting on blogs, for the Girl Scouts and their community, and for me as a blogger & management scholar. I hope I’ll get a chance to address some of these questions [...]

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Wal-Mart Knocks Off the Girl Scouts

August 3, 2009

(Welcome MacLeans Readers… Please join the conversation! ) Just when you think your opinion about Wal-mart might be changing… Just when you think that maybe, just maybe, Wal-mart was learning to be a better citizen… Wal-mart turns around and does something really … despicable. It’s not discriminating against women, strong-arming suppliers, polluting neighborhoods or racing [...]

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BlogHer 09: Does Swag Pervert the Purpose?

July 27, 2009

Walking into my office this morning, I tripped over a ‘rubber bracelet cum flash drive’ that was part of the swag I brought back with me from Chicago and the 2009 BlogHer. That clumsy move plus a few friends’ Tweets about supposedly free swag costing them money to ship home, made me wonder about how [...]

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Peek inside an Authentic Organization: Blogging at Berrett-Koehler

July 14, 2009

Years of following industries that create culture have left me with a special fondness for book publishers. Year after year, season after season, page after page, book publishers create objects that convey what I love most — great ideas. Increasingly, book publishers do this in an embattled industry, towards a customer base with a dwindling [...]

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Reflective Executives, Where are you hiding?

July 9, 2009

One of my blogging e-mentors asked “If you had one question about blogging that you could have answered with a magic wand, what would that question be?” I’m a big fan of magic wand questions– I use them all the time with my kids, and so I took the bait. My one question? Where do [...]

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Where is my Values-Driven Landscaper?

April 19, 2009

I don’t get it. My “Tree Guy”, the fellow who sprays professionally applies pesticides to my hemlock hedge to prevent wooly adelgids from sucking the life out of them, came by to make sure we were renewing our contract with him. Some of his customers are switching to less expensive, less professional solutions, and others [...]

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A Benevolent Perfect Storm for Progressive Organizational Movements

April 16, 2009

“A Benevolent Perfect Storm.” Isn’t that a lovely image? It comes from David Ellwood, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as quoted by Steve Lohr in his NYTimes article “With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King?” Ellwood hopes that one outcome of the collapse of social and monetary incentives to take a job [...]

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Authenticity in 16 Words?

April 3, 2009

At soccer practice this week, I came up with a great idea for my 3rd/4th grade girls team. As coach, I have great ambitions for my team this Spring — I want them to do more than chase the ball all around the pitch whilst squealing.  So, I need to teach them to think just [...]

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