What do the captain of the gold medal US Olympic women’s gymnastics team Aly Raisman and polar explorer Robert Swan have in common?

On an afternoon in Palo Alto this week, their shared mission was to inspire. Not nascent gymnasts nor endorphin junkies, but venture capitalists, social entrepreneurs, corporate executives and foundation heads gathered for the Social Innovation Summit. Held twice annually, SIS aims to inspire a diverse network of leaders to collaborate and share strategies and business innovations that yield social transformation.

Having attended several times, I can liken it to a big-tent event showcasing a variety of acts meant to inspire and set imaginations–and corporate agendas–in motion. Rather than convening action around a singular cause, the Summit offers a tableau of critical issues–veterans affairs, women & girls, STEM education, the health care epidemic, and melting ice caps–ripe for support and collaboration. Undergirding this are partnership case studies, models of social enterprise, and best practices to scale.

Here’s my highlight reel.

• The Buddhism vs. Catholicism continuum of scaling — whether to tailor your business to local needs or replicate the same practices as your organization or company expands. In his forthcoming book, Scaling Up Excellence, Stanford professor Bob Sutton talks about Home Depot vs. Ikea’s entry into China. When Home Depot entered China, a service-focused culture, it imported the same model that’s made it an international success, and failed grandly. In contrast, Ikea, a global icon of DIY-ness, adapted its model to include home delivery and assembly.
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• Sutton also counseled organizations to create cultures where people feel as “I own the place and the place owns me.”
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• Perhaps counterintuitively, Sutton recommends shedding policies and practice as your organization grows. “Scaling is a problem of more AND less – as you grow you also need to shed [practices suited for a smaller team].” But this doesn’t mean you should go free-form, “There are no organizations without hierarchies. People need and want them.”
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• Shannon Schuyler, Corporate Social Responsibility Leader at PwC challenged companies to innovate for impact rather than for profit: “Companies that truly commit to innovation are 60% more likely to earn a profit versus companies that use profit as a motivator for innovation.” Schuyler also urged collaboration across organizations, a role she calls the extrapreneur. “The most innovative companies collaborate with third parties three times more often than low innovating companies”
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• will.i.am‘s organization, the i.am.angel Foundation, focuses on bundling existing STEM education programs to rebuild inner-city schools and neighborhoods. “Athletics shouldn’t be the only thing taking kids out of the ghetto. It needs to be robotics and math and engineering.” The Foundation heeds Schuyler’s advice in that its model is based on convening and partnering with existing programs. “I don’t want to create new programs, I want to create new combinations of programs. It’s this cluster effect that really works,” shared will.i.am.
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• Highlighting Code For America‘s model of using technology to rebuild citizen trust in government, Tim O’Reilly urged governments to prioritize user engagement and clean interfaces. “Healthcare.gov showed us the frustrations and incompetencies that people trying to access social services like welfare experience daily.” He urged government to adopt Silicon Valley tenets such as failure, “How do we get government to think more like Silicon Valley, that not every good idea works and that’s okay?”
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• “The main challenge to disrupting poverty is how we can provide more meaningful employment,” said Samsource founder Leila Janah. Samasource creates microwork by outsourcing rote functions (like online categorization or simple data entry) from companies like Google or Eventbrite to the poor. Leila addressed the controversial topic of outsourcing by speaking to market forces and the flow of capital. Samasource allows companies to channel big dollars toward international development (via employment) and receive a market-rate service in return. The organization evidences how the “social business model creates a new class of companies that are non-dividend and non-loss.”
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• Sold into prostitution at age 12 by her grandfather, activist and mother-to-all Somaly Mam has rehabilitated more than 7,000 child prostitutes through love, trust, education, and the gift of responsibility. Second to drug trafficking, sex trafficking is the most pervasive global crime, yet the issue is largely untouched by the corporate sector. While many are moved by Mam’s story, sex trafficking remains a third rail issue around which few companies are willing to engage. Critical exceptions are Juniper Networks’ Not For Sale Campaign to end human slavery and Google’s $3-million investment to develop global hotlines to report human trafficking.
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• I caught up with Barbara Bush to chat about equipping young leaders with the tools to tackle global health through non-traditional channels like architecture computer science. Her organization, Global Health Corps, has grown 450% in the past five years, in part due to the atypical partnerships she creates across sectors (a topic we spoke about in detail last year).

The enormity of such challenges as ending human trafficking, employing the world’s 1.29 billion extreme poor, and rebuilding trust in government call for bold commitments, unwavering dedication, and a comfort with failure. And so 19-year old Olympian Aly Raisman took the stage to talk about the merits of hard work (the rewarding feeling of falling into bed with noodles for arms and the knowledge that she didn’t hold anything back in training that day) and learning to be comfortable with fear. “People think Olympians aren’t scared. We’re terrified everyday.”

Robert Swan, the first person to walk to both poles, talked about commitment and carry through. After a 900-mile march across the icy terrain, Swan and his team reached the South Pole and received word that their ship home had sunk minutes before. Before starting off on his trek, Swan promised his mentor Jacques Cousteau that he would leave no trace. This promise required a year on base in Antarctica and additional funds to retrieve and remove the sunken vessel.

Closing the conference Swan cautioned that “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”

Eric Ryan, co-founder of Method

When corporate culture junkies gather around the fire, we tell stories and recount legendary figures in our mythos like Herb Kelleher, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines, who offered to competitors all details of his business knowing that without Southwest’s culture–the focal point of its business–competitors would never gain traction. Drawing us around the fire the recent Conscious Capitalism® Conference sparked stories, armed us with new skills, and provided a common refrain offered up by Roy Spence, co-founder and CEO of GSD&M Idea City, “The Conscious Capitalism movement is about playing to our strengths to serve the greater good. When we do this, it will make all the difference.”

Conscious Capitalism is an approach to business based on four principles–

1) Purpose. Recognizing that every business has a purpose that includes, but goes beyond, making money;
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2) Stakeholder Orientation. Engaging and creating value for various stakeholders (employees, consumers, suppliers, shareholders;
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3) Conscious Leadership. Those who embrace the higher purpose of business and work to create value for all of the business’ stakeholders. Conscious leaders recognize the importance of culture and actively cultivate it; and
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4) Conscious Culture. Culture sets the tenor of the business, integrates and supports the business purpose, and connects stakeholders.

But how do these principles translate from static theory to practice within organizations combatting daily demands? Throughout the two days of the conference, we heard from many CEOs and former leaders. Below are some of my favorite tactics that they shared.

I. Walter Robb, Whole Foods’ president and COO, believes that culture has strength and immunity.

8 Characteristics of Culture

1. Culture is alive. It’s not enough to create it well and then leave it. It shifts and changes and needs to be tended to and nourished.
2. Culture is empowering. One Whole Foods employee took it upon herself to create Braille tags for the majority of items in the store. Additional stores later adopted the tags, and Whole Foods is now working with the Braille Institute in Boston to develop signage and improved tags for all stores. 
3. Culture is a differentiator
4. Culture is powerful
5. Culture creates innovation
6. Culture is soulful
7. Culture is precious and fragile. Whole Foods dropped 30 spots on Fortune’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. This was a warning for Whole Foods leadership that they needed to revisit the needs of employee and consumer, and develop new ways to support these.
8. Culture is evolving

II. Eric Ryan, co-founder of Method, was quick to share that “Nearly everything I’ve done with Method, I’ve taken from someone else, so you should take this from me.”

• Method starts every week with a ‘Monday Huddle’ at 9 AM when the whole team gathers. Everything at Method is about empowerment so each week they draw a name from a hat and that person leads the meeting, which includes a customer testimonial, business updates, an employee story, and appreciation shout-outs. 
• Method believes you can prototype anything, including a relationship. Job candidates are given three questions, including the last one, “How will you help keep Method weird?” This trait is key to the culture, so they recruit for individuality, authenticity and zaniness.  “The bigger we get, the smaller–and weirder–we act.”
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• At Method, everyone is a receptionist, including the two-founders and CEO. Every six weeks, an employee sits at reception for the day. He can develop a theme and do whatever he wants with the lobby. The company has had mac & cheese days and Jersey Shore-themed days.
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• Borrow from improv. Instead of a the prevailing culture of “Yes, but” Method has a culture of “yes, and.” They’ve brought in different improv instructors over the years to improve the company and shift culture.
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• Method applies culture to marketing by writing for one person. Marketing is not top-down but rather everyone is a marketer. “The second that Fred, our product designer, posts on Facebook, he’s a copywriter so he needs to understand the culture and be able to communicate this.”

III. Tom Gardner created his financial services company, The Motley Fool, in the image of a jester, which evokes a fun-loving culture. But underscoring an atmosphere of playfulness is a core set practices and commitment to employee wholeness at the workplace.

• Every employee writes her own job description. Of 54 million workers polled, 72% are indifferent to the work they’re doing, without passion for their job or what they accomplish (Gallup). The most important thing we can do is engage the people we work with.
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• Traditionally, high performing work is monetarily rewarded with a raise or bonus. But this doesn’t factor in four key metrics by which employees evaluate their own satisfaction (how much they believe in and are driven by the purpose of the organization; how much they like their colleagues and management; how much they love the work they do and whether they have challenges that excite them; and flexibility of their schedules). Conscious companies look to address and reward employee performance across these four areas.
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• Every other weekend is a long weekend with Friday or Monday off.

It’s all simple cause and effect to Howard Behr, former president of Starbucks: A strong culture leads to employee happiness, which feeds customer happiness, which leads to profit, which circles back again to company culture. For Behr, culture is just “who you are.”

Image credit: New York Times

I flew up to Boston for the Conscious Capitalism® Conference last year out of curiosity, not with the expectation that two days of speakers and conference hobnobbing would shift my work and life. But it did. It offered up a community, framework, and lexicon that were both inherently natural and alluringly new.

This year’s conference, held in San Francisco, begins Friday, April 5th and continues through the 6th with hands-on practicums where you can learn alongside founders of Method, Whole Foods, the Container Store, and B Lab, among others. Rather than urging you to join the event, I decided to share how it shaped my last year and direct you to 10 takeaways from 2012. Registration for the event is nearly capped but there are still some slots. (And if you’ll be in the city, send me an email to come meet me for a drink.)

1. Conscious Capitalism gave me a broader framework in which to think about business and social impact.
My work before primarily focused on external outputs: how can a company positively impact its suppliers, consumers, community, or environment? But I realized that looking only at external outputs is incomplete. It’s the systems, policies, culture, practices and values within a company that make possible any positive outputs like reduced waste or strong supplier relationships. To maximize impact, it’s critical to first understand and be able to work with company culture and systems. Put another way: as humans, we inherently want the same positive outcomes for our lives and world. When we build the systems and the culture to allow us to practice these inclinations, we see positive outputs, such as more equally distributed pay or increased employee education. This evolution of understanding has impacted the nature of my work, the clients with whom I choose to work, and the writing I do.

2. I’ve built community.
The quality of conversations I had at last year’s conference was so high (and so honest) that I wanted more when I returned home to Washington, D.C.  To find and create these conversations, I organized an event for Conscious Capitalism businesses, practitioners and enthusiasts.  Although I’ve since moved to San Francisco (more on this below), people from the event remain in touch and are actively growing the D.C. community. To kick off the next week’s conference, I’m co-hosting a reception and dialogue focused on women in Conscious Capitalism. The event is open to both men and women. Please join us if you’ll be in town!

3. I’ve become more conscious.
Admittedly, I just wrote this and wanted to delete! and replace it with another outcome, but I’m forging ahead in honesty. Being exposed to people who were leading engaging, intentional lives helped me to think more intentionally about my own and to recognize the choice I have in it and the responsibility of this choice. I switched my environment, moving back to California. I switched how I relate to and engage clients. It’s no longer just about delivering product; I’m now more attuned to the motivations, concerns, and fears of the entrepreneurs and executives I work with. By understanding these, we’re able to make deeper shifts than we would have if we only focused on creating a partnership strategy and pipeline, for example. And I meditate. Ninety-five percent of our days seem directed by outside stimuli so I take some time each morning to turn inward.

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Having shared all this, I should be clear that the intent of the Conscious Capitalism Conference isn’t personal transformation (that is, no fire walking sessions). It’s designed for business owners, executives, and nonprofits to learn to apply the principles of Conscious Capitalism. The speaker roster reflects this pragmatic approach: John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods; Casey Sheahan, CEO of Patagonia; Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, co-founders of Method; Kip Tindell, CEO of the Container Store; Liz Maw, Executive Director of NetImpact; Teju Ravilochan, co-founder of the Unreasonable Institute; and Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Labs, among others.

Global Health Corps was born from frustration alchemized into opportunity. It was the gripping frustration that despite sufficient knowledge and treatment, millions of people continued without care, which left Barbara Bush looking for solutions–solutions she found, in part, in a growing cohort of educated graduates and young professionals keen to confront the problems they saw.

Adanna Chukwuma, Olivia Khalili, Barbara Bush (l-r)

Barbara co-founded Global Health Corps (GHC) in 2009 to “mobilizes a global community of emerging leaders to build the movement for health equity.” Taking inspiration from Teach for America, the one-year fellowship matches a pair of young professionals with government and nonprofit partners working in health. Since 2009, GHC has placed 216 fellows with partner organizations in seven countries (in East and Southern Africa and the United States). With its reputation growing internationally, the program attracted 4,000 applications for 90 available slots in the current class. Applications for the 2013-2014 fellowship are now open.Barbara and GHC Fellow Adanna Chukwuma were invited to speak about their work and collaborative model of leadership at the recent Social Innovation Summit in Mountain View, CA. I sat down with them afterward to talk about systems-change approach to health, the value of humility, and public health role models.

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Olivia Khalili: What was the impetus for founding Global Health Corps?

Barbara Bush: Frustration triggered an opportunity. I was frustrated that we [as a global society] had the knowledge and technical skills to vastly improve global health, but that we weren’t doing enough, quickly enough, to deal with the scale of the problems that existed. So this was a frustration, but at the same time I realized there was an incredible opportunity to engage a huge segment of young professionals who are interested in global health. Why not tap into this interest and funnel talent into the global health field? I think for many people frustration can be motivation. When we’re frustrated that systems aren’t working, we’re driven to make change.

OK: How do you address global health concerns from a systems level?

Adanna Chukwuma: GHC Fellows approach an issue by thinking about the different factors that influence global health, such as taxation and agriculture. As Fellows, we think critically about the health challenges within the context of a system, versus as siloed. How do different factors interact to create problems? Then we look to design solutions that incorporate all of these factors. Out of 2012’s class of 90 Fellows, only two are doctors; the rest are business graduates, education specialists, ICT4D, anthropologists, or architects. We also look for bright spots, trying out new things, seeing what works and then scaling them up. It’s a system and you can’t control a system. All you can do is try to understand what works within that system.

BB: Part of our theory of change is that you need every skillset to create new solutions in global health and to change systems. Adanna is a doctor but she’s interested in working on the systems behind health care to minimize the need for people to see doctors in the first place. And, because we expect our Fellows to end up in leadership positions, our bet is that they will model this type of systems thinking, creating an exponentially larger impact.

OK: How do you act on the trends and patterns identified through this work? Do you use them to influence policy?

BB: There’s a lot more we can do now from a knowledge-sharing perspective. Our Fellows approach systemic issues from different angles, with unique perspectives and skills. We’ve anecdotally seen cool outcomes but need to find ways to build in more knowledge sharing.  I’ll share one example from last year. Fellows placed with the PEPFAR office in Washington, D.C., lived with Fellows working for a very grassroots organization that addressed health education for sex workers and supported HIV-positive populations in D.C. So we had people helping to shape policy at PEPFAR living with people representing those for whom policy is shaped.

OK: How do you measure GHC’s impact?

BB: It’s tough, in part because we have two main goals. The first is that our Fellows make an impact during their year of fellowship. We work closely with our partner organizations to assess what the organization was able to accomplish by virtue of having the Fellows on their team. The second goal is our investment in our Fellows. We expect they will continue to shape health solutions in their sectors, and we track the career paths of past Fellows. We’re committed to investing in and supporting them after the fellowship as much as during it.

OK: to Adanna: What drew you to this program?

AC: The opportunity to partner with someone who brings a different set of skills, who isn’t a doctor like me. We work in teams of two, and I see this as a new model of leadership. There’s also a strong emphasis on social justice. I applied for this specific health policy position in Newark because I felt it mirrored the situation back home in Nigeria. Many of the factors are the same: the same war. In 1967 we had a civil war in Nigeria, and 1967 there was large-scale civil unrest in Newark that started its decline. I felt I could carry some of what I learned during my fellowship in Newark back home to Nigeria.

OK: to Barbara: What criteria do you look for in Fellows?

BB: It parallels a lot of what Adanna said. We look for commitment to social justice, leadership potential, rejection of the status quo. Critically, because our model is one of partnership in which our Fellows work in teams of two, we look for a collaborative approach. Zainab Salbi [founder of Women for Women International] talks about the importance of respecting people you serve. So we look for humility, which is hard to measure for but critical.

OK: Who do you look to for inspiration?

AC: Rifat Atun [former director of strategy for Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria], Julio Frenk [dean of Harvard School of Public Health and former health minister of Mexico]. Julio Frenk straddles the academic and policy worlds. He moved forward national health reform in Mexico. Rifat Atun underscores the importance of having advanced technical skills to address the magnitude of the issues.

BB: Zainib Salbi. Everything is so pure in her approach to what she’s doing. She’s driven by purpose. From a health perspective, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho [Rwandan minister of health]. She gets stuff done every day and can navigate the systems and politics that exist so smoothly. Rwandan health outcomes have changed drastically. She tweets routinely and made everyone in the Ministry of Health get on Twitter because she sees it as a tool for greater accountability. For example, if a patient shares that she went to the health center in Kigali and a drug wasn’t available, there’s accountability for it and people aren’t able to deflect responsibility.

OK: Are there enough female role models in global health?

BB: 70% of GHC applicants are female. So if there aren’t enough role models in health now, there will be!

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If you liked the interview you can thank Barbara and Adanna and pose follow-up questions at @GHCorps. 

Perhaps you’ve noticed a slight twist in topic, unfamiliar terms and different companies referenced in recent posts. I’ve become  enthralled by the concept of conscious business, which I view as an extension of cause capitalism to include organizational culture and structure, leadership, and communication. I’ve always explained cause capitalism as the merger of business and social mission, and I see conscious business as the confluence between business and values (of employees, consumers, suppliers, community).

In thinking about the benefits of a conscious business I realized that they are identical to what I’ve written about before. So while the intent of this site and my work remains unchanged, I’ll introduce new tactics and principles aimed at creating a financially profitable company rooted in humanistic values.

After meeting Richi Gil at the Conscious Capitalism Conference I invited him to talk about what the concept conscious business means to him and how his firm, Axialent, helps transform companies into conscious businesses. As the Managing Director and Chief Culture Officer at Axialent, Richi works with senior leaders and their teams to help significantly improve personal and organizational performance. In his role of chief culture officer, he helps clients develop the behaviors, symbols and systems to support business strategy.

I highlighted some key takeaways from our interview below, but the full value of Richi’s nuanced thoughts and demeanor (as well as how Axialent helped to transform a 100k-employee multinational company) is best captured by listening to the audio. Right-click to download the interview.

Download audio file (CauseCapitalism-with-Richi-Gil.mp3)

• I was curious how Richi responds to the cocktail question “What do you do?”. He explains his job as working with the “human dimension” of business, helping to build conscious teams, leaders, and cultures.
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• Richi defines conscious capitalism as a body of philosophical principles, tools, and behaviors. I’ll dive into each of these elements in subsequent posts.
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• Policies and norms within a company are “artifacts” of the consciousness of the people who design them, so if you have conscious people, you’ll naturally have progressive, innovative and supportive policies. I love this metaphor of policies as “artifacts” of the culture. A classic example is Patagonia’s liberal leave policy that allows employees to take off for afternoon surfing, bike rides and runs.

You can read more on conscious capitalism on Axialent’s blog and follow the company on Twitter at @Axialent.