Are You a Caterpillar or a Butterfly?

Over 200 years ago, the American experiment started creating the free market, which has done more to improve the lives than any other governmental system in history. The voluntary exchange between companies creates the need for innovation, value, and improvement to stay relevant. Companies and individuals can choose where they spend their money, so they will direct their funds to those companies where they have the greatest experience, value for their exchange, and overall return on their purchase. They need their customers, people, and community to stay relevant.

To stay relevant in the marketplace today, companies must focus on more than just the bottom line.  The bottom line is a byproduct of activities ultimately leading to happy stakeholders across the entire enterprise and supply chain. Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia states that, “Conscious businesses have simple but powerful belief, the right actions taken for the right reasons will generally lead to good outcomes over time.”

Today, more than ever, we are experiencing changing business demographics with four generations in the workforce, disruptive business models with technology, and the greatest availability of information at the fingertips than ever before. To adapt quickly in these changing times, you can no longer rely on a zero-sum game, but you must now innovate and create value across all stakeholders creating win-win relationships. Even your competitors can help you improve and be viewed as educators to improve our existing value proposition.

In an effort to start to engage our stakeholders, FlexPAC created our painted picture after listening to Cameron Herold, COO for 1-800-GotJunk & author of Double Down. We developed a written vision with a higher purpose to set us on our course.

As noted in the book Conscious Capitalism, “The caterpillar consumes all they can and takes as much from the world giving little back. Yet, it is possible to transform much like a caterpillar into a butterfly transforming ourselves into beings who create value for others and make the world more beautiful.” Below I’ll outline two keys to shifting a company from a caterpillar and transitioning it to a butterfly.

1. Define your purpose and live it

As we embarked on our journey to create value across all facets of the business we stumbled.  To assist and help hold us accountable we hired a coach from EOS. EOS stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System and is based on the book Traction. Our first meeting together, we were tasked to develop and define our purpose. Our reason for being. Why we get up in the morning. This is something greater than ourselves and transcends profit. It is a philosophy that is greater than the products and services we are providing. A few examples of other companies’ purposes are:

REI – a national outdoor retail dedicated to inspiring, educating and outfitting its members and the community for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship.

Southwest – To connect People to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel.

The Container Store – is to improve the quality of our customers’ lives through the gracious gift of organization.

Google – organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Apple under Steve Jobs in 1980 – “To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.”

Finding your purpose should resonate with the reason the original founder started the company. The leadership team should be involved in a healthy discussion and debate about what drives the organization. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion our purpose is “To make everything we touch better” Our Customers, Our People, Our Community. We are on a journey and are trying to live this daily.

2. Find synergies across all stakeholders. In our world, we have multiple stakeholders we are accountable to:

Our customers – without them we are not in business. They are our reason for being.

Our people – if we train, educate, and empower our people so they are happy, and they will take care of our customers.  As in Daniel Pink’s book Drive, “We cannot rely solely on only extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivators are far greater to satisfaction at work. An environment that fosters mastery, purpose, and autonomy will lead to greater satisfaction and ultimately great happiness.”

Our suppliers – our suppliers are partners. We are here to promote their value and innovation in the marketplace. By treating our suppliers with respect, partnering with them, and fostering a win-win relationship we will grow together.

Our community – we are part of a greater community with people in need. Township, City, State, Country, World. We deploy resources in time, talent, and treasure to help drive value and do it better than governments. We cannot rely on the government to solve problems. We must deploy the innovation in the private sector through non-profits to create solutions for the problems in place. Grameen Bank founded by Mohammad Yunus is a perfect example of how free market philosophies can improve lives greater than that of governmental philosophies.

FlexPAC recently has recently participated in two activities to synergize our stakeholders. The first was creating a new ice melt brand called Major Melt. With every bag of ice melt sold between August 1^st – September 30^th, we will donate $0.16 to Wish for Heroes foundation supporting our troops. The donation will be made on behalf of our customers that have purchased the product listing the amount they are donating and their name. This initiative provides value to our community, customers, and suppliers.

The second activity was Pack for Hunger, which is an organization dedicated to reducing global hunger by packing meals. We were able to engage our employees, fellow business partners in Vistage, and impact our global community. We are continually striving for ways to synergize our stakeholders to drive value and create win-win relationships.

We are in business for our customers and our people take care of our customers with the products and innovation from our suppliers. Our people live in our community and are impacted by its surroundings.

If we do the right things, for the right reasons, the right things will happen over time. This is a journey, not a destination.