Alignment

What is an Authentic Organization?: An elevator speech

November 17, 2010

Tweet Last week I went to a program sponsored by the NYC chapter of GirlsInTech and directed towards (women) tech entrepreneurs and (potential) venture capital professionals. After the program, I had great conversation with some of the entrepreneurs about their ‘pitches’ — the 5 sentence elevator speeches that they give to convey the core idea […]

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Authentic Food Organizations: Why I love my CSA

May 29, 2008

Tweet Spring is here, and I’m in love again… with my CSA. CSA as in “cyber-spouse avatar”? No, CSA as in Community Supported Agriculture. It’s a group of us — 55 families, Farmer John (that’s John, below), the five or so employees of John’s Starbrite Farm, and 20 weeks of organic produce. [Quick introduction: Community […]

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5 Reasons Why Being Authentic Can Be Bad For Your Organization

March 5, 2008

Tweet Being authentic requires constant vigilance. Authentic organizations need constantly to monitor the relationship between their identity, their image, and their actions. Ideally, the organization wants to catch (and fix) any misalignments before others notice, because these misalignments can easily be interpreted as signs that the organization isn’t authentic or isn’t intending to remain authentic. […]

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It’s not that hard to recognize an organization’s authenticity. Even a child can do it.

February 16, 2008

Tweet “Mom, this company really shows their believingness.” So said my nine-year-old daughter. She had just noticed that the tag hanging from the T-shirt I gave her for Valentine’s Day was made from “100% post-consumer waste”. She already knew that the T-shirt was from a company called PositiviTee, that the graphic image printed on the […]

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