Search Results: "Social Venture Networks" Results 7-12 of 429
How do you build the kind of company you've always wanted to work in—one that serves people and the planet while being financially successful, too? What do you do when you believe that business should serve the common good, but everyday business pressures—meeting payroll, battling competition, keeping customers and investors happy—are at a fever pitch? Leading a small business when you measure success more broadly than with a single financial bottom line is no easy task. True to Yourself is a practical guide to doing just that. It provides tools you can use to combine profit with purpose, margin with mission, value with values.

Drawing on insightful interviews with seventy-five forward-thinking leaders and his own extensive experiences as an entrepreneurial leader, Mark Albion details five critical leadership practices:

Turn your values into value
Walk toward the talk
Communicate with care
Facilitate personal growth
Collaborate for greater impact

True to Yourself shows how successful businesspeople have put these practices into action, and it provides hands-on exercises to help you integrate them into your own business. This trusted guide will help you avoid mistakes while making your job easier, your company more successful, and your life more fulfilling.

• By the author of the New York Times bestseller Making a Life, Making a Living
• The second volume in the Social Venture Network Series for small businesses
• Draws on the author's experience and interviews with 75 innovative small business leaders to offer a practical guide to leadership practices needed to build a business that reflects your values
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In Values-Driven Business, Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen and Social Venture Network chair Mal Warwick team up to provide you with a way to run your business for profit and personal satisfaction. This practical, down-to-earth book details every step in the process of creating and managing a business that will reflect your personal values, not force you to hide them.In Values-Driven Business, Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen and Social Venture Network chair Mal Warwick team up to provide you with a way to run your business for profit and personal satisfaction. This practical, down-to-earth book details every step in the process of creating and managing a business that will reflect your personal values, not force you to hide them.

• The premier title in the Social Venture Network (SVN) Series--SVN is a nonprofit network of the most prominent socially conscious business leaders in North America, representing Ben & Jerry's, Working Assets, Tom's of Maine, Eileen Fisher, Clif Bar, and many others. Find out more about the series
• Combines the tried-and-tested wisdom of the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's and the chair of the Social Venture Network Advisory Board
• Concise and practical format includes a self-assessment tool, checklists, and other user-friendly features
• Listen to podcasts of Mal Warwick talking about Values-Driven Business on the Good Life radio show

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Times are changing. Instead of obsessing about what they’re against, progressives have begun to think about what they’re for—to prepare once again to play their role as agents of bold ideas and political and social transformation. Finding new confidence and imagination, they have begun to renew their political capital. The essays in this volume draw on that new store of capital to sketch the outlines of a progressive agenda for 21st-century America. Authors such as Van Jones, Dean Baker, Andrea Batista Schlesinger and Miles Rapoport cover a wide array of topics and, in their policy recommendations, present a few contrasting ideas. But all these essays reflect a belief in the need for fundamental change. The problems discussed here cannot be solved, the authors agree, through charity, through volunteerism, or even by well-meaning local and state governments, though surely all have a role. The contributors make the case for the kind of concerted action that can only come through the agency of our national government. They argue that we need programs that serve our national and international needs and encourage faith in our public institutions, creating a positive cycle of political change and space for further reform. There are many good reasons to be worried at this critical moment in history. To navigate these troubled times, we need a rare combination of ideas, action, resolve, and leadership to meet the challenges that lie before us. Thinking Big is an indispensable piece of that puzzle, arriving just when it’s most needed. With a foreword by Robert Kuttner, author of Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency. The Progressive Ideas Network is an alliance of multi-issue think tanks and activist organizations working together to amplify the power of ideas in advancing today’s progressive movement.



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This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world.

The social and environmental challenges we face today are not only complex, they are also systemic and structural and have no obvious solutions. They require diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear. Even so, collaborative efforts often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity with traditional strategic plans, created by hierarchies that ignore the way people naturally connect.

By embracing a living-systems approach to organizing, impact networks bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe. 

David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.

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People often ask, "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we solve global hunger?"

  • Offers a more dynamic, powerful, and practical way to address difficult social problems than the dominant planning approach
  • Features inspiring examples of the results social labs around the world have achieved
  • Provides detailed guidance on how to start a social lab in any setting and on any level

People often ask, "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we solve global hunger?" That very question demonstrates the fatal flaw in the dominant way of dealing with difficult social challenges: they're treated like straightforward technical problems. Organizations do a few studies, establish some goals, devise a plan, and attempt implementation. As a look around the world sadly shows, this hasn't worked.

Issues like poverty, ethnic conflict, and climate change are incredibly dynamic and complex, involving an ever-shifting array of factors, actors, and circumstances. They demand a more fluid and adaptive approach. The answer, says Zaid Hassan, is social labs.

Social labs bring together a diverse a group of stakeholders not to create yet more five-year plans but to develop a portfolio of prototype solutions, test those solutions in the real world, use the data to further refine them, and test them again. Their orientation is systemic-they are designed to go beyond dealing with symptoms and parts to get at the root cause of why things are not working.

Hassan builds on a decade of experience-as well as drawing from cutting-edge research in complexity science, networking theory, and sociology-to explain the core principles and daily functioning of social labs, using examples of pioneering labs from around the world. He describes a fast-growing global movement around a new generation of ambitious social labs that are tackling big challenges such as dramatically reducing global emissions, preventing the collapse of fragile states, and improving community resilience. The Social Labs Revolution offers a new generation of problem solvers an effective, practical, and exciting new vision and guide.

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Entrepreneur and executive development expert Mike Dulworth's THE CONNECT EFFECT provides readers with a simple framework and practical tools for developing that crucial competitive advantage: a high-quality personal, professional/organizational and virtual network.Networking is not mere socializing—it is a vital personal and professional development skill. An effective network can make you more knowledgeable, help you address critical issues, accelerate your career, and even improve your health and well-being. As a recent article in MIT’s Sloan Management Review reports, “What really distinguishes high performers from the rest of the pack is their ability to maintain and leverage their networks.” Networking is simply too important to be left to chance. In this book, Michael Dulworth shows how to take a conscious, systematic approach to networking. After a short quiz to measure your “networking quotient” (NQ), The Connect Effect identifies three distinct kinds of networks: personal, professional, and virtual. Dulworth examines their specific characteristics and offers strategies, tools, and resources for building up and making the best use of each one. Stories from Dulworth’s twenty years of experience running networks, as well as interviews with top executives, researchers, and thought leaders, provide insights and advice about how networks function in the real world. Few of us are born networkers, but anyone—introvert, extrovert, or in-between—can learn to master this important skill. And as you build your networks and the connections between members multiply, you’ll find that the benefits you gain grow exponentially. This extraordinary return on your networking investment is what Dulworth terms “The Connect Effect”—and in this book he shows how it can enrich every aspect of your life.

•Offers a systematic approach to developing your networking skills—including an “NQ test” to help you quantify your networking ability

•Features tools and techniques specific to each type of network, as well as advice from leading executives, researchers, and thought leaders

•Copublished with ASTD, the leading association for human resource development professionals

 

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