Middlemen or Distributors?

Council Fire *  

Now we all have personal experience with the collapse of supply chains: toilet paper, produce, meat, flour.  They are more fragile than we knew, for many reasons. Whether in conversation with my consulting colleagues at Council Fire or with my clients such as the Equitable Food Initiative, supply chains are front-of-mind – as they also are in many everyday conversations.

Supply chains manage ‘betweens,’ the spaces between activities that otherwise would be disconnected. They connect the farm to the packing house, packing to trucking, truckers to warehouses, and so forth. When working properly, these supply chains are tightly connected, like individual railcars that together make up a train.

While the couplings that keep a train together are obviously critical, do we need all the couplings in our supply chains? When families go berry picking on a local farm, there is no fresh produce supply chain. However, when a farmworker in New Zealand picks a kiwi for sale in Detroit, the chain is long and winding (more of a web than a chain, in fact).

Distributors and consolidators are either essential to keep supplies humming or they are middlemen squeezing growers or producers without adding enough value to warrant the cut they take. Especially today, they seem critically important. But as we rebuild, should they play the same traditional roles or not? Fishmongers are now making a go of it in the UK selling straight to customers at the dock; no distributors. Restaurants have become community pantries in the Washington, DC, area; new distributors.

Size and distance are dispositive. We can't have lobster in the winter in Oklahoma without a complex system of suppliers carefully coupled together. While most of us are not going back to the farm, or to lobstering, maybe the real innovation obscured by the much bandied about idea of ‘scale,’ is that smaller might be better than bigger. We misuse scale as a synonym for bigger, when it actually means proportional or appropriately sized.

As we rebuild better, size and distance must be central to planning. Going from the bedroom to the home office is a shockingly short commute for many people. And we don’t even need to embrace Small Is Beautiful as a principle to wonder; what really is the optimal size for the most efficient economic system?

Before we scoff at alternatives that emphasize regions and internalizing costs, sharing economic value more fairly and better alignment with our personal values, we would do well to remember that what is dismissed today as ‘unworkable,’ is tomorrow’s patent and next year’s most successful IPO.

Especially today, be careful betting against big changes.

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* Council Fire is a global management consultancy that helps purpose-driven organizations thrive by creating lasting economic, social, and environmental value.

This Ain’t That – Communications & Covid-19

Every crisis is of course unique and demands specialized communications. But regardless of scale, or location, or type, common features emerge - whether Chernobyl (Ukraine) 9/11 (NYC), Bhopal (India), or the Tsunami that took ~30,000 lives in Sri Lanka in 2004.

Across these diverse events, each had a precise start, a field of impact that could be defined, and a timeline. Water and wind move at known rates. Fissile nuclear materials decay in predictable ways.

These ‘typical’ crises burst forth as a single events – a tectonic plate shifting under the Indian Ocean, a terrorist attack. And each had an ‘owner’ upon whose desk responsibility for communications (if not also for the event itself) crash-landed.

Not so Covid-19. At different times in different places Covid-19 began, has begun, is beginning or will begin. And the endpoint, as well as the metric to measure it, keeps moving: flattening the curve, getting back to business, declining mortality rates, testing, vaccine, treatment.

Adapted for these circumstances, I thus offer as fundamental the following ten #communication links, with descriptive text below the graphic. 

First and foremost, especially now, start by examining your....

Assumptions: Revisit them all. No exceptions. Review who you and your organization want to be in this moment. Auto assembly line or ventilator shop? Fashion house or PPE manufacturer?

Knowledge: Don’t join the chorus. Know what you know and don’t stretch. That everyone’s life and work has been affected does not make everyone a specialist. Lean hard on your unique and value-added knowledge.

Audience: Move past traditional understanding of your target audience. Know what is different today about the people you need to reach. People are craving connection and structure, trying to navigate in a world turned upside down. Can you help?

Narrative Arc: Don’t fight the dominant virus #narrative unless your platform is equal to the task. Jujitsu-style, draw energy from a discrete element of it and then align with that thread. Identify that singular connection carefully and stick with it. Flip negatives to positives, but don’t distort or dissemble.

Messaging: Announce whether you are offering or asking. Say something that has not already been said or if reinforcing a point be explicit about why you are doing so. Be hyper-clear. Be brief. Make two points rather than four; shorten three paragraphs to one.

Services/Products: Stay off the shoulder so emergency vehicles can pass. Don’t reposition something as essential that isn’t. Announce what's inside – whether on a truck or in an email subject heading. For shipped products, add ‘handling ingredients’ to make clear if packed by hand or machine.

Pathways/Delivery Vehicles: Mental, technical, and operational bandwidth are all reduced. Reconsider the optimal way to deliver your message. Create ‘learn more’ options. Take the time to make a visual really bounce so you can cut text. Be consistent. Be consistent. Be consistent.

Timing: Time has become warped, days merging into one another; we are wobbly and off our stride. Date and time everything, even if evergreen. If you don’t need to push now, don’t. If you can postpone, postpone. Accept that everything will take longer. No exceptions.

Calls-to-action: When feasible, flip asks into offers. Help more; ask less. Lower the bar for participation and contributions not directly linked to the crisis.

Impact: Holding your own in this #crisis is a success. Limit your own and stakeholder expectations.

Assessment: Rethink metrics. Expect web traffic to fluctuate dramatically. Memorialize more than usual; keep timelines. Make it easier for your audience to provide feedback.

One principle, however, remains fundamental. Listening, not talking, remains the bedrock of sound communications.

A Vision From Farm to Fork: What A Strong Regional Supply Chain Looks Like

Following sessions with the Global Alliance for the Future of Food (NYC) and The Emerson Collective (CA), Jonathan J. Halperin addressed the audience at The Chesapeake Food Summit (DC), urging participants to let go of the myth of a “neat, clear, linear supply chain.

"It’s a web, a network, a system.  We all need to think systems. Systems connect silos.”

What They Talked About in Helsinki.

Note: The fiercest competition today is for attention. More than any other, this is the market that counts. Dominate the market for attention and you wield a kind of power rarely seen across business, politics, and culture. As exemplified in the Trump Administration’s dizzying attacks, reality itself is under assault. The institutional cornerstones and conceptual underpinnings of democracy are profoundly at risk. Even as new revelations emerge every day, what we might call “The Helsinki Moment” is instructive. This dispatch thus looks somewhat wryly at change, shock, power, partnership and the limits we often place around our own imagination – of both the future and the past.

Helsinki was not an aberration. Trump is many things. Stupid is not one of them. It is time we stopped being shocked.

Trump and Putin share common goals and values: absolute need for loyalty, disdain for free and fair elections, willingness to use and discard people, and antipathy toward media. As has been well documented, they are also both vengeful, racist, misogynist bullies. They are united in a relentless drive for power amassed in all its forms: financial, institutional, political, and control of natural resources. The goal is clear: engineering the collapse of democratic institutions and societies around the world.

Trump is not so much Putin’s toady or agent as his enthusiastic partner.

The core topic in Helsinki was how well they are doing in this collaboration to bring forward their vision of a world run be authoritarian despots: elected, stable, geniuses as they fancy themselves.

The dust will not settle after Helsinki; and we will not return to the established norms of diplomacy, democracy, and allegiances. Helsinki was, rather, a harbinger of things to come. Trump is not going to now start reading briefing books; he is not going to repair relations with America’s allies of the last 75-years. Those relationships are finished.

Helsinki was intentionally announced publicly yet held privately to send myriad signals and warnings to foes as well as allies, to confidantes as well as would-be challengers. It was intended to and did serve to intimidate. And make no mistake, the reactions were carefully monitored – like political sonar, taking readings, to chart the next move. I spent 17 years working in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Union with major western companies; this is a well-honed technique.

Understanding Putin and Trump as collaborators allows us to bring more clearly into focus the likely discussion points in the Helsinki meeting. On foreign affairs, the Middle East, Syria, Iran and Israel’s regional capabilities were center stage with discussion of who can tolerate what levels of military intervention where; timetables and sequence of military and diplomatic actions; and possible puppets, spokesmen and how to sow division among opposition parties. There was discussion of the need to perhaps instigate an action just provocative enough to warrant a pre-planned response.

Trump was also no doubt cautioned to manage his open disgust for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and to not be too hard on Putin’s all-important Gazprom – the global tentacles of which are essential to Putin’s apparatus.

On trade, aluminum, oil and natural gas figured prominently. Various commitments were made to ensure the ongoing allegiance of oligarchs such as Oleg Deripaska. Putin also pointedly reminded Trump that the global price of oil determines the state of the Russian economy. The stability and vulnerability of stock exchanges was also likely discussed – as these centralized markets are a juicy target. If one aims to shift the concentration of wealth on a global scale, well-timed stock market manipulation can accomplish quite a lot.

In the same vein, intelligence and propaganda was a theme threaded through the entire meeting. Putin shared some of his more refined propaganda techniques and urged Trump to develop a bit more patience -- to reduce his vulnerabilities, to manage some of his impulsivity. But Putin was sure to feed the American president’s ego with praise and admiration. Putin’s ability to read Trump’s body language (crossed arms, upraised eyebrow, tilted head) no doubt helped him find the right combination of ego-stroking and unsettling bluntness. Once a KGB agent, always a KGB agent.

Although not explicitly discussed, there was also clear recognition of the critical need to control data, access communications infrastructure, and manage the media. The combined power of post-Soviet intelligence operations, the porous security safeguards around US social media, and Trump’s power to access government databases was referenced as a key strategic asset of this new collaboration. Satisfaction was expressed at the prospect of a unified Russian/American monitoring, surveillance, and tracking system. With both leaders sharing a common desire to extract revenge against those who cross them, the energy around this unparalled capacity was palpable.

Putin no doubt praised Trump for conducting the various tests, for floating various trial balloons, such as encouraging the killing of journalists, not commenting when it happens, and maintaining ‘plausible deniability’ throughout. The use of ICE as a never-before seen U.S. internal security force was discussed and Putin provided suggestions and guidance to Trump for how to allow other figures to have just enough oversight that they can become targets of blame if things get out of hand. Trump expressed relief that the horrific images of kids in cages had vanished from the pages and screens of American media.

Trump complained mightily to Putin about the American judicial system continuing to be an obstacle in his efforts to rule -- as if a King or a Tsar, by proclamation or tweet. Putin praised for managing Justice Kennedy’s departure, keeping largely unnoticed connection to the critical Duetsche Bank loan by Kennedy’s son when Trump badly needed a billion-dollar cash injection. While the question of Trump pardoning himself was danced around, there was clear acknowledgement by both leaders that it was important to preserve the facade of an independent judiciary. Trump asked Putin if he wasn’t impressed also that the justice department switched direction just this month so that 501(c)4 organizations like the NRA no longer need to reveal donors. A knowing wink was exchanged.

Around guns and violence, they joked about how fun it would be to go hunting or at least to a shooting range, maybe bring some sexy girls, some vodka and beer, and have a little respite from the stress of leadership. But they moved on, speaking of girls; Butina. It was a good ploy, they agreed, to throw her away and see how the various institutions in the US responded, to garner intelligence on how much Mueller really knows. They considered if it would be needed to engineer some kind of quid pro quo personnel trade. Trading a girl who offered sexual favors to gain access in return for protecting Ambassador McFaul would be a delicious way for Trump and Putin to smear the good name of a diplomat – and yet appear that Trump was protecting him. Snowden was also briefly mentioned.

How to manage key assets was discussed extensively. And as part of a designing a pretext for announcing a joint Russian/American intelligence operation, various risk scenarios were reviewed. The pros and cons of creating and planting evidence, or digital footprints that would warrant investigation in Montenegro, or one of the Baltic states or in Ukraine/Crimea was also discussed. What would be the right level of crisis to engineer such that it would not spin out of control but be sufficient to further justify the collaboration?

Trump complained that he was beginning to be uncomfortable with the dance around election manipulation; if the hijacking of the 2016 election actually happened, then it might well be traced to someone ‘other’ than the Russians. Putin signaled empathy and understanding, agreeing that this trope might need to be refreshed as Trump has indeed referenced “other” quite a lot in this context. He promised to have his “boys” at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg look into some new messaging options that might reverberate well in social media.

Plans for hacking the 2018 elections were discussed and Putin thanked Trump for sending the Republican delegation to the Kremlin. Trump sought advice on the November 10th military parade in Washington, coming so soon after the elections on the 6th. Would it be too much for Putin to visit Washington and also view the parade with Trump? To what extent should Trump explicitly call for his base of armed supporters to descend on Washington to celebrate the mid-terms and militarize the Capitol? Acknowledging that this might be too “Soviet-like,” they agreed to wait a bit before deciding.

Near the end of the extended private meeting, Putin asked after Trump’s children and Melania’s health. With his arm a little too tightly around Trump’s shoulder, and in rather good English, Putin repeated his past reassurance; ‘I have no plan, absolutely no plan, to let the media know that we really did hack the election. No plans whatsoever.’

And thus, he reminded Trump that the compromising material he has is not sexual but existential. Putin can declare Trump a ‘loser.’

Jonathan J. Halperin managed a strategy and communications company in the Soviet Union and former Soviet Union for 17 years.

Markers of Corporate Purpose, Part II

Purpose seems to be catching fire.  Empowered by yet another horrendous school massacre, students from Parkland have changed the American conversation in a momentous way.  The impact ranges far beyond the overdue debate on controlling assault weapons in the United States. 

Companies once seemingly isolated from the issue of guns are being swept into an already heated discussion of corporate purpose.

• Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta, grabbed the headlines recently with his assertion that “…our values are not for sale,” after the Georgia State Legislature showed its values by yanking a tax-break for Atlanta-based Delta after the airline succumbed to pressure and cancelled a group travel discount it had offered NRA members.

• Larry Fink, Blackrock CEO, earlier wrote a letter that earned him kudos for championing a view that would not long age have been generously dismissed as quirky: “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

• And not to be left out, CEO André Calantzopoulos, head of Phillip Morris, the company that once epitomized corporate malfeasance, announced a plan for the company to go “smoke free: …we have a duty to our business that we ensure we have a viable business going forward, so we’re investing in alternatives so we provide a future for them, as well.”

In the first blog of this series I shared some views on how companies are finding competitive advantage in purpose.  This is not a passing fad.  It has potency but not because big organizations are getting on a bandwagon.  People, not organizations, are driving this. 

In purpose we find meaning; in meaning we find ourselves.

Let’s look carefully at the three statements above. The last is perhaps the oddest.  The comparison of Philip Morris to Patagonia in the attached article from Sustainable Brands is startling.  I imagine finding these two companies in the same bucket has the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, either laughing or horrified – or both.  Patagonia has walked the talk of being a purpose driven company since Chouinard begin making chocks and surfboards in 1973.  Despite growth and expansion into mainstream apparel markets, Patagonia has continued to align its products and manufacturing, marketing communications, activism, and policy positions around an exacting and exemplary mission:

Build the best product,
cause no unnecessary harm,
use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. 

Patagonia has also been a leader in the BCorp movement, a shift in structure that enables corporations to put purpose and profit on a level playing field.  (For further discussion of benefit corporations see the first installment in this series.)

On the other hand, for well-on a century PMI has been a global leader in producing “cancer sticks,” i.e. cigarettes.  Its mission couldn’t be more different:

to own and develop financially disciplined businesses
that are leaders in responsibly providing adult tobacco and wine consumers
with superior branded products.

Aside from the fact that it seems to have been written by a linguistic contortionist, it speaks not at all to social purpose, gives only a passing nod to being responsible, and makes clear the core purpose remains exactly what Larry Fink from BlackRock decries in his letter to corporate CEOs

Further exploration of Phillip Morris purpose leads only deeper into the circular double-speak.  While boasting that it is “Designing a Smoke-Free Future,” the company “operate[s] 46 production facilities in 32 different countries and produce[s] over 800 billion cigarettes each year.”  Phillip Morris is Designing a Smoke-Free Future” the same way Exxon-Mobil is building an energy future devoid of fossil fuels – as slowly as possible, only when under extreme pressure to do so, and in order to maximize near-term ROI for shareholders regardless of the long-term consequences.

Before assessing the BlackRock and Delta letters more closely, let’s map what a company needs to do to not just talk about but actually demonstrate purpose – and it is, after all, in the demonstration that leaders accrue enduring benefits to brand, team, stakeholders and shareholders. Building on terrific work done by Generation IM with HBS and KKS, here our ten Markers of Corporate Purpose™ that we use to measure whether a company has or is developing a purpose beyond profit.

1. People: staffing structure, benefits, wages, inclusion, training

2. Resources: finance and human capital

3. Culture: diversity, access, transparency

4. Authenticity & Trust: Stakeholder engagement, regulatory and legal

5. Trade-offs: patterns of decision-making

6. Governance: structure, board, collaborations

7. Advocacy: policy positions, campaign contributions

8. Communications: lobbying, advertising, marketing, reports

9. Alignment: products, purpose, operations, leadership

10. Sustainability: targets, integration, reporting

Like more commonly referenced genetic markers, these Markers of Corporate Purpose™ (MCP) are not promises of what will happen but rather indicators of propensity.  Taken together, however, they offer a benchmarking tool for assessing purpose.

More on our Markers of Corporate Purpose™ in the forthcoming, third blog of this series.

So, how does Delta stack-up on these markers for purpose?  While Ed Bastian has been widely praised for his statement that “…our values are not for sale”, has that praise been earned or simply bestowed on him because of the understandable heat in the post-Parkland moment?  Reading all of his short letter gives me pause, especially around MCP #4 and #7. While “Delta’s intent was to remain neutral, some elected officials in Georgia tied our decision to a pending jet fuel tax exemption, threatening to eliminate it unless we reversed course. Our decision was not made for economic gain and our values are not for sale. We are in the process of a review to end group discounts for any group of a politically divisive nature.”

It seems Delta was not really leaning forward into a courageous moral stand at all. But rather it was cornered into having to defend its decision vis-à-vis the NRA due to the actions of the radical right wing in the Georgia, Republican-controlled legislature.  And Bastian back-pedals further by placing the NRA on equal footing with other groups of a “politically divisive nature.”  This is corporate hypocrisy at its worst in that the entire ‘moment’ is about the sui generis nature of the NRA.  Its fanatical financial and political advocacy of a civilians right to possess weapons designed for use by the military is categorically unlike any other. He then goes on to further pander to the NRA, kowtowing before the 2nd Amendment:

And we are supporters of the 2nd Amendment(link is external),
just as we embrace the entire Constitution of the United States.

As indicated in the link to the NRA’s own website, the 2nd Amendment, of course, says nothing about assault weapons and conveys no absolute right to own guns, clearly predicating that right on the need to “form a well-regulated militia.”

While it has garnered some short-term publicity benefits from a nice turn of phrase, Delta has also set itself up to fall well below the ambitious bar it has now set for itself in terms of living its values.  Delta’s Rule of The Road articulate a solid set of values; the potential for leadership and purpose is there – as yet untapped.

By contrast, Larry Fink’s letter is a powerful statement: precise, blunt, and sweeping in its call for a fundamental rethink of the very core of what business is about in the 21st century.  As a letter I give it high marks indeed:

"…a company’s ability to manage environmental, social, and governance matters demonstrates the leadership and good governance that is so essential to sustainable growth, which is why we are increasingly integrating these issues into our investment process.”

How quickly and openly that integrating happens is the question before Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, with $6.288 trillion AUM.  Is internal guidance being re-written so buy-side analysts factor purpose into their day-to-day decisions? Is compensation being reworked to reward the values lauded in the letter?

How this unfolds will tell the tale of whether Blackrock is only advising others or also going to walk its own talk.  As Yvon Chouinard might have it, is Larry Fink just paddling or actually surfing?

Phones and Nuclear Power: The Network Effect Collides with the Tragedy of the Commons

The technologies we embrace reflect social and business values. But whether they embody our personal values is another question entirely. Contrary to decades of myth-making about the inherent neutrality of technology – it is only a question of how we use it – values are embedded in many technologies, reinforcing some values while undermining others.

This realization is awkward. It challenges the core idea that technology is a benign force that springs freely from the minds of scientists and engineers and is an inherent element in the steady march of social advancement and progress for all.

While the evolving Facebook debacle puts this in the public eye today, I had the opportunity some years back at the Aspen Ideas Festival to engage with Eric Schmidt (the then CEO of Google) about this question of technology and values. After claiming that key functions of our cell phones operate “by their nature,” he backed away graciously from this its-only-a-neutral-tool perspective. But his instinctive reliance on that claim reveals an all too common tendency among purveyors of technology; we just build the tools, how they are used is someone else’s problem.

(For commentary on this discussion, along with video of the entire panel discussion and Q & A session from the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival Channel, please see my blog Autonomous Technology.)

That the tech community still largely claims it can ignore the social consequences that attend the appropriate and intended use of its devices is stunning. We are in an age when corporate social responsibility, the circular economy, and supply chain management are expanding “cradle to cradle” responsibility. But leaders in the technology sector are drawing from the playbooks of the tobacco and firearms companies; it's the users not the technologies themselves creating negative consequences.

The warning signs are everywhere for tech leaders who can see them.

How about nuclear power? Is this a neutral technology or is there something inherent in the technology itself that ineluctably pulls us in a certain direction? Whether in North Korea or North America, the use of nuclear materials demands, without exception and regardless of the intended use, a high level of secrecy and security. From uranium mining through to nuclear waste it demands security perimeters, special handling, and so forth. Whether you like concentrated nuclear or prefer distributed solar, the values embedded in the two technologies are profoundly different.

Before we opine on how unfair it is to compare the phone to nuclear power, and before we appeal to the democratizing impact of smart-phones and social media, let us please remember that Facebook was conceived of in 2004 as a means of ranking babes at Harvard. The baby-faced depiction of it as a neutral, social platform that just lets people connect seems to be under assault as Facebook squirms in social quicksand made up in equal parts of hubris, duplicity, and market power.

There is a deeper new reality lurking beneath questions of privacy, net neutrality, data-sharing, and how we have become accustomed to accepting “free” services with impenetrable terms of use. There is no longer a meaningful distinction between content providers, advertisers, and the architects of distribution systems. The neat distinctions and firewalls between “the pipe,” platforms, and producers of content have given way to a wickedly complex web (sorry!) of interlinked technologies.

We are in a moment of historic reckoning that is playing out in the most personal places. It can be heard in dinner table arguments about phone usage; in school yards filled with kids looking at screens; in therapy office discussions of rising anxiety and loss of emotional connection; in medical offices and skyrocketing diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD); in bedroom conflicts about where to put the phone.

But this moment also signals a profound conceptual clash between “The Network Effect” and “The Tragedy of The Commons.” The network effect speaks to one reality we all experience. The value of a network is closely related to how many people are in it; each new additional member adds value to the whole. Facebook as a tool limited to Harvard undergraduates was not so interesting. Add another school, and then another and another and after a few million people the network effect is clear.

Powerfully captured by Garret Hardin in his masterful essay from 1968, The Tragedy of the Commons explains what happens when too many people overwhelm a resource on which they all depend. When individual farmers use a common and limited grazing space for their herds everyone benefits when there is an equilibrium between the space and the number of animals. But if unbridled self-interest leads one farmer to enlarge his herd, thus consuming more of the commons, other farmers will be drawn to do the same thing. In the ensuing tragedy the commons is degraded and eventually destroyed. Private choices, public consequences.

Expanding the social media “commons” through the power of the network effect seems to have no limit. No technical limit, perhaps. But it is we, humans, who represent the limit. How much technology can the human commons absorb and still survive? No one wants to go back to living in caves. That is not the point. This is not a Luddite argument about smashing machines. But can we as a species manage our appetite for technology such that we don’t push past our own human carrying capacity?

Our fate may be in our hands. Literally.

A Fair Chance at Work: Employment Pathways for Excluded Individuals

A staggering 70 million Americans have a criminal record. Despite a tightening labor market, this forecloses for them - by rule or by discrimination - most employment opportunities, even though stable work is crucial to avoiding recidivism. Research from NELP suggests that removing barriers to employment for people with criminal records has been successful in numerous ways.To address this, several fair chance hiring initiatives have emerged, such as ban-the-box.

And previously incarcerated individuals are but one group that is traditionally excluded from employment opportunities: think of people experiencing homelessness or with language barriers.

An especially interesting model to counter exclusion is Open Hiring: the practice of filling jobs without judging applicants or asking any questions. Open Hiring creates mainstream work opportunities and supports individuals in succeeding at those jobs.

Exclusion from employment opportunities touches racial justice, criminal justice reform issues, and human capital management, and investors can play a role.

In this webinar Transform Finance Investor Network presents the Open Hiring model pioneered by Greyston (famous for supplying brownies to Unilever's Ben & Jerry's) over the last 35 years. We will hear from Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs; and Mike Brady, Greyston CEO. Greyston is now looking to fund a new initiative to make Open Hiring a universal practice and support other companies in its adoption

Authenticity is the business principle for 2018

Jonathan Halperin. Founder & President, Designing Our Future:

“As the political battle worsens in 2018 in the U.S., and as facts and reality come under further assault, authenticity is the business principle for 2018. Companies that view CSR as window-dressing or a short-term marketing campaign will lose customers and market share to companies authentically embedding purpose into culture, operations, products/services, KPIs and structure.”

(For full article, clink on image link below.)

The Leading Good Podcast: Rod Arnold hosts Jonathan Halperin

Rod Arnold hosts Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs for Greyston. Greyston has been changing lives for 35 years through radical inclusion. A pioneering social enterprise, Greyston practices Open Hiring™ – providing jobs to individuals who face barriers to employment – in its world-class bakery and supports its employees and community members with a range of community programs.

On Purpose and Profit

Much has been written since Peter Drucker observed that “profit is not the purpose of business, but rather the test of its validity.” Yet, many corporate leaders still wonder both what purpose looks like operationally and whether it really generates value.  Recently, a host of firms have sought to unpack this challenge: from E&Y(link is external) and Accenture to Sustainable Brands, Conscious Capitalism, Ogilvy, and the Arthur W. Page Society.

For some executives, the sustainability agenda and its cousin, corporate social responsibility, remain challenges.  For others, carbon disclosure remains problematic.  But if Unilever CEO Paul Polman is right that purpose-driven brands within Unilever’s $61 billion ecosystem are growing “50% faster than the rest,” then brand managers, board members, investors and executives all need to quickly get their heads around this next phase of corporate evolution.

To advance the conversation, let’s first take a quick look in the rear-view mirror to understand how we arrived where we are today.

• In 1602 the Dutch East India company was chartered and granted a trading monopoly across a vast area of the Indian Ocean and southern Africa.

• In 1811 New York State passed the first statute facilitating the formation of limited liability manufacturing operations, a landmark event in defining corporate form.

• In 1889 Andrew Carnegie published “Gospel of Wealth,” imploring his wealthiest peers to share their wealth to improve society – a precursor to the 2010 Giving Pledge launched by Bill Gates and others at the urging of Warren Buffett.

• Fast forward to 2012 and Greyston Social Enterprise becomes the first “benefit corporation” to be registered in New York State, identifying Open Hiring™ as the social mission that it would pursue on par with its fiduciary responsibilities.

While humans have been bartering and trading for a very long time, corporate form as we know it today is relatively new.  And the current way we practice philanthropy in the United States is also a modern construct.  The typical pattern involves, first, the accumulation of great wealth through commerce and then some of that wealth being returned to society to meet various social needs.

It is this fundamental sequencing – extraction of profits followed by giving back – that is challenged by purpose-driven corporations.  In the case of Greyston, the scale of profit-taking is moderated by balancing the necessity to not only generate profits but to also achieve a social purpose at the same time.  Benefit corporations bring purpose inside the corporation, thus fundamentally changing its culture.

Greyston’s two-part mission is to create thriving communities and produce delicious brownies. To this end, it operates a world-class bakery in Yonkers, NY, baking 35,000 lbs. of brownies a day for Ben & Jerry’s, and for sale in retail markets.  The kicker is that the Greyston bakery production line is staffed entirely of people brought into the mainstream economy through Open Hiring™.  Anyone who wants a job is offered the opportunity to experience the dignity of work at Greyston: no questions asked, no resumes, no references, no background checks. (Please see this link for more on our work with Greyston).

In codifying this duality of profit and purpose as equally important we enter an entirely new stage of corporate evolution.  Purpose is where self-interest and service meet.    Survival of the fittest, in the jungle, and profit maximization, in competitive markets, have in common what Chris Houston identifies as the fatal flaw of panarchy.   In his provocative book, For Goodness Sake (with Jordan Pinches), Houston extrapolates from systems analysis and ecology to set forth the panarchy principle: any system designed exclusively to optimize just one variable is self-limiting precisely because single variable optimization eventually destabilizes the system.

BCorps are among a few new forms of corporate structure designed to transform business from the inside, rather than through external regulation. These new corporate forms are early efforts to rewrite the rules and codify the opportunities and obligations for corporations to create value for everyone, beyond returns for shareholders. Tempering short-term profit maximizing behavior with the creation of long-term social value benefits may enable capitalism to avoid panarchy.

Such mission-drive corporations now operate in the US across virtually all sectors of the economy – from brownies to banking.  The Co-CEO of Beneficial State Bank, Kat Taylor captured the importance of this evolution in her remarks congratulating Greyston on its 35-year history as a purpose-driven commercial bakery: “I know there’s this popular notion that somehow the capital markets were put here by some cosmic force, and they’re perfect and universal and they always produce the right outcomes.  But they’re actually just a series of rules that we human beings wrote….”

While legal license to operate is still granted through government agencies (as it was in 1602), the more important and broader issue for companies today is around social license to operate.  When the purpose and behavior of a corporation is fundamentally extraction – mining the environment, harvesting time and talent from employees, maximizing profit over all else, squeezing suppliers and vendors – then it is not surprising that over time discontent bubbles forth.  When the richest 10% of the population own 88% of global assets (according to Credit Suisse), the system spawns the seeds of its own destruction.

Minimal licensing requirements, social and regulatory, will not going to forestall short-term profit taking or panarchy.  Licensing is, after all, the low bar of corporate behavior.  Rules requiring placards in elevators, anti-discrimination posters in break rooms, safety codes on wet floors are the absolute minimum.  “Do no harm” may be a useful guide for doctors, but does not take a business very far forward in pursuit of higher social purpose.

Beyond licensing and compliance, and recognizing that competition is fierce, how then are corporations finding competitive advantage in purpose – and simultaneously redefining what it means to be a business? Watch this space.

Our Work with Greyston...

A video explanation of the Greyston story with colleagues Dion Drew and Sunitha Malieckal

When we first started working with Greyston a few years back, its history was rich and its story powerful. Greyston is New York's first registered benefit corporation, a hybrid social enterprise, and a world-class bakery. Pioneers of the Open Hiring™ practice invented in 1982, Greyston had taken this idea from Bernie Glassman, an engineer turned Buddhist Zen master, and developed a close relationship with Ben & Jerry’s. So close that Greyston now bakes 35,000 lbs. of brownies every day to go into iconic ice cream flavors like Chocolate Fudge Brownie.

The idea was radical and simple. Everyone who wants a job should have the opportunity to experience the dignity of work, no questions asked.

I take great pride and pleasure in helping lead the transformation of Greyston from being a fabulous but niche brownie company in Yonkers to a global thought leader in human capital management.  We now describe Open Hiring™ as “investing to bring people in rather than spending to keep people out.”  Around that core brand proposition, we’ve helped design the Center for Open Hiring at Greyston, a collaborative and experiential learning space for early adopters, and recently framed the Greyston 35th Anniversary Gala as a celebration of “business innovation and social inclusion,” honoring Ben and Jerry.  Mental frameworks are not enough to change the world, but how we think often expands or narrows our sense of what is possible – and contributes enormously to brand value and marketing power.

As captured in “Greyston Social Enterprise--Using Inclusion to Generate Profits and Social Justice,” the case for Open Hiring™ is now more compelling than ever. My year-end podcast with Leading Good, in collaboration with the Social Enterprise Alliance, also captures the essence of Open Hiring and its scalability.

Embedded links and images on this page provide some examples of the external facing work we have done in collaboration with Greyston to help envision, shape, design and set in motion its next 35-years. In addition to myriad presentations on Open Hiring™ and purpose-driven companies, our work also includes:

• Designing strategic partnerships with Conscious Capitalism, Beneficial State Bank(link is external), Conscious Company Media, NYU Center for Sustainable Business at The Stern School, CleanCraft, and The Impact Finance Center;

• Securing, planning, conducting and post-production of video interviews with Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, Jostein Solheim, CEO of Ben & Jerry’s and Kat Taylor, Co-CEO of Beneficial State Bank; and

• Crafting a first-person narrative video of baker Dion Drew's story, using existing footage.

For more information please see Greyston’s new website or contact Jonathan J. Halperin either at Greyston (914-376-3900 x-224) or at Designing Our Future (301-951-0229).

Selected Presentations and Events

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Jonathan J. Halperin keynotes at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit
Leaders, change agents and entrepreneurs from the business, academic, nonprofit and government sectors gather at the Fourth Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit

Hosted by the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit
and the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University
(Cleveland, Ohio,  June 14-16, 2017)
Selected Media Coverage: Global Forum Wrap-Up by Chris Laszlo (Humanity's Team, July 19, 2017)

"Smart on Crime" Innovations Conference at John Jay College
(New York, NY, October 10-11, 2017)

Plenary Presentation: Greyston Bakery and Open Hiring
Jonathan J. Halperin gives Plenary Presentation at PRME Regional Meeting Agenda
College of Business and Economics, University of Guelph
(Guelph, Ontario October 19, 2017)

Business Doing Good--Jonathan Halperin "Open Hiring at Greyston Bakery and Beyond"
Conference Call sponsored by Good Cities
(October 19, 2017)

The Impact of Diversity, Inclusion & Equity in the Workplace
Jonathan J. Halperin joins a panel to offer insights on what being an inclusive company means, why it matters and what you can do to bring diversity to your organization.
(Washington, DC, May 15, 2017)

Selected Articles and Interviews

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Rod Arnold hosts Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs for Greyston. Greyston has been changing lives for 35 years through radical inclusion. A pioneering social enterprise, Greyston practices Open Hiring™ – providing jobs to individuals who face barriers to employment – in its world-class bakery and supports its employees and community members with a range of community programs. (December 23, 2017)

Capitol Pressroom, WCNY, New York, NY
Jonathan J. Halperin
(August, 1, 2017)

Once convicted criminals served their time in prison, another kind of sentence starts when many can’t find work after their sentence. Governor Cuomo’s Work for Success Employer Pledge encourages employers to hire those once considered unhireable. According to the administration, “moving these individuals into the workforce helps keep New Yorkers safe.” If the Greyston bakery in Yonkers is any indication, the program works. Greyston provides all the brownies for the ice cream made by Ben & Jerry’s. They have employed something called “Open Hiring” for the last 30 years. Jonathan J. Halperin, the head of External Affairs at Greyston shared the story.

Greyston Social Enterprise--Using Inclusion to Generate Profits and Social Justice
The Successful and Achievable Open Hiring Model
Today is the day we each need to decide: Do we want a society that is more inclusive or more exclusive?
That is the question asked and answered by this small bakery with a great, big mission.
April 25, 2017, BtheChange
(Mike Brady, Chief Executive Officer & Jonathan J. Halperin, Head of External Affairs)

The Sustainability Trajectory
(Jonathan J. Halperin, May 13, 2014)
Transitioning to expanded role as “engine for change” in sustainability, environment, and energy funding,
The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation invites external thought leaders to blog on their website.

Selected Media Coverage

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Ben & Jerry's Supplier Greyston Bakery is Earning Brownie Points for Their Open-Hiring Policy
The Yonkers business plans to export its open-hiring practice across the US.
'Open Hiring has bottom line benefits'
Jonathan Halperin in Westchester Magazine, October 2017

How Hiring the Formerly Incarcerated Helps Rebuild Lives--and CommunitiesThe Crime Report, October 11, 2017

This New York Bakery Thrives by Hiring Anyone Who Wants to Work, No Questions Asked.
Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in Entrepreneur (August 18, 2017)

Brownie-Makers Wanted, No Application Needed
Urging leaders to take risks and think big at Weatherhead School
Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in beyond (June 21, 2017)

Ben & Jerry’s Supplier Greyston Bakery is Earning Brownie Points for Their Open-Hiring Policy

Westchester Magazine, October 2017

(Full text below.)

The Yonkers business plans to export its open-hiring practices across the US.

From decadent cheesecakes and creamy cannoli to rich almond tortes and buttery muffins, most bakeries are best known for their confections. But Greyston Bakery has more to offer the community than just the iconic brownies that go into every container of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream.

The Yonkers company has also earned a stellar reputation as a social enterprise, adopting an open-hiring policy in the establishment of its workforce. At Greyston, things like work history, criminal record, credit score, or homelessness just don’t matter.

“If someone wants a job [here], they put their name and cell number on a list,” explains Jonathan Halperin, head of External Affairs, about the policy, which has been in place for 35 years and accounts for 100 active positions at the company. “When they’re the next name on the list, they have a job. We hire people without asking any questions.”

But don’t think for a moment that Greyston’s sense of benevolence comes at the expense of either quality or good business. Open hiring has bottom-line benefits: “It drives brand value,” Halperin says, lowers onboarding costs, and leads to higher-than-average retention rates.

Now, Greyston is looking to export their open-hiring model nationwide. “We can’t change the world at the pace we want, even by quadrupling brownie production,” Halperin explains.

So, in 2018, the Greyston team is launching The Center for Open Hiring at Greyston in Yonkers, which will provide consulting, research, education, and toolkits to other companies. “[It’s] designed to refine, promote, and share open hiring with businesses across the country,” Halperin says, adding that the best-suited companies are “those with entry-level manual-labor jobs where skills can be reasonably, quickly acquired.”

He also cautions that interested companies must be patient and open-minded. “Change can be unsettling,” Halperin says. “Because it is a new idea for many, [open hiring] requires commitment and persistence.”

Marsha Gordon, president and CEO of the Business Council of Westchester, says she’s not aware of any other organizations in Westchester practicing open hiring. Still, she’s intrigued. “We do see a lot of interest in exploring new ways to access talent, especially in today’s economy, which is facing a labor shortage,” Gordon notes.

At the end of the day, says Halperin, “People increasingly want to work at a place that is accomplishing something other than making a product.”

By Kevin Zawacki

"Bottom line, fair chance hiring is about the dignity of work."

Plenary Presentation: Greyston Bakery and Open Hiring

Businesses Doing Good (Online Registration)

Businesses Doing Good -- Jonathan Halperin "Open Hiring at Greyston Bakery and Beyond"

Make it stand out

Event to be held at the following time and date:

Thursday, October 19, 2017 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (CDT)

From Sustainable to Flourishing Businesses and Communities

Today businesses are going beyond "sustainability" which reduces the ecological footprint, to "doing good" in the communities where they are based and in places where they offer their products or services. This is a movement toward flourishing businesses and communities.

This series of conference calls on the third Thursday of each month at 10 a.m. Central Time lifts up examples of business as an agent of community benefit. Dr. Glenn Barth, our host, will interview the guest in the first half of each conference call and then open the lines for callers to ask questions in the second half of these highly interactive one hour calls. 

Conference Call Number and PIN will be provided in Registration Confirmation.

Our guest on the October 19 Conference Call is Jonathan Halperin of Greyston Bakery. The interview topic is "Open Hiring at Greyston Bakery and Beyond". 

Greyston Bakery has been working at the intersection of social inclusion and business innovation for 35 years. Open Hiring is its proven and transformative business practice now being adopted by small as well as multinational companies.Today, Greyston produces 35,000 lbs. of brownies every day for Ben & Jerry’s.

JONATHAN HALPERIN

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Jonathan Halperin serves as the Head of External Affairs at Greyston—with responsibility for communications, development and digital assets. He is founder and President of Designing Sustainability, a strategy consultancy.  He has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit and commercial organizations such as SustainAbility, Ltd., Resources for the Future, and FYI Resources for a Changing World.

In collaboration with international executives, nonprofit leaders, public officials and creative media producers he designs and executes projects to drive systemic changes in thinking and behavior.  Recent projects include research and design of communications on agricultural risk with The World Bank, creation of SNAPAlumni.org with Participant Media to dispel myths about hunger in America, and design of TeachFood! at Mundo Verde PCS which brings celebrity chefs to an inner city school in Washington, DC.

He serves as a trusted source for journalists, a regular public speaker, meeting facilitator, panel moderator, writer and diplomatically disruptive provocateur.  He is a graduate of Duke University and lives with his two young children near Washington, DC.

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Upcoming Interviews in the Businesses Doing Good series:

November 16: Pablo Guevara of Epoch Pi in Cleveland on the topic of "Purposeful Investing."

December 21: Guest in process of responding.

January 18: Paul Turek and Brett Struwe of Caribou Coffee on the topic of "Rainforest Alliance Certification."

Share this event on Facebook and Twitter

We hope you can make it! Glenn Barth, GoodCities GoodCities

The Capitol Pressroom: A WCNY Radio Production

This New York Bakery Thrives by Hiring Anyone Who Wants to Work, No Questions Asked.

Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in Entrepreneur (August 18, 2017)

Bakery Thrives by Hiring Anyone Who Wants to Work, No Questions Asked.

Full-text of the article appears below.
Kira Halevy - Guest Writer

Dion Drew was reluctantly but seriously considering returning to the drug trade -- a life that had landed him in prison for four years in New York. Nine months had passed since his release, and despite his best efforts, he couldn’t find honest work. At every turn, employers, leery of his felony record and criminal past, had turned him down for job opportunities.

Then the phone rang. It was Greyston Bakery.

A few days earlier, Drew had put his name on a list at the small, Yonkers, N.Y.-based company, which embraces a unique “open hiring” model. Anyone of legal working age can get a job at the bakery, regardless of his or her experience or background. No questions asked. No resume needed. Applicants simply have to put their name on a list and wait for a job to become available.

“After I applied, it took about three to four days for them to give me a call back, which was tremendous,” Drew says. “I was riding around with a friend and I was ready to start selling drugs again, to be honest with you. I got that beautiful call, and it’s been glorious ever since.”

One promotion after another, Drew has worked his way up into a management role at Greyston. He’s able to provide for his family without ever again flirting with the wrong side of the law.

“Now I’m able to take care and provide for myself on my own,” said Drew, who has since become a father, as well. “I have a beautiful daughter, I have started a family since I’ve been at Greyston, and I’m able to take care of them -- legally,” he says.

Located just outside New York City, Greyston is best known for its delicious brownies, 35,000 fragrant pounds of which its workers bake, cool, cut and package every day. The sweet, fudgy treats are sold online and at Whole Foods Market grocery stores throughout the country.

You may have even tried them without knowing it, as Greyston’s delicious brownies can also be found crushed up and folded into Ben & Jerry’s popular Half-Baked and Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream flavors.

Beyond Greyston’s superb baked goods, the for-profit B Corporation heralds a larger mission through its groundbreaking open hiring model. Core to its social stewardship values, the community-focused company affords eager, would-be workers from all walks of life -- including ex-cons like Drew, the homeless, the long-term unemployed and veterans -- jobs, paychecks and hope for a better future.

“You don’t need no resumes. You don’t get asked questions. You don’t need to know anything about working,” Drew says. “You just need to come here and show that you want to work.”

Like the chocolaty confections that abound at Greyston (4 million pounds of them are baked there annually), Drew’s story has a sweet ending. With gratitude and tears in his eyes, he’s unafraid to express his emotion as he shares his story, something he often does at conferences and other events, including during a recent TED Talk.

Imbued with the independence his position at the bakery has provided, Drew speaks with joy about his young daughter and the ability to properly care for her after leaving behind a life of crime in favor of honest work and a reliable income at Greyston. He beams with pride at having the opportunity to support himself and his loved ones legally.

Inspiring stories like Drew’s -- and Greyston’s unique approach to hiring that make them possible -- show how business owners, community leaders and local officials can work together to everyone’s benefit, potentially reversing generations of unemployment and poverty.

That sweeping social impact shines through in the bakery’s mission.

As longtime Greyston spokesperson Jonathan Halperin notes, “We don’t hire people to bake brownies; we bake brownies to hire people.”

“We create job opportunities for everyone who’s willing to work, regardless of their background, regardless of their prior criminal record,” he says. “That model creates an opportunity for people who have often been excluded to become a part of the mainstream fabric of economic and cultural life in this country.”

Beyond giving anyone who’s willing to work a job, Greyston bakes in the right infrastructure to make its distinctive open hiring model work in practice.

“I wouldn’t have been able to come back to work without the option of having daycare through Greyston,” says bakery account manager Sunitha Malieckal. “What is amazing about Greyston is that when they try to provide these add-on services, it becomes so much more than just a job.

“I have a lot of friends still in jail, I have a lot of friends that are still selling drugs, I have a lot of friends who died at a young age, and I’m tired of that,” he says, adding: “You’re changing a person’s life by helping them get a job.”

Watch the video above to get a glimpse inside the bustling Greyston Bakery facility in New York and to hear from the folks who’ve benefited from open hiring.

Brownie-Makers Wanted, No Application Needed

Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in beyond (June 21, 2017)

Brownie-Makers Wanted, No Application Needed

Full-text of the article appears below.

There are no job applications at Greyston Bakery. No background screenings, no interviews, no reference checks. Instead, getting a job at this 35-year-old bakery in Yonkers, New York, requires nothing more than a name and a phone number on a no-frills list. When a job comes up, the next person in line gets a call. No questions asked. 

“We don’t hire people to make brownies,” said Jonathan Halperin, the bakery’s head of external affairs and founder of consulting firm Designing Sustainability. “We make brownies to hire people.”

It’s called open hiring, and it holds the promise of providing equal access to employment for all, including those often excluded from the job market like formerly incarcerated individuals, immigrants and refugees. Speaking to an audience at this month’s Fourth Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, Halperin described how this “hybrid social enterprise” has operated an open hiring model since its 1982 founding by Bernie Glassman, a former aeronautical engineer who became a Buddhist monk. The company is currently led by CEO and president Mike Brady. 

“As businesspeople, that means that we are people doing business,” Halperin said. “But the people part does have to come first. Having a purpose is essential for us in so many ways. At a species level, we are wired to create, to make, to build.”

Greyston was the first certified Benefit Corporation (B Corp) in the state of New York in 2008, and in 2017 received 138 out of 200 on its impact assessment report, well above the average score of 80 and qualifying it as a “Best for the World” honoree. The company churns out 35,000 pounds of brownies a day that supply Ben & Jerry’s — where you’ll find Greyston’s brownies in the Chocolate Fudge Brownie and other ice cream blends — and Whole Foods. 

The next step in Greyston’s evolution, said Halperin, is “moving from a place-based company to a practice-based company.” It’s fostered a community around the business that includes low-income housing, an early learning center, workforce development programs, internships and a community garden. “It’s where business innovation and social inclusion come together,” he said. 

Now the company is creating a Center for Open Hiring, which it describes as a “collaborative learning space facilitating the widespread adoption of Open Hiring and supporting innovation in the delivery of community programs for employees and neighbors,” as well as an Association for Open Hiring to set standards and promote best practices in the field.

Halperin pointed to the example of Dion Drew, a Greyston Bakery trainer who regularly speaks about his experience there. Drew grew up in the projects, turning to the streets to make ends meet and spending his years in and out of prison from the age of 17. After his last release, he searched for a job, but he was constantly turned away because of his criminal record. Now six years into his employment at Greyston, Dion spreads the word whenever he has an opportunity that the job saved his life.

“If Dion can do what he has as a man,” Halperin challenged the audience, “think of what we can do as business leaders.”

- Jennifer Keirn

Jonathan J. Halperin Keynotes at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit

Leaders, change agents and entrepreneurs from the business, academic, nonprofit and government sectors gather June 14-16 at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.  (And artists who captured the presentations with creativity and accuracy.)

Greyston Social Enterprise — Using Inclusion to Generate Profits and Social Justice

The Successful and Achievable Open Hiring Model

Today is the day we each need to decide: Do we want a society that is more inclusive or more exclusive? That is the question asked and answered by this small bakery with a great, big mission. (By Mike Brady, Chief Executive Officer & Jonathan J. Halperin, Head of External Affairs)

April 25, 2017, BtheChange

Today is the day we each need to decide: Do we want a society that is more inclusive or more exclusive? That is the question. From Boston harbor to the Statue of Liberty, from the Gateway Arch to the Mexican border, we believe the arc of history bends toward inclusion, not exclusion. It is inclusion that has made our nation great.

Access and mobility, the freedom to chase a dream, the urge to innovate, the opportunity to take risks in order to succeed, the right to become part of the American tapestry; this is the America that we celebrate every single day at Greyston. At Greyston, inclusion is the core of our Open Hiring Model. Open Hiring creates opportunities for everyone: women, men, people of color, people of all faiths and sexual orientations, immigrants and refugees, the economically disadvantaged, the formerly incarcerated and all others who may have been excluded — blocked from contributing to the health and strength of our society. Because no one willing to work should be denied the dignity of a job.

Open Hiring is not a handout or give away. It is built on mutual respect, opportunity, a fair chance. It is about communities, jobs, families. It is about responsibility, hard work, commitment, achievement, and the intrinsic worth of every human being. And we’ve been doing it for 34 years. What began as a modest bakery on the edge of New York City with the moniker that “we don’t hire people to bake brownies, we bake brownies to hire people,” has emerged today as a globally recognized brand with an innovative business model and value proposition. We are proud to be a mission-driven social enterprise and certified B Corp, proud to be based in Yonkers, proud to be New York state’s first registered benefit corporation, and proud to be part of Unilever’s global business ecosystem. We are proud of what we have done with Open Hiring.

Open Hiring is not just a job, but a pathway forward — providing career training and life skills. Jobs are fundamental and yet insufficient. Open Hiring connects jobs to families and childcare — so parents can work to support their families. Open Hiring supports parks, gardens, and healthy eating. Open Hiring generates community housing and economic development. All from baking brownies — and a mission to use business as a force for god. What we do is first and foremost about people — and about systems, changing and creating new systems that meet social, environmental, and financial needs. It upends traditional hiring practices that focus on spending to screen people out and instead makes an investment to include people and support their success.

We envision a world where responsible businesses collaborate with communities to create inclusive economies. We envision a world where businesses compete to attract and retain citizens who have done their time and want to start a new life. We envision a world where business assets are deployed more effectively to generate a social return on investment that benefits the company, its employees and its community. We envision a world where tax benefits are extended to mission-driven companies that demonstrate consistent returns on mission that reduce government obligations. We envision a world where we recognize that everyone — from CEOs to day laborers — needs support to succeed on the job and also be a responsible family and community member.

Greyston is a community that celebrates the art of what is possible, that believes everyone can contribute, and that puts faith in the power of core American values: opportunity, fairness, respect, and equity. And, we measure success every day — and over the long term. Success for Greyston is not a trade-off where we short the next generation to make outsized profits today. We must not sacrifice our children’s future to satisfy our near-term desires. Greyston generates strong returns for all stakeholders, a hybrid enterprise with nonprofit operations alongside a commercial business.

Dion and Shay, two employees of Greyston Bakery. Photo courtesy Greyston.

Our signature initiatives weave together business innovation and social justice to create thriving and inclusive communities:

• The Center for Open Hiring at Greyston, a collaborative learning space facilitating the widespread adoption of Open Hiring and supporting innovation in the delivery of community programs for employees and neighbors;

• Development of new financial models to support mission-driven, hybrid organizations;

• Public policy engagement to create a level playing field for benefit corporations;

• Design of social return on investment (SROI) vehicles that bring transparency and rigor to measuring impact;

• Creation of the Association for Open Hiring to collaboratively set standards and best practices for Open Hiring;

• Leveraging the purchasing power of global supply chains to support Open Hiring;

• Alignment with business schools to prepare new leaders ready to manage for social, financial and environmental success; and

• Preparation of the Open Hiring toolkit and guidelines for innovative HR leaders.

We are a modest bakery with a great, big, disruptive idea. And we’ve been perfecting it for three decades. We are “Bakers on a Mission.” Work with us: Inclusion@Greyston.com