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In addition to traditional concerns about cost, agility and quality, our clients [and us] are being challenged with their record on SDG’s, ESG, DEI+B in the world outside their organizations. While these challenges overlap significantly, the question they raise is how do we as design practitioners respond, if at all?

Guest presenter: Bernard Mohr
Moderator: Paul Tolchinsky

We explored:

1. What contributions to society do we want from our business enterprises
2. What role do we, as organization designers, want to play in helping our clients build a better society? What is our responsibility as a profession and as practitioners?
3. How, when and where can we, as designers, engage leaders in the conversation about the role of their businesses in creating a better society?
   • How do we help our clients integrate “profit” and “purpose”?
   • What capabilities will our client organizations need to succeed in this arena?
   • What will our “offer” to our clients look like? What skills, tools, capabilities, practices, etc., will we offer to our clients
     • What are we doing today? What could we do in the future?

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Compelling ambitions! Making nuclear energy with tiny reactors. Turning CO2 into everything from yarn to jet fuel. Using AI to design EV batteries that are 300% better. . The use of super-hot bricks to run factories with zero emissions. There are also tart-up stories about improving breast cancer detection; helping laid-off tech workers retain their visa status; using webform tools to help after deadly earthquakes; telehealth services in the school nurses’ office; new housing within factories; increasing access to the morning-after pill and turning a laundromat into a doctors office – to mention just a few.

These start-ups have the right idea.  But so far the evidence suggests that while they inspire us and have future promise, we need the reach and resources of mid to large-size businesses if we want to move the needle toward a better world for all.

This is what CCMV (Co-Creating Mutual Value) is all about, – supporting growing, medium and large-sized businesses (ie- Corporate America) with the tools and practices needed to build a better world by identifying and capturing new business opportunities. Opportunities at the intersection of what the world needs, what a business’s core strengths are, and the likelihood of positive business impact..

Presently, there are very few businesses that have gone beyond philanthropic and “do less harm” strategies. Very few “Corporate America” businesses are creating value that supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals

At CCMVC our research seeks to understand the unique challenges that mid to larger businesses face in going down this road. We seek to learn from the small minority that have already succeeded. By studying “what works”, we develop an evidence-based Roadmap (steps, tools, practices, mindsets) that any existing business can use to engage ecosystem stakeholders in identifying and capturing opportunities that will create mutual value. Value that includes but goes beyond ROI. Value that creates a better world as defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Please contact us:
·     If you know of a company open to a 60 minute interview
·     Or, if you are interested in joining our team of research volunteers

Contact: Bernard@CoCreatingMutualValue.org or call +1-207-807-4974

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 For the bulk of my adult life, I made my living by founding and running my own professional service business. To plan for my future (which is now), I self-financed a portfolio of investments as my retirement strategy. My main income now comes from this investment portfolio. I rely on the ability of these businesses to be profitable. But I also want to safeguard my children (and yours) from the ever-increasing threats of pandemics, terror in our schools and grocery aisles, ever-growing socio-economic inequality, unremitting injustices against marginalized groups, geopolitical conflicts, and climate disasters. This requires massive collaboration, at all levels, to reach breakthroughs in scientific, social and economic innovation. Frankly, a  better world where all people, businesses and communities thrive, now and across the generations cannot be realized without the reach and resources of business. But businesses must also prosper during that journey.

Fortunately, some of the most innovative businesses (small, medium and global) are succeeding at this BY using their strengths to solve ESG issues. And yet those businesses are under attack by people like State Senator Bryan Hughes (R- Texas). He is the author of what is being called “the fiduciary duty bill” – a bill that would prohibit public pension funds from investing in any corporation “with a purpose of furthering social, political” or other goals that deviate from maximizing short-term shareholder results.

Why do I bristle at such attacks?  Given my dependence on shareholder returns, it seems to me I should applaud his work. And yet, I reject all those who are attacking businesses for pursuing strategies that create sustainable shareholder returns BY building a better world. These attacks are short-sighted and mean-spirited.

Short-term returns at the cost of a livable planet and a just society make no sense. Businesses need a world where the environment sustains us rather than threatens our very existence as a species, a world where together we overcome the pandemics, terror in our schools and grocery aisles, our socio-economic inequality and injustices, and our dangerous geopolitical conflicts.

Personally. I want to live and love in a world where ALL my neighbors experience justice, belonging, equity, and joy. Anything less is meanspirited and not worthy of the life I (and so many like me) have been given. And our children, mine and yours, need this world as well.

As paradoxical as it may sound to some, let us fight together for the right of business to go beyond focusing exclusively on short-term profit. Let us support those businesses that find ways to prosper by building a better world.

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Driving this is the recognition that our economic model for value creation and distribution, driven by Milton Friedman’s popular, if perhaps somewhat misunderstood notion of shareholder primacy, can no longer be relied upon to address the challenges described by Rebecca Henderson in her book “Reimagining Capitalism in A World On Fire.

The good news is that many many many “nodes” of reinvention are springing up all around the world – from the almost 300 year old RSA (Royal Society for the Arts), to our very own small CoCreating Mutual Value Collaborative

Underlying all of this are the ideas sometimes expressed as “regenerative capitalism” A recent RSA blog describes these ideas quite well.

For a quick read, please see << https://lnkd.in/e7w-XUw4 >>  

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NOTE: When this second part of the equation exists, businesses will make the necessary investments. 

There are loads of opportunities for businesses to make money addressing climate change (http://bit.ly/3i7u9PO ) …but what about our social and economic justice problems? How does business (as a sector) profitably create innovative solutions?

This requires bringing together stakeholders from the business’s ecosystem in new collaborations, at scale. The outcome will be breakthrough ideas (and execution) in HOW a business can combine its strengths with those of its stakeholders in ways that create meaningful MUTUAL value – for the business and its stakeholders. 

Our non-profit, (The Co-Creating Mutual Value Collaborative/ CCMVC) believes businesses will undertake this journey if they a) are shown examples and b) if they are given the practical tools and methods to successfully create the needed business and operating model innovations.

At CCMVC we collect stories of where this has already worked and share them. We build tools and methods based on what we learn about “what works” and share them. 

And, we also provide hands on support to any business that wants to be an organizational learning partner with us.

Want to Join our team? 

Want to talk about becoming an organizational learning partner? 

Feel moved to donate to us?

Message us bernard@cocreatingmutualvalue.org or call me at +1-207-807-4974

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Emeritus Faculty, Concordia University and Member of the CCMV Advisory Council

“Nothing feels better at work than collaborating with others

to find innovative solutions to difficult challenges.”

People not only have the right to be involved in the decisions that affect them at work, they have the psychological need to be involved. The good news is that radical participation processes work, add value and accelerate positive change in health care, education, social services and in business!  Partially participative processes (sometimes called consultative participation such as many Design Thinking approaches) just don’t deliver the best results.  The difference involves shifting from “You said… we did” to “we said, and we did,” which builds radical participation into the organizational culture as a “way of being.”

Radical participation includes everyone affected by workplace innovations in designing the innovations.  Of course, everyone can’t be involved in everything so creative ways to provide opportunity for involvement is part of the process. In small organizations everyone can be involved in all innovation activities and in large organizations, everyone can be involved in some innovation activities. A wide range of evidence-based and well-developed tools exist for engaging hundreds even thousands of people, in both face to face and virtual processes of participation in the co-discovery and design of innovations. These include but are not limited to Search Conferencing, Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry Innovation Studios and Summits, World Café, Social Labs “town halls,” and more.[1]

Think about this for a moment.  Without the ability to affect the environment in which one lives and works, one is powerless, and this can result in a deep sense of self-doubt that affects not only the workplace but also our families, our community and our countries. A workplace characterized by people who are not actively engaged, but rather passively doing only what they are told is not productive and innovative.   To have the ability to produce intended results, one needs to know “why­” and this requires being involved in creating the solutions as well as implementing them.  Emotions arising from top down or partially participative workplace innovation and change include contempt, humiliation, guilt, shame and anger.[2] These illicit natural and strong defenses that end in the refusal to work with others, disengagement (the lack of caring about my work) and sometimes, active sabotage.

Consider the radical participation alternative.  Nothing feels better at work than collaborating with others to find innovative solutions to difficult challenges. In an environment where one is involved in a fast-moving dialogue searching for new ways to work better, people feel valued for their knowledge and skill, respected and included.  They feel involved, engaged and that their contributions are valued and worthwhile.  Strengths are recognized, appreciation and positive emotions are generated, and a work climate of high energy is created. Creativity and innovation are at their best and so are productivity and human health.  In the face of conflict or tragedy, resilience and agility are demonstrated. Positive human relations develop and lead to high trust, and trust leads to a willingness to engage and take risks that can only result in better solutions. A virtuous cycle of continuous innovation and design develops for the organization.  Participation in the process of designing innovations leads to learning how to use participation in the day-to-day functioning of the workplace.  The result is a continuously adaptive agile organization.

How might we co-discover and co-create such a positive workplace?  Research has shown that intrinsic motivation at work stems from six psychological factors.[3]

1. Having some area of responsibility that is yours in which you have the autonomy and the accountability to make decisions and to innovate.
2.  The opportunity to learn and get better at your job and to get to do more complex or difficult things.
3. Not always, repetitively doing the same thing but having some variety in the work that you do.

These first three factors are quite personal.  What is energizing for you may be terrifying or far too simple for me.  So, we all need to participate together to figure out what is right for us in our workplaces.  Radical participation is essential in this working through process.

We all want more of these second group of three factors (below) all the time.  They are embedded (or not) in the workplace by the choices that we have made as managers about the design of the organization – the structures, systems, and policies.  

4. The trust and respect of others so that when I ask for help, I get it and when I suggest or offer ideas to improve our work together, I am listened to and I feel heard and understood.

5. A meaningful job that provides some sense of contributing to the whole organization and society. A feeling of pride when telling others what you do, and

6. A clear path to a desirable future. A sense that if I participate fully here, I will be able to realize my dreams.

Research also shows that even though this second set of factors is desired by everyone, not many of us experience all six of these critical psychological factors at work.  A radically participative organizational culture is necessary, and it can be created with radically, not partially participative processes of workplan redesign and innovation.

Today, managers, consultants and academics are learning that full participation by all those involved in implementation in the process of designing innovations really works – but it is still rare enough to be called radical. The next challenge that some are learning is even more radical.  That is how to capture and use the learning from radically participative innovation and design as a day-to-day way of being to continuously innovate business and operational models.  That is a future blog.

[1] See Mohr, Bernard and Dessers, Ezra , p#284, “Designing Integrated Care Ecosystems: A Socio-Technical Perspective” 2019, Springer Nature, Switzerland

[2] See de Guerre, D. W., Emery, M., Aughton, P., and Trull, Andrew (2008). Structure Underlies Other Organizational Determinants of Mental Health: Recent Results Confirm Early Sociotechnical Systems Research. SPAR,  http://www.springerlink.com/content/glq28t156367213n/.

[3] Emery, Merrelyn (2008).  The Determinants of Creativity and Innovation at Work.  Unpublished Manuscript available from the author.  

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