Report from the Charter for Compassion Business Call April 29, 2014

Thank you so much for your participation on the call today. Your contribution—even at the most modest of levels-- not only helps to cover our immediate costs but also serves as a strong vote for our continuing and expanding this effort.

Lending a Helping Hand
As was demonstrated in our conversations yesterday so many of you have access to extensive networks of religion/spirituality and interfaith organizations.  Would you consider letting your fellow colleagues and associates know about the Charter for Compassion network?  We can accomplish a great deal more by adding hands, hearts and minds to our end goal of bringing shared dialogue, and compassionate action to our network efforts.  If you were on yesterday's call, and are not a partner, please consider it. 

Business Compassion Reader
Did you know that there is a Business Compassion Reader on the Charter website?  New articles are added to the on-line reader each week.  Click on any of the sixteen "chapters" and you'll find a series of topics to match each theme.  There are the themes you would expect, "Leadership in Business," and "How to Change Things When Change is Hard," but there are those theme deal specifically with compassion and which you may want to explore: "Resilience in Business," "Mindfulness in Business," and "When Fostering a Culture of Compassion in the Workplace Really Matters."  Have an article you think others should know about, let us know and we'll see what we can do to get it up in the Reader.

Charter Staff on the Business Call
Andrew Himes (Executive Director)
Marilyn Turkovich (Program Director)  

Presenter: Blaine Bartlett www.blainebartlett.com  CEO of Avatar Resources, writer, lecturer, innovator
Blaine Bartlett is a  business consultant, advisor, lecturer, business development expert, innovative thinker and writer. He is the author of Discover Your Inner Strength (2010) and Three Dimensional Coaching: Passion into Performance (2013). Blaine is currently interested in the concept of sustainability for business.  He is writing another book tentatively titled Compassionate Capitalism: A Return to the Soul of Business.  

Presentation by Blaine Bartlett
The thing that excites me most is that business touches every aspect of life on the planet, transcends boundaries, and is present in every culture.  The way business is conducted today—particularly capitalism—is toxic to the planet.  Climate change, wealth disparity--can be traced back to business and the way it is conducted today.  The future of business is making the future its business.  I’ve got four grandchildren—want to be able to pass sustainable world on to them.  We can’t make decisions in isolation or in short-term time frame, but many business decisions are made quarterly.

The story that people hold in their minds about what business is—each story has a psychology, a philosophy. If we can begin to change the story that we are living, it will have an impact on all of us.  The story of capitalism is an old story—all the way back to Wealth of Nations.   We do business in order to create wealth—primary reason that businesses have operated. This includes the aggregation of money.  Costs that should be part of doing business are externalized and society pays (i.e., healthcare).  

How to change the story so that we see business as the creation of value and uplifting the quality of all life on the planet?  Things could begin to happen differently.  Greider speaks of the soul of capitalism—that it doesn’t appear to have one!  When we move toward the creation of wealth, we move away from soul.  Business is the soul of life—and if decisions are made without thinking about the soul of life, they are unsustainable.

This isn’t about demonizing business or capitalism (which can be good). The wealth of people on the planet has increased dramatically over the past 300 years.  We are wealthier than ever before in history—may see the elimination of poverty in our lifetime.  The problem—business has become focused on continual growth.  Although we are close to eliminating poverty, we still have a poverty of meaning.  People lack the means to appear in public without shame.  Ever increasing consumerism is necessary to sustain business in the current story.  That increase is much of the difficulty.  We live in a closed ecosystem. Continuous consumption is not a sustainable model for business or for life.  

Changing the story of business—creation of value, uplifting life for all on the planet--this is where compassion comes into play.  All peoplewant to feel fully alive—that is where value creation plays a role.  Businesses that do that well will be around for a long time because people will resonate with it.  In the book, Firms of Endearment: How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose (by Rajendra S. Sisodia), the author speaks of creating a value set—love, compassion. He  looked at business metrics from this perspective.  “Firms of endearment”—those based in creating values--are dramatically more successful than other businesses in their market sector.  
A large number of people on the planet have more free time, more creative time, and are less concerned about “survival” issues.  How do we use this “to live wisely, agreeably and well?”  That is worth paying attention to.

When we look at business operating from a position of compassion—it will take into account all stakeholders, all who are affected by the way business conducts itself.  If business were judged not only by fiscal performance but by how it attends to the greater social good—that could change the current story.  The future of business is making the future its business.  This may be a bit of an alarmist position—businesses could be out of business and so could the world . . .  We want to be able to change the story of business to the creation of value and to uplifting life on the planet.

Question and Answers  

Randy Schenkat from Minnesota- Community Quality Council- based on Deming: “Reinventing the Organization”-  ties problems with change with need for top leadership to gain this consciousness.  Problems with “taming the ego.”  

Blaine: Deming is wonderful.  Drive fear out of the workplace. Recognition that we are all in some way connected. Fear is the absence of love.  Point about conscious leaders is important.  Couple of organizations are making changes- Unilever is doing some phenomenal work in this area- looking at practices and models.  Leaders need to recognize the story they are operating from.  What does it mean to be a leader?  Leaders exist at all levels of the organization.  Leaders cause coordinated movement in the system to get the action needed.  Grassroots opportunity to make some change.  Enormous challenge to get business leaders to direct their organizations in a different way.  

Amy Lloyd: Austin, Texas- Elementary School Principal- joined because trying a new model at campus- focusing on 4 initiatives: 1) SE learning; 2) multi-culturalism; 3) green-sustainability; and 4) creativity.  Started Microsociety in school and developing own society.  Trying to re-direct meaning of education.  Work that MIcrosociety does is help grade levels create ventures/initiatives.  4 initiatives have to lead all the businesses.  Have to start at a very young age.  Teach children that they have a place in space and a framework for a connected universe.  

Blaine:  Brilliant model!!

Simon Chater: Interested to hear about work of Unilever.  Businesses that are built to last are built on altruism.  If you are paid, need to meet someone else’s needs other than your own.

Break Out Composition

Break Out Rooms

The question: What does compassionate business mean to you? (especially in the work you do)

Andrew Himes Break Out

Simon Chater: Green Ink -- greenink.co.uk
Compassion should be the guiding principle – but this is much easier said than done. Compassion can be a hostage to the fortunes of the company. Unilever is a good example of a company that is trying to be a compassionate corporation. Has compassion instilled at every level in Unilever? Yes. But it depends on top-down leadership from the highest levels. When a company is subject to sharp competition, it can be helpful to try to form a conversation among competitors to establish common standards
 
Carol Ryan: member of the Association of Holistic Nursing, Louisville, KY
She works for a large health care agency. “We’re tired, don’t always take care of ourselves and each other. We don’t get support from the management, people drop out. We have an altruistic mission, but our currency is time, and we don’t seem to have enough of it!”
 
Nancy Shaver: works for Experian.com, large business services and data management company. This challenge of melding business with compassion is very challenging. The bottom line can seem to be at odds with compassion, especially when investors and the public are looking at quarterly results. Leadership must come from the top.

Barbara Kerr Break Out

Michael Huey (Ashland, KY – working on getting Ashland to become a city of compassion) is a small business entrepreneur and founder of his own company.  Work includes internal audits, looking at processes—institutes six-sigma processes, lean engineering.  Michael read about Louisville, KY as a city of compassion (in Huffington Post) – became interested in the concept and in “adding value” as Blaine mentioned.

Helena Angell  (St. Augustine – college professor in media studies at University of Florida and  also an investor—looking for alternative ways to be engaged with business community).  Looking for ethical content providers for media courses.  Currently have an online professional development program at university – much data thrown at us to continue consumer culture.  My role has been to continue promoting that—but I’m looking for ways to promote sustainable, multicultural businesses – like the school system spoken of by principal of elementary school (during the Q & A session after Blaine’s talk). Excited to see Charter moving in this direction – creating community around these initiatives.

Jennifer Hooten (VP Claremont Lincoln at new graduate school focused on interfaith and ethics) provided a summary of last week’s faith partners call:  The speaker asked: “What action could religious leaders take to bring compassion to life in our communities?”  
Marian Boyle (Gainsville FL) – professional coach – help organizations assign meaning, realize their potential.)  As a coach, it is important that I think and act with compassion, but now expanding thinking to helping them become more compassionate.

Michael:  I think the important thing in incorporating this is to tie it to a business metric – not just to feel good.  Retain employees, get them to work together and enjoy it.  Also—be there for long term.  Want people to grow and progress in a company as well—improve. Also – reduction of non-conformity—better production quality.  Improvement in compliance scores. Why do people leave?  Boss was a jerk—did not feel listened to, needs not being met.  

Marian Boyle: Harder to measure but concept of engagement is important; 75% of people are not engaged or do not like their work.  Need to find meaning in work and passion for what they do.  Organizations that are able to build engagement--members feel part of the organization and that they are heard.

Jennifer:  This conversation is driving our academics.  It’s our job as educators to get serious about naming capacities and creating practices that expand our capacity: emphasis on mindfulness, dialogue, change.  In world of education—accreditation requirements—we are asked how do we measure these intangibles?  We need greater ways to prove that these capacities can add bottom line value, increase employee engagement.

Marian:  Associative branding: we’re all branding whether we like it or not in order to get our voices heard as individuals or organizations.  “Compassionate business” associated with Ben & Jerry’s hippie type business.  But research in graduate courses on  millennials (18-34 year olds) :  important to them to show some kind of social conscience in the brand – see that business is giving back to the community (scholarships, giving to community events) – redirection of business.  It will be the youth that pushes us toward this new model.  Excited about the elementary school project in Austin.

Michael:  Millennials automatically understand this branding.

Helena: “Intentionally public lives” – the millennial understanding.

Jennifer: Thank you for the work you are doing.  Important to carve out time for this.

Michael: Thinking about engagement in work:  As a gen-X, I am challenged to engage the millennials that I hire – need to relate to them, understand, give avenue to express themselves.  Some companies have a person to talk to parents of millennials.

Mary Ella Keblusek Break Out

Candace Apple from Atlanta, a small business person, has owned a metaphysical bookstore for 26 years, which has been very challenging with the changes the book industry has undergone during that time. The focus of her business has been to create a healing space and provide tools for conscious and compassionate living. However, her challenge is how to make sure that she and her staff find balance and compassion for themselves and set appropriate boundaries, since the healing and compassion they focus on providing for their customers can be exhausting. She noted how helpful Karen Armstrong’s book The Twelve Steps for a Compassionate Life was in reinforcing the need for self-compassion.
 
Aaron Heinrich is a marketing and PR consultant with San Francisco-based Big Brand Theory, which helps companies be more effective in their communication. He noted that when companies are building future scenarios in their business planning, they seem to be noticing the underlying impact of compassion in communications overall and specifically in how they tell their ‘story’. He also reminded us that setting boundaries and other behaviors work top-down; if employees see the owner of the company not taking care of themselves, they will think that’s expected for themselves.
 
Randy Schenkat from Winona Minnesota [I didn’t catch Randy’s professional connection as he mentioned that in the plenary as part of his question] spoke about how we can change our stories and our consciousness so it has real impact, and isn’t just words that we speak. He mentioned early work by Deming around quality, and more recent work by Ken Wilbur (including spiral dynamics) as being very helpful to understanding how to make positive systemic change in organizations. He reinforced Aaron’s comment by saying that unless a high level of consciousness is being held by senior leadership, it will be difficult for an organization to shift.
 
Diane McGuire is VP of HR at Mental Health Association of Southeastern PA. She spoke about the challenges of managing employees in a service-oriented nonprofit to help them keep appropriate balance between performance and their need for compassion for themselves and others. This issue is very challenging from an HR point of view; the tendency in the nonprofit world is to go too far without boundaries and give too much compassion – maybe less compassion is better!
 
Mary Ella Keblusek of Seattle observed that many organizations are trying to incorporate daily practices using ‘quiet’ to reduce stress and enable more compassion for self and others. Some of these practices include ringing a bell at pre-planned times during the day when everyone remains quiet for one minute, and bringing a bell to meetings where any participant can ring the bell if they feel there is tension or chaos and all remain silent for 30 seconds. These kind of mindfulness practices are simple and can be very effective.
 
Marilyn Turkovich Break Out

Amy Lloyd (Austin, TX) designed a model of education at the elementary level (Cunningham Elementary) because she believes that you need to start at a young age to explore what business means. The school advances four pillars, aspects of exploration throughout the elementary years: self-learning, diversity and multicultural education, "living green" and understanding the need for sustainability and creativity.

Questions that are of interest for Amy to explore include : "How does a community wrestle with their problems together?" and "How does a school, such as Cunningham connect with business?"

Kim Groshek (Madison, WI) writer, speaker, filmmaker; working as a change agent in companies.  Kim currently is working with an executive to see what bullying means in the workplace.  Has a musical coming out about bullying--a product for families.  In order to be effective, you need to be a strong leader.  About changing the workplace. Kim is the CEO at GC Strategies, founder and owner of Creatively Canny (see below) and Author of Bug’s Adventure Series and Floyd the Fire Truck children’s books.

Blaine Bartlett (Whidbey Island, WA) Blaine has had the privilege to have lived all over the world. Born and raised on a farm in OR, small town roots. Looks to that period of time to see about connections. Lived in Japan and Australia for a period of time.  HIs oldest client, 28 years, demonstrates that the world operates on relationships.  Organizations are a group in relationships.  This relationship warrants investigation.  The default is the interpersonal relationship; people have relationship with the organization's processes, values, the way people conduct their work.  As a driver for compassionate capitalism you realize the trade offs are crucial.  If we take trade offs off the table everything looks different.  This becomes a different operational model.  Compassion is hard edge.  Difficult to do on an on-going basis.  It makes decision-making difficult. It forces us to face the notion--what is the best for all, in all situations.

Lesa Walker Group

Shai: A Peace of Jerusalem Initiative - crowdsourcing project started on a bet/dare (partly inspired by Karen's work) to collaboratively solve a really huge problem. Since 2009, collecting ideas from people on what they think might help to resolve the situation in the Middle East -- 500-600 responses. Maintaining an evolving on-line document; limited to 2000 words.  Don't do fundraising per se; extremely low budget 5-year project ($1000 - not including people’s time).  On Business: Understand the importance of having business to rely on -- top of the list for fundraising, charitable contributions.  Important that businesses understand need for compassionate process.  Key to capital flow for non-profits.  Agree with everything said so far.

Rick Rodgers: Virgina/DC area- Managing Director of Resource Network- brings business, govt, and non-profits together for social impact- ways everyone can win and improving accessibility.  Involved with Charter from before created. Passion is helping organizations to do things in a better more responsible way.  Comment about consciousness of leaders is important.  Want to learn about “Firms of Endearment.”  Find people doing things right?

Peter Johannesen Osisi: works with group called Asona Ashram- place for different heritages and communities to convene.  Involved with a number of interfaith organizations. Interfaith activist.  Liked that capitalism has altruism intrinsically in it.  What is the fear of people who don’t relate compassionately? How do we address this?  How does the person with nothing help the person with everything.

Lesa Walker: shared about her background as a public health physician and her current work with the Charter and the Compassion Relays and the connection to business.  Importance of daily practice of compassion and “walking the talk.”  We must change as individuals to change our businesses.  Shared about the wonderful business school in India, SOIL, and their emphasis on compassion with their business students and their connection with community business mentors. Also shared about the Stanford “Design Thinking” course- need for empathy and attention to compassion and long-term impact of design

Shai: Compassion and business overlap when business focuses on people's needs as opposed to their wants or desires.  Businesses that recognize this and act accordingly should be rewarded with public recognition and patronage.

Peter- traveled to S. Africa. People wondering why he wanted to go there. Had a wonderful time. Yes, people were poor but there is a wealth of sharing.  Culture is for people to help pick up people and help them get where they need to go.  Here, in U.S., there is a wealth of cars but poverty of sharing.

Full Group Conversation: Nuggets from the Conversations

Andrew: One thing noted is that no matter how many people in an organization are interested in bringing compassion to the forefront, it is difficult to transform an organization without leadership from the top.  Bottom-line for the company may appear to be at odds with compassion.

Barbara Kerr: How to increase engagement among employees?  Millennials- who want to live intentional public service lives- may be a target group to get involved.   Need to create metrics to measure the impact of compassion in the workplace.  Education/accreditation is important.  Everyone excited about the elementary school project!

Randy: Brilliant- that fear is the absence of love.  Direct application in the businessplace.  Challenge ministers to try to engage community and help drive out fear and add