Three Simple Steps to Staying on Mission

By: Gene Zlotnikov

True leadership requires the willingness to recognize the need for change, as well as the ability to lead and manage change. Companies that consistently choose to pursue change are typically growing, dynamic organizations that stick to their mission. On the other hand, companies that fear change are likely to find it more challenging to remain relevant and continue to meet their customers’ needs. Forbes contributor Mike Myatt, describes three easy steps to help leaders and organizations stay on mission by leading change:

•    Identify the Need for Change
If your organization is not willing to innovate to meet society’s changing demands, it is more likely to struggle and fail. To stay relevant and successful, companies should focus on changes that will help them more effectively serve their customers (and potential customers) and shift their corporate culture to foster an efficient and positive workforce.
•    Lead Change
When faced with change, people typically respond by taking on one of four roles, becoming the Victim, the Neutral Bystander, the Critic or the Advocate. To successfully lead change, these four roles must be communicated to using appropriate messaging and properly involved in the process.
•    Manage Change
Successful change leaders will ensure that their company is aligned with the same mission and vision for change, provide their employees with responsibility and accountability for innovation and maintain authority over change to ensure things happen.

To learn more about how to stick to mission and lead change in your organization, read the original article in Forbes.

For more information about how you can take your leadership to the next level, check out this upcoming event on Transformational Leadership, April 27th and 28th, 2012 in Chicago: Transformational Leadership Awards Dinner & Symposium

Panera: The Nonprofit

By: Stephen Delaney

Imagine a restaurant where food prices are only a mere suggestion. The man in front of you pays an extra dollar for his smokehouse turkey panini. You round up to the nearest dollar for your Asian sesame chicken salad. The woman behind you pays what she can, a dollar and some loose change for her broccoli cheddar soup.

Is this a utopian ideal of a concept, unrealistic and bound to fail? No. It is Panera Cares, a community café launched in St. Louis in May 2010. The concept is simple: customers pay what they can, offering more than the suggested price if they’d like or enjoying a free meal if finances are tight. Cashiers don’t take any money, they only make change. The customers themselves deposit their donation into a locked glass box.

Ron Shaich, the president of the Panera Bread Foundation, said, "Twenty percent of customers pay more than the suggested donation. Sixty percent leave the suggested donation and 20 percent leave less, typically significantly less."¹

The cafés are an inventive approach to feeding the hungry. The idea was based off of the SAME Café, which opened in Denver in 2006, but putting the power of Panera behind it offers grander possibilities of impact and influence.

Since the pilot restaurant, Panera has opened two more locations in Dearborn, MI and Portland, OR. On February 23, 2012, Panera announced they would be finalizing the locations for at least two more of the cafés by spring.²

Sources
 ¹ ABC News       ² MSN Money

Soccer + Portable Energy = sOccket

By: Stephen Delaney

Get ready to be impressed.

Two Harvard graduates, who are only 23 years old, are already the heads of their own business. Not only is their product doing well in the world, but it has also received top praise from a former president.

The two women you may be in awe of are Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman, the founders of Uncharted Play. Matthews and Silverman created the sOccket, a soccer ball that harnesses the kinetic energy of a game and turns it into post-game electricity. Donated balls have already been distributed in Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Haiti and Nigeria.

Uncharted Play has one goal: convince the masses to reTHINK FUNction. By combining innovation with a dedication to fun, Matthews and Silverman have created a genius (and simple!) product to provide portable energy to resource-poor communities.

After just 30 minutes of play, the sOccket can power 3 hours of LED light. This allows resource-poor families to save money they would normally spend on kerosene, fumes of which can be fatal. The sOccket can also provide electricity for water purifiers, mini-fridges and emergency cell phone chargers.

Silverman is already looking forward to what lies next on the horizon for Uncharted Play. Silverman explained that Uncharted Play’s mission is “about dreaming and thinking about your community and how you can better it through innovation.”

To read more about how the sOccket is helping families have fun while saving money, read the CNN article about powerful women entrepreneurs here or visit the official website.

Facebook's Next Innovation on Its Mission

By: Gene Zlotnikov

Facebook is about to put a completely new spin on online marketing and advertising. The social media giant is getting ready to launch a new format for premium ads that mark radical departure from traditional advertising. The new format is social by nature, pulling content from users’ posts to brands’ Facebook pages instead of from ad copy, and automatically showing you which of your friends already “like” the brand. Their statement is loud and clear: “ads based on content, rather than messaging, have a better chance of hitting home and ads involving tacit endorsements from the people you know have a better chance of capturing your attention.”

This new form of content-based advertising reinforces Facebook’s mission to “give people the power to share” and create opportunities for them to engage and connect online. Such a bold departure from traditional advertising is also very much in line with the company’s reputation for innovating the social media space. Facebook announced their planned changes at their marketing launch event at the end of February.

To read more about Facebook’s content-based ads, read the article in Fast Company.