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For-Profit Charities?

Nearly all of us are familiar with Google and many of us use it often to do our web searches. But the faces behind Google are doing more than run search engines and selling ads to make a living. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two guys who founded Google, started Google.org even before they went public with their IPO of Google stocks. And although Google.org is a charitable business, it has not filed for non-profit status but chosen to stay in the “for profit” sector to do its work. But it still has it purpose clearly defined to make the world a better place.

The Power of a Good Fight

Many of us will spend time visiting family over the holiday season. For some of us that will also mean worrying about and working to avoid conflict! But conflict isn't something we should avoid in the organizations we love. In fact, a "good" fight is just what many of our organizations need.

A Dangling Participle

What do you get when you put an anthropologist, economist, entrepreneur, psychologist, social scientist, and military-logistics expert in the same room together? A typical design team at Participle, a self described "social business" whose members are part of a "new wave of design evangelists who are trying to change the world for the better." This remarkable company is featured in the latest issue of Fast Company.

Getting Social

More and more small businesses and other organizations are discovering the benefits of online social networking. Facebook and My Space remain highly popular, of course. But there are other sites that give you the ability to offer people stricter privacy controls and access to more focused experiences. At A Renewal Enterprise, for example, we use Ning sites to gather people around particular issues and projects.

In The News: Another Leadership Lesson

“Teary-eyed jubilation is giving way to harsh realities…” 

That’s more or less what the front page of my Sunday newspaper read this past weekend. In fact, it’s what most of the pundits are talking about these days: “Is President Obama going to be able to do all of the things candidate Obama promised?” Whether or not you voted for this guy or the other one, if you’ve ever taken on a leadership role in a tough situation, you’ve got to feel for him. Most leaders benefit from some sort of “honeymoon” at the beginning of their term. His may be the shortest in history. 

5 Teambuilding Lessons From This New President

No matter who you pulled the lever for on Tuesday, this election season has been like a high holiday for anybody interested in leadership issues. Today the news is full of speculation about who will serve on the new president’s team. It might be hard for those who supported the other side in this election to even think about learning anything from the president-elect. But we think this moment gives us all a pretty good opportunity to think together about what makes a good team in any movement or organization. 

People Make All The Difference

There's a lot of analysis happening today about this presidential campaign - what worked, what didn't, what we've learned, what's changed, what explains it all. At Fast Company they're talking about the gynormous impact of the internet on this campaign. One article is actually titled, "How Obama Won It With The Web.

Lessons in Renewal from Roger Ebert

Many of you are familiar with film critic Roger Ebert, who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times and also has been a fixture on TV for many years. He has been well loved and respected by many in the film industry. But his battle with cancer has led to health concerns which have caused him to nearly die, to lose his ability to speak, and for a while – to almost lose his will to live. 

Don't Fail To Play

One of my all-time favorite book titles is “Failing Forward” by John Maxwell. It captures one of my basic values, that failure can be a very good thing. In fact, most of the really important things I’ve learned came as a result of really big messes I got myself into. 

It's Your Turn!

We had a fun (and harrowing!) webinar tonight in which we shared some of our favorite web tools. (Harrowing because the three of us were passing control of the presentation back and forth --- and showing live websites. Never did either of those things before. Ahh!) Anyhoo...it was a pretty awesome evening. And we're following it up (as promised) with a quick summary, a link to the sites we talked about, and an invitation to YOU to share your favorite web tools.