Designing for Business Impact

On OpenIDEO, our global community tackles a variety of big challenge topics, from improving maternal health using mobile technology, to providing accessible voting for citizens with mobility or language restrictions. Each challenge topic brings with it the chance to explore, learn about and design for social and environmental impact in a new and different way.

As I gear up to attend the 2012 Net Impact conference, I can’t help but connect the dots between our current OpenIDEO challenge and the 3,000 or so passionate, driven and connected MBAs and professionals who’ll be gathering in Baltimore, MD for this year’s event.

OpenIDEO’s Business Impact Challenge focuses on designing tools, resources, incentives and other solutions to help for-profit companies innovate for world benefit. At its core, this challenge centers around a topic that was (and still remains) very near to my own heart while I was in business school: doing good and doing well.

The sponsor for our challenge, the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value at Case Western Reserve University, has set its sights on creating a Nobel-like prize to not only recognize current business innovations that have made our society and environment better, but also to spur and catalyze future innovations that drive our world forward. Their intention for this OpenIDEO challenge is to collect inspirations and ideas from around the world that they can incorporate into their own effort toward a vision they call “Business as an Agent of World Benefit.”

Our challenge has opened its Concepting phase, where everyone is invited to collaboratively design ideas to inspire, recognize and enable businesses to innovate with world benefit in mind.

For many of the folks attending Net Impact (or following along at #ni12), this concept – business innovating for world benefit – is already integral to your thinking, approach and outlook at school or at work.

So from your own experience, what do you need to help you do this work better? How could you collaborate with the OpenIDEO community to design concepts that enable your organization to develop these kinds of world changing innovations? To help guide everyone’s efforts in the Concepting, we’ve put together a few tools – Challenge Themes and a Brainstorm in a Box toolkit.

If ever there were a conversation meant specifically for Net Impacters, this is it.

At conferences, it can be so easy to keep the conversation up in the clouds, to speak in what if’s and theories, rather than in the practical and the tangible. This week, why not balance out the theories with some real-world designing? Join our Business Impact Challenge and create concepts to support each of us as we move the needle toward businesses that innovate not just for financial return, but to change the world for the better.

See you on OpenIDEO!

And PS - this Saturday I'm speaking on a panel at the Net Impact conference about breaking into the impact sector and finding a job with purpose. I hope to see you there!

On OpenIDEO, our global community tackles a variety of big challenge topics, from improving maternal health using mobile technology, to providing accessible voting for citizens with mobility or language restrictions. Each challenge topic brings with it the chance to explore, learn about and design for social and environmental impact in a new and different way.

As I gear up to attend the 2012 Net Impact conference, I can’t help but connect the dots between our current OpenIDEO challenge and the 3,000 or so passionate, driven and connected MBAs and professionals who’ll be gathering in Baltimore, MD for this year’s event.

OpenIDEO’s Business Impact Challenge focuses on designing tools, resources, incentives and other solutions to help for-profit companies innovate for world benefit. At its core, this challenge centers around a topic that was (and still remains) very near to my own heart while I was in business school: doing good and doing well.

The sponsor for our challenge, the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value at Case Western Reserve University, has set its sights on creating a Nobel-like prize to not only recognize current business innovations that have made our society and environment better, but also to spur and catalyze future innovations that drive our world forward. Their intention for this OpenIDEO challenge is to collect inspirations and ideas from around the world that they can incorporate into their own effort toward a vision they call “Business as an Agent of World Benefit.”

Our challenge has opened its Concepting phase, where everyone is invited to collaboratively design ideas to inspire, recognize and enable businesses to innovate with world benefit in mind.

For many of the folks attending Net Impact (or following along at #ni12), this concept – business innovating for world benefit – is already integral to your thinking, approach and outlook at school or at work. So from your own experience, what do you need to help you do this work better? How could you collaborate with the OpenIDEO community to design concepts that enable your organization to develop these kinds of world changing innovations?

To help guide everyone’s efforts in the Concepting, we’ve put together a few tools – challenge Themes and a Brainstorm in a Box toolkit. Check them out, and join our challenge.

If ever there were a conversation meant specifically for Net Impacters, this is it. At conferences, it can be so easy to keep the conversation up in the clouds, to speak in what if’s and theories, rather than in the practical and the tangible. This week, why not balance out the theories with some real-world designing? Join our Business Impact Challenge and create concepts to support each of us as we move the needle toward businesses that innovate not just for financial return, but to change the world for the better.

Lessons from the Trenches: My Year in Review

It’s been a busy year of learning, stretching, growing and testing for me at IDEO. Knowing that I’m someone who likes to take stock of my progress and plan for the year ahead (see my posts here and here for examples), I thought I’d take some time to review my efforts and share some big lessons I’ve had along the way.

For those of you out in the working world, my hope is that these might resonate with you. And for the MBAs, design students and other job seekers out there, consider these some helpful tips for what’s to come!

So, here’s what I’ve learned so far:

The Road to Impact is Long…and Bumpy…and Unpaved

If you’re like me, when you start a new job you want to hit the ground running. Eager to make an impact and prove my value to my team, I dove in head first to every big and bold strategic question I could get my hands on – basically with the intention to solve every question, pursue every lead, and wring every ounce of opportunity I could from each day.

Not surprisingly, after a few months of this craziness I realized the dangers of this approach. First and foremost, I burnt out almost immediately. Secondly, this ‘raising my hand to tackle everything’ strategy actually meant that I wasn’t really able to complete anything I started…a brutal a-ha moment when I went back over my to-do lists and saw how many things I started but never crossed off.

At OpenIDEO we talk about achieving impact from our challenges, and yes – the road to OpenIDEO impact is definitely long (but we’re working on it). But from where I sit, my own road to impact at work – not just learning my job but actually doing it well – has been bumpy, unpaved and very windy.  After 12 months on the job, though, I not only know how to do my job, but I know how much of my job I can do. At least at one time.

Opportunities Disguised as Obstacles

Although it might sound cliché, this lesson for me is all about attitude. Buried in post-its, empty cups of coffee and a growing list of things to do, it’s been easy for me to throw my hands up in the air at times and wallow: “This is too difficult/chaotic/busy/challenging/insert negative thought here.”

But the truth is: it’s all about attitude. Take, for instance, the work that I do with my teammates who literally live half a world away. Rather than bemoan our regular Skype calls and long email chains, I’ve chosen to respect and appreciate the fact that our team brings a global voice and perspective to the work we do. Working across three time zones has also forced me to practice communicating in new ways, favoring short and to-the-point over long and wordy (definitely easier said than done – I’m still working on this one!).

Stopping to Smell the Roses…at least once a day

Let’s face it: working in a startup can be a bit nutty, to say the least. Over the course of the last year, I’ve had my fair share of skipped lunches, early morning starts and weekend work-a-thons. But somewhere along the way, the Golden Rule of Business School (you may know it as the 80/20 rule) flashed into my mind.

What I realized is that there is always going to be work. There’s always going to be an opportunity to do better, to try something out, to report back on the last experiment, or just really to do more. But as the law of diminishing returns teaches us, at a certain point this extra effort just stops paying off. Productivity drops, mood drops, everything drops.

I started taking walks at lunch. I started having coffee with new coworkers to welcome them in much the same way I was welcomed when I joined. I started attending lunches and know-hows and speaker sessions. In essence, I started showing up for activities and opportunities that existed beyond my desk.

I learned this lesson late in my first year at IDEO, so I’m truthfully only starting to reap the rewards. But trust me: I’m learning more, I’m making friends, and I’m doing even better at my job. A win win win!

Creating, Promoting and Leveraging Communities of Change

This last lesson has been an especially sweet one for me. When I started this blog almost three years ago, I was attracted to the idea of communities of change – who they are, what they do, and what we can learn from them. So you can imagine my nice surprise when, just a couple of weeks ago, I realized: this is what I do for work.

My job is all about creating, promoting and leveraging one very specific community of change: the OpenIDEO community. My role is to help our global community find their voice, learn about issues that affect them, and translate their enthusiasm and energies into ideas for local and global impact. Amazing how early interests and intentions can end up aligning with real life.

All in all, this last year has been an incredible time for me, one that’s pushed me to reevaluate how I work, collaborate, learn and lead. Are you taking time to review your own lessons at work, or in life? What have you learned?

It’s been a busy year of learning, stretching, growing and testing for me at OpenIDEO. Knowing that I’m someone who likes to take stock of my progress and plan for the year ahead (see my posts here and here for examples), I thought I’d take some time to review my efforts and share some big lessons I’ve had along the way.

For those of you out in the working world, my hope is that these might resonate with you. And for the MBAs, design students and other job seekers out there, consider these some helpful tips for what’s to come!

So, here’s what I’ve learned so far:

The Road to Impact is Long…and Bumpy…and Unpaved

If you’re like me, when you start a new job you want to hit the ground running. Eager to make an impact and prove my value to my team, I dove in head first to every big and bold strategic question I could get my hands on – basically with the intention to solve every question, pursue every lead, and wring every ounce of opportunity I could from each day.

Not surprisingly, after a few months of this craziness I realized the dangers of this approach. First and foremost, I burnt out almost immediately. Secondly, this ‘raising my hand to tackle everything’ strategy actually meant that I wasn’t really able to complete anything I started…a brutal a-ha moment when I went back over my to-do lists and saw how many things I started but never crossed off.

At OpenIDEO we talk about achieving impact from our challenges, and yes – the road to OpenIDEO impact is definitely long (but we’re working on it). But from where I sit, my own road to impact at work – not just learning my job but actually doing it well – has been bumpy, unpaved and not at all direct.  After 12 months, though, I not only know how to do my job, but I know how much of my job I can do. At least at one time.

Opportunities Disguised as Obstacles

Although it might sound cliché, this lesson for me is all about attitude. Buried in post-its, empty cups of coffee and a growing list of things to do, it’s been easy for me to throw my hands up in the air at times and wallow: “This is just too difficult/chaotic/busy/scary.”

But the truth is: it’s all about attitude. Take, for instance, the work that I do with my teammates who literally live half a world away. Rather than bemoan our regular Skype calls and long email chains, I’ve chosen to respect and appreciate the fact that our team brings a global voice and perspective to the work we do. Working across three time zones has also forced me to practice communicating in new ways, favoring short and to-the-point over long and wordy (definitely still working on this one!).

Stopping to Smell the Roses…at least once a day

Let’s face it: working in a startup can be nuts. Over the course of the last year, I’ve had my fair share of skipped lunches, early morning starts and weekend work-a-thons. But somewhere along the way, the Golden Rule of Business School (you may know it as the 80/20 rule) flashed into my mind.

What I realized is that there is always going to be work. There’s always going to be an opportunity to do better, to try something out, to report back on the last experiment, or just really to do more. But as we all know, at a certain point this extra effort just stops paying off. Productivity drops, mood drops, everything drops.

I started taking walks at lunch, having coffee with new coworkers, and attending know-hows and speaker sessions. In essence, I started showing up for activities and opportunities that existed beyond my desk. And so far I’m learning more, I’m making friends, and I’m doing even better at my job. A win win win!

Creating, Promoting and Leveraging Communities of Change

This last lesson has been an especially sweet one for me. When I started this blog almost three years ago, I was attracted to the idea of communities of change – who they are, what they do, and what we can learn from them. So you can imagine my nice surprise when, just a couple of weeks ago, I realized: this is what I do for work.

My job is all about creating, promoting and leveraging one very specific community of change: the OpenIDEO community. My role is to help our global community find their voice, learn about issues that affect them, and translate their enthusiasm and energies into ideas for local and global impact. Amazing how early interests and intentions can end up aligning in real life.

All in all, this last year has been an incredible time for me, one that’s pushed me to reevaluate how I work, collaborate, learn and lead. Are you taking time to review your own lessons at work, or in life? What have you learned?

Choosing Generosity & Courage in 2011

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I really never have been. Mainly I don’t like the idea of waking up one day and declaring things like, “I will now exercise more”. While I do believe a New Year offers the chance for a new start, I think more often than not, New Year’s Resolutions are shallow and low-impact.

What I do love, though, are what I call Birthday Resolutions.

While everyone else is busy resolving to do things come January 1^st, I sit tight for a little while. My birthday is in February, so after New Years I’ve got about 6 weeks of thinking to do.

In my opinion, making Birthday Resolutions means there’s less pressure to say things like, “I want to eat healthier” – perhaps because it’s easier to tune out the background noise on my birthday and really think through what I want the year ahead to look like.

In fact, my overarching objective when setting Birthday Resolutions each year isn’t just about changing my behavior or attitude. It’s about asking myself:

What do I want my life to look like this time next year?

Now, don’t get me wrong – setting and then keeping a Birthday Resolution can be just as tough as a New Year’s Resolution. After all, any kind of resolution entails challenging yourself to change, and change is hard.

Still, I do find that Birthday Resolutions help me start my next year feeling present, thoughtful and focused about the year ahead. And for me, that’s the whole point.

This year I have two Birthday Resolutions, which I’m pleased to share with you.

First, I resolve to give.

By this I really mean to give of myself more freely – my time, my interest, my intellect, and even my personal resources (like money, my network etc).

In my family we use a concept borrowed from Stephen Covey called “The Emotional Bank Account”. The premise here is that relationships are like bank accounts, with deposits and withdrawals. Each person in a relationship makes transactions of both kinds, but overall both people must focus on making deposits – otherwise the account balance goes empty.

For me, the last two and a half years have been all about withdrawals. Succeeding in business school required that I focus almost exclusively on myself and my own journey. Because I had built up enough of an “account balance” with my family and friends, I was able to lean on the people around me for support, help, and guidance. But, with my own bandwidth limited, I didn’t do the best job of making deposits.

Now that I’m out of school with a healthy dose of perspective and clarity, I’ve decided that I want this year to be about making deposits. I’m so thankful for the help I have received, and now I feel compelled to be generous in return.

Second, I resolve to try.

By this I really mean to find the courage to take risks, to speak up, and to think beyond what seems possible or plausible.

People who’ve known me forever know that I’m not a big fan of risk, so this isn’t an easy resolution for me. But if there is one lesson I took away from business school it’s that when I am brave enough to speak my opinion or pursue something unknown, good things can happen. Sometimes I fail or make a mistake – everyone does at some point. But more often than not, when I push myself to give something new a try, I’m glad I did.

So there you have it – my 2011 Birthday Resolutions. While I can’t promise instant success, I do feel more focused and prepared to make this year be about both generosity and courage.

Hopefully by this time next year I'll be reporting back to you all the ways I was able to both give more and try more.

Happy New Year to each of you, and best of luck with your own Resolutions!

My Year-End Job Search Advice

Boy how time flies! Incredibly, we’ve made it through another year.

2010 was an interesting year for me, comprised of what I see as two separate phases: the last six months of business school, and the first six months of the rest of my life.

Anyone who’s gone to business school can speak to how intense the experience is. For two years you push yourself to learn, study, compete, and succeed – in the classroom, among your friends, and especially in the job search. You also sacrifice; your life revolves around being a student and everything else often takes a back seat.

As cliché as it sounds, business school is all-consuming (that whole “seeing the forest through the trees” thing doesn’t always apply to us MBAs).

Like any good business school student, I took my two years in school very seriously, working hard to ensure success for my job search. After all, I often reasoned, the whole point of going to business school is to get a job!

Just out of curiosity, I went back and looked over my 2010 calendar. From January to December I went on 28 job interviews and reached out to another 64 people for informational interviews, or 1.8 interviews of some type per week.

I wrote countless cover letters, recreated my resume practically every week, and scoured the job boards for openings. I networked, I applied, I interviewed…and nothing happened.

In fact, while I left business school in May thrilled and excited to find a job, by the second half of 2010 I felt a bit like the low squeal of air being let out of a balloon very, very slowly.

By late October, I was officially deflated.

Things were just not working out like I’d planned. I wasn’t finding the job I wanted, or dare I admit, the job I felt I deserved (even if they won’t say it out loud, I believe every MBA feels a sense of job entitlement from the minute they step on campus because, again, the point of business school is to get a better job).

For a while my apparent inability to turn a job interview into a job offer just ate away at me.

With time, though, and a lot of soul searching, I realized that no matter how much I wanted to control the outcome of my job search, I had to let it go. This was clearly something I could not fix all by myself, no matter how much I wanted to.

So, with that, I tried to relax and remember the big picture.

And when I did, I suddenly saw all the important people, experiences and traditions that I’d neglected during my job search. I saw my husband, my family, and my friends. I saw birthday parties and holidays, yoga classes and hikes outside, and weekend movies and dinners out. In essence, I saw a world filled with people who love me, and whom I love – and I decided right then and there that it was time to start participating in the fulfilling life I already had, with or without a job.

In hindsight, getting an MBA was the best career choice I’ve ever made. It gave me skills and experience and confidence unlike anything else, and I am so proud of how far I’ve come.

Yet I also believe that getting an MBA was one of the most selfish things I’ve ever done.

Business school gave me permission to focus on me, and only me, for two years. And when the final result didn’t initially turn out the way I had hoped or expected, I could only conclude that I had somehow failed. It sounds extreme now looking back, but at the time, that’s how I felt.

I am certain now that I haven’t failed.

Instead, what I have done is realized that business school is just one piece of my life story. There was life before business school, and there will certainly be life after business school. No matter how enormous the experience has felt, my post-MBA job search is actually just a blip on the radar.

Ironically, the moment you stop worrying about something is the moment it happens. I am pleased to say that I’m finally making some great progress on my job search, and I’m feeling hopeful for good things in the New Year. But it hasn't been an easy year for me, and unfortunately I know the same is true for so many other job seekers out there today.

And so, with that I’d like to leave with you a few words of unsolicited advice as we close out 2010 and move towards 2011:

To the Class of 2011 – and to those brave members of the Class of 2010 still pounding the pavement – I say: pick your heads up. See the forest, not just the trees. Know that your MBA job search is just one stop along the long chronology of your professional life. It doesn’t define you as a person, or determine your success or failure. It’s just a job. And you will have many in your lifetime.

And to everyone who’s helped me throughout my own search: I want to offer my most heartfelt thanks. It really did take a village to find me a job! And I am so grateful for the village I have.

Happy holidays to each of you and best wishes for a terrific (and employed) 2011!

Ashley's Note: I originally wrote this post for Vault's CSR blog, In Good Company, as part of their 2010 CSR Year in Review series. I encourage you to check out all of their guest bloggers - there's some great CSR learning there!

Making an Impact at Work

One topic that comes up often in CSR discussions is social intrapreneurship (in fact, it’s something I’ve written about previously on The Changebase).

Lots of people want to do CSR work, but not everyone is lucky enough to be in the right place, at the right time to land that perfect CSR job.

Thankfully that doesn’t mean that you can’t still make an impact at work.

I recently sat down with Britta Durtsche, a true social intrapreneur who found her CSR calling in a most unexpected way.

Interestingly, Britta never expected she’d work at a big company like Best Buy.

A self-proclaimed “anti-corporate” college student who’d been active in causes like sustainable clothing and social enterprise, Britta never guessed that an internship with the consumer electronics giant would have such an impact on her professional career. But it did.

In 2004 as an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, Britta decided to “test the waters of a corporate environment” by accepting an internship with Best Buy. By the end of the summer, she says, she was hooked on the company’s culture and energy.

After graduation Britta joined Best Buy as a Demand Planning Analyst in the Marketing group, and even though she spent most of her time in spreadsheets and forecasts, she loved it.

Soon after starting, Britta heard about a new group being formed at headquarters by a fellow employee named Hamlin Metzger. The goal was to get Best Buy employees engaged and active in an internal movement to integrate sustainability into their everyday work routines. Hamlin was looking for help, and Britta jumped at the chance to get involved. Soon after, in 2006 the Best Buy Social Responsibility (BBSR) team was launched.

From working with Facilities to improve recycling programs, to hosting a company-wide energy-themed film festival, Britta and the BBSR team worked hard to create buzz and generate excitement internally. In addition to these highly-visible initiatives, the BBSR team also hosted smaller informational meetings to provide employees the chance to learn more about how they could personally get involved.

And the most amazing part? Britta, Hamlin and their colleagues accomplished all of this in addition to their regular day jobs. In fact, according to Britta, it really just started as “little grassroots things I could take on in addition to my role” in Demand Planning.

Today, more than 200 employees are part of the BBSR team and it seems inevitable that this number will grow with time.

Britta attributes the program’s success to the fact that the BBSR team taps into employees’ personal interests and allows them to “bring their hearts” to work – even if their jobs aren’t directly related to corporate social responsibility.

The other crucial success factor, Britta says, was engaging Best Buy’s senior leadership every step of the way. Through personal, one-on-one outreach with VP’s and other leaders, Britta and the team secured buy-in from key influencers throughout the company – a strategy she believes helped to “carry the legitimacy” of the BBSR team’s efforts and model the way for others to join in.

Although she has since left Best Buy and the BBSR team, Britta has continued to work with social intrapreneurs who want to identify ways to bring sustainability into their workplaces and schools. Today Britta serves as the Impact Programs Manager at Net Impact, where she provides resources, tools and support for professionals and students who want to make a difference in their organizations.

For many Net Impact members and recent MBA graduates, working in sustainability or CSR is an important goal. Often, however, those jobs are tough to find and can be very competitive.

Nonetheless, Britta’s story reminds us that we don’t need “CSR” in our job title to make an impact at work. By finding a company she loved; volunteering to help with an issue she cared about; and engaging with employees at every level, Britta was able to meaningfully participate in and help guide Best Buy’s sustainability journey.

Clearly Britta’s story serves as a great example of finding ways to contribute to your company’s sustainability goals, even when you’re not working in the CSR team. But why tell her story now?

As you may know, Net Impact’s terrific annual CSR conference is taking place October 28^th through the 30^th at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and I want to encourage everyone to attend.

This year’s theme is “2020: Vision for a Sustainable Decade” and, given Net Impact’s own interest in social intrapreneurship, I have a hunch it’ll be a great place to learn more about how to get involved in your own company’s CSR journey.

They’re still announcing speakers and sessions, but trust me: the networking is great, the energy is contagious, and the learning is invigorating.

And the best part? For another week you can take advantage of early registration! So: what are you waiting for?