Sustainable Business Learning Community Conversations, May 2013 - June 2013

May 23, 2013 Topic: Adult Learning

May 16, 2013 Topic: Developing the Workshop Format

Comments from last week - Asking Questions:

• Organizations that you work in are holding questions. Be able to provide leadership that supports the asking of these questions. What are the really important questions being held by the organization and how do we get the richness of them? What might the possible answers might be?

• Example: There are many little questions we ask every day at the Green Garage: can we have natural ventilation today? can we compost more? Each of these questions supports the higher level question: how can we be more sustainable today?

• Perhaps that one big Question IS what you are and your work is to answer that question.

• Think of the business owner who encourages customer questions because he's learned that many other customers will have the same questions. By finding answers to those questions he finds that he's able to get his business to a place that is beneficial to those he serves.

• Can questioning and perseverance be in conflict with each other? At what point do you stop persevering and start to question your previous assumptions, or questions you thought you had already answered?

• Henry Ford failed several times before he successfully establish his car company. Did he every question his ability to run a company, or that people would want to buy cars? Or did he focus on questions that allowed him to refine his business approach? Questions can be about refining and evolution of ideas.

• Questioning something isn't always an indication of doubt. It can be part of an ongoing process - have I gone deep enough?

• Revisit and reevaluate your original assumptions: You can start with a set of valid assumptions but then you move forward with your business and the context changes fundamentally, so now those assumptions are no longer valid. The way you calculate and forecast may have to change - a discontinuous change. What kind of fundamental changes might you have to make? You have to know when to go back and question foundational assumptions.

• Can your fundamental questions be too specific?
  • Ex: Kodak's question: How do we make the best film - but if no one uses film anymore, wouldn't it be better to ask, how do we best capture moments?
  • Ford: How do we make the best cars? If we no longer use cars, then a better questions might be, how do we best transport people?

• Just because an answer works for one person doesn't mean that its the right answer for you.

• Businesses fit into natural cycles. Just like living things, not all businesses are supposed to last forever. To fight from going under at all costs might not be the most prudent thing.

• Not all questions have to be answered, or, at least, answered right away. We get a lot of visitors to the GG and there are some questions that Tom won't answer. The most frequently asked: What's the payback? This is a question that comes from a borrowed paradigm (investment --> payback, all within a pretty short amount of time). But in the conventional sense, that's not the right question to ask. He has to begin with the context first in order to answer this question: what does payback mean?

• Profit is the primary goal in this country, so if you step outside of that model, it's hard to answer people's questions about what you do. You have to spend time framing the context of the work you do - it takes a lot of time to get people to understand.

• Questions as a pulse - if Bob's not hearing the questions, then he wonders why. Are people not interested? Are they afraid? He looks for patterns of questions to help him understand how his business is going.

• It's important to have the person who asks the uncommon questions - value those people who see things differently and ask the questions you never thought of. Those people might actually have better focus on things than you do.

Today: Developing the Workshop Format

People approached Tom asking for information about specific and practical skill sets relating to their businesses. So we decided to do workshop-style meetings in order to work on growing those skills. Workshop meetings will be held the 3rd Thursday of each month. We hope to help those leading 3D business to continue to grow their skills and competencies. Each meeting will last 1 1/2 hours. The first half hour will be for presentation, the remaining hour, one of the businesses will present their situation and the other attendees can discuss and comment. (Case study learning style)

12 habits of sustainable business (falling under the 3 dimensions of a sustainable business):

Economic:

• profitability management
• management information
• funding capital and ownership
• quality and continuous improvement

Environmental:

• energy
• no waste
• water
• toxicity

Community:

• organizing for growth
• learning organization
• growing the vital community
• sustainable relationships

Capstone piece: Leadership - priority setting, project management, intersection between economic, environmental and community

Other topic ideas offered by the group:

• How do I figure out my break even point?
• How do I grow? (what if growth leads you to bankruptcy???)
• How do you value a service - decide a price? discounts?
• How to develop non-conventional business models?
• Developing a chart of accounts
• Managing client/customer relationship systems - processes
• What does quality mean?
• Understanding costs, fixed and variable costs
• Creating and managing data
• Building good relationships, letting go of the bad ones
• Point of sale systems
• Payroll - taxes, pay rates
• Auditing and financial reporting
• Loans
• Environmental impact analysis
• Flexibility (in systems, equipment)
• Managing inventory

Next week: Adult Learning