success

Making Good, released earlier this week, explores how the next generation is "searching for practical ways to succeed financially while also making positive changes in the world." We ask Billy Parish, co-author of Making Good (also authored by Dev Aujla) a few questions about how young changemakers are forging their own paths to success.

Check out more buzz about Making Good!

 

Billy Parish is widely known as an innovative youth organizer, social entrepreneur, and champion of the emerging green economy. He co-founded the Energy Action Coalition, the largest youth advocacy organization in the world working on climate change issues, is co-founder and President of Solar Mosaic, a solar energy marketplace and serves on numerous non-profit and clean-tech boards. Parish lives in Oakland, California with his wife and daughters.

1) The next generation is often recognized as a group that is driven and determined to integrate both purpose and passion into their lives, jobs, families and life goals. Making Good comes at a critical time when many in the younger generation are trying to reconcile their desire to do good, but also to do well. Do you offer any advice or guidance for individuals on how to navigate this intersection?  

Choosing the right people to work with is the single biggest factor that will impact your success. You’re looking for a complementary skill set to your own, but also some core qualities: creativity, integrity, persistence, and passion. Make a list of the 10 people you most want to work with — friends, professors, leaders in a field you are excited about. Cultivate those relationships, vision together and see where opportunities arise.

2) In the synopsis for the book, you make the distinction that this guide for finding opportunities that can effect change and make money are not just for entrepreneurs or Fortune 500 companies. How do you see those who many not identify themselves as entrepreneurial leveraging the “opportunities” that you reference in your book? Do these labels or distinctions matter when it comes to success?

In chapter 8 of the book we look at 3 major pathways for building a career:

• Being an entrepreneur
• Being an intrapreneur (making change from within a company)
• Being a freelancer

It’s possible to be successful and make change in any of those roles, and frankly, entrepreneurship is risky, hard and just not what a lot of people these days want. We’ll need more social change oriented intrapreneurs and freelancers than ever. Existing companies and organizations have tremendous power, and people who can get those institutions to do the right thing can drive serious change. Independent workers already make up 30 percent of the nation’s workforce, and the number is growing every year. This sector includes freelancers, consultants, independent contractors, temps, part-timers, contingent employees, and the self-employed.

3) From the articles I’ve read in various publications that have profiled you, it is clear that you’ve created your own path in life to follow. What is your own personal definition of “success” – whether that be personally, professionally or otherwise?

The most direct way to answer that is to share my mantra: “I am part of the beloved community. Building a more just and sustainable world -- For my family, my community, and all of creation. I am ready to follow.  I am ready to lead. Nothing to it, but to do it.”

1. My definition of real success is recognizing your purpose and passion in life and then following through with the goals you set for yourself. Personally my goals this year are to: Be a great husband, dad and friend;
2. Introduce the first awesome solar investment with Solar Mosaic and make it available to millions; and
3. Release Making Good as a best seller.

4) We’ve seen polls such as Deloitte’s 2011 IMPACT survey show that Millennials care deeply about whether or not a company provides volunteer opportunities for employees. What role do you think skills-based volunteering can play for younger people who may be looking to fulfill this need for making good?  Alternatively, do you think it is important for companies and organizations to provide employees, and in particular younger employees, with the opportunity to volunteer or find pro-bono opportunities?

Yes, I think skills-based volunteering can play a huge role in helping young people find their purpose, and I also think it’s important for companies to offer volunteer and pro-bono opportunities outside of the workplace. Every job involves learning on the go, but as an unpaid intern you are going to have to know what you want to learn and to drive your own education. Interns are often under trained and overlooked so plan for it and leverage the fact that you are working for free to get what you want. If you know that if given access to the company’s internal workings you have the ability to learn everything you need, then working for free could be a great fit with your self-starter impulses. If you prefer to take direction, showing off your abilities through head-down work, you might be better off somewhere with more structure.

It’s also important to ask yourself another question: Will the position give you access to a whole new world of contacts or will you be meeting and spending your days with those you already know? If the job you are taking involves getting out there and meeting lots of people in your field, it could be worth it. You need to take a long term networking view as you never know who you are going to be working with during the next five, 10 or 15 years.
 

5) In addition to the book, you are launching a series of “missions” to help others “meet the right people, build the skills, and find the right opportunities.” The premise is that these missions can ultimately help individuals find the right job.  How do you operate these missions? Can anyone join in and participate?

For the last three years we have been doing the background research, interviews, focus groups and experiments in the process of writing Making Good. We have distilled best practices from the top leadership development programs and job search guides to help people through the barriers they face in seeking meaningful employment. The Making Good Missions is a 12 week program to help people find or create a job that does good. Starting in March, in conjunction with the launch of Making Good, those who sign up will get a weekly email with instructions for their mission. Each mission is designed to help people see the opportunities for employment today, connect with partners and allies, and hone the skills they need in order to make money and do good.
 

6) You have also made a number of investments in ideas that can not only make money, but also have the potential to change the world and you call them “experiments.” How do you select these group/projects and what have you learned from them to date? Can you share with us what your next experiment will be?

We are investing in a series of experiments that enable us to explore new ideas that help people make money and change the world. Currently we are working in partnership with Gameful offering a challenge to 15k game designers that want to do good. The Challenge is to create a game that both uncovers the invisible power structure of an office place, a community or an entire world and then makes it visible for all. We are also working with Net Impact, whose mission is to use their business skills to make positive social change, in order to create a series of missions that help these young graduates meet the right people, build the necessary skills and find the best opportunities to help them get jobs that make money and change the world.   

“The future of the world rests with women,” according to Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo Worldwide. Nooyi explained that more than 70% of the world’s buying power is controlled by women, and therein lies a new source of power. She believes this power is enhanced through mediums such as social media and blogging, democratizing information and amplifying women’s voices.

While an interesting point, Nooyi’s emphasis in her keynote at this month’s BlogHer11 conference was less about thought-provoking stats, and more about urging attendees to challenge their notion of today’s societal norms of power, success, and social good. Her message was simple and empowering—these are tough times for everyone, and we all must strive to embrace a “can-do attitude with a must-do responsibility” by not limiting ourselves in thinking about what is possible.

For many, Nooyi’s remarks served as welcome affirmation. Their power came not only from the idea that an internationally renowned company like PepsiCo can in fact do well and do good at the same time; but that more importantly, an individual can do well and do good at the same time without sacrificing success.

Nooyi also shared how she finds balance between performance and purpose as CEO of the second largest company in the world, mother of two, and a Social Citizen. For Nooyi, combining performance and purpose, both professionally and personally, is critical for success. She cautioned that you cannot have one without the other. The secret to her success — the Five C’s:

1) Be Curious: Don’t be a generalist! To stand out, you need to excel in specific areas that appeal to you, so become a lifelong student continually seeking new information.

2) Have Courage and Confidence: You can be the smartest, most capable person when it comes to a specific subject, but if you are unwilling to share ideas or stand up for them, then why does it matter?

3) Refine your Communication Skills: Nooyi reflected on a required communications class she took at Yale (failed the first time, but went on to pass) as a turning point for her when she realized the importance of being able to clearly communicate ideas.

4) Be Consistent: Here Nooyi noted it is perfectly acceptable to change one’s mind from time to time, but you must do so within a consistent framework so as not to be inconsistent or irrational in your decision-making.

5) Never Lose Your Moral Compass: The most important “C” reminds us to always follow one’s internal compass to know what is “right” and to make the “right” decisions – if one does not, Nooyi warns everything else will come crashing down.

Being a social citizen in business and in life is an ideal that Nooyi strives to achieve. She acknowledged that it is not always easy to do so, and may not always lead to profits, but anything else would fall short of true success.

What do you think about Nooyi’s Five C’s and philosophy? Do you have any “rules” for success? How do you balance performance and purpose?

It seems like such a simple question and one that people have been asking each other since the beginning of time. There is still no formal consensus, and I certainly won’t attempt to answer it today. What I do want to share with you is new data specific to Millennial women and what they want, which may just surprise you.

Redefining Success

A recent survey of women from around the world found that there has been an overall “generational shift” in life priorities that redefine the concepts of success and life milestones. Conducted by Levi’s^®, the survey found that almost all 1,000 respondents (96%) listed “being independent” as the most important life goal for them. Moreover, 87% of them defined success as “being able to shape their future.”

In addition, study participants responded that more traditional ideals and goals important to previous generations are most assuredly not as important to them. When identifying which life goals are important to achieving personal success, 68% selected motherhood and 50% chose marriage (participants could select multiple options). As for wealth defining one’s success, that milestone resonated with only 43% of respondents. Given the current economic state, unemployment rate and overall period of uncertainty, it’s no wonder responses were focused on breaking the traditional molds of success and independence.

The researchers concluded that, “Millennial women [are not only] reshaping what success looks like, they’re changing the way they reach their goals as well. More than half (58%) of women worldwide ‘do not have a definite plan to achieve their long-term goals.’ This lack of a ‘life plan’ is precisely what Millennial women seem to relish—and perhaps what makes previous generations so nervous, leading to accusations of extending childhood into their twenties.”

Back to the Future?

The findings reinforce much of the same data that helped spur the creation of Social Citizens several years ago. In 2006, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland conducted a study on youth demographics that arrived at many of the same conclusions we are finding today. Among the many parallels to the Levi’s study, the CIRCLE report noted that young adults are less likely to be married and more likely to be unemployed. Sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it?

Reflecting on these overarching similarities among study findings, it leaves me to wonder if anything has changed over the last few years. As time has passed, how do these studies reflect the evolution and maturation of the Millennial generation? Will the findings be any different five or 10 years from now?

What Millennial Women Want Now

Millennials distinguish themselves from previous generations in several ways, one of which is their cause lifestyle. The Millennial generation represents a youth that is “infused with giving and volunteering, eventually complemented by careers dedicated to causes.” 

This is very much the case for women, and in particular, Millennial women:

• The Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University Researchers concluded in its Women Give 2010 research that, "Women have been an overlooked or untapped resource to fund social change." When it comes to giving at least, “Women across nearly every income category give significantly more than their male counterparts – in many cases, nearly twice as much,” notes Debra J. Mesch, Ph.D., director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute.

• A recent Reuters survey noted that, “Most young women believe they will achieve a balance between a rewarding career and a fulfilling personal life.” 

What's to Come

Levi’s found a creative way to use this research and tap into this younger generation’s journey to success with a new portal called Shape What’s to Come. The online community is designed to empower women—primarily ages 21 to 29—from around the world and from all walks of life. The platform offers like-minded women the opportunity to exchange ideas, find inspiration from others and learn about everything from art and fashion to social entrepreneurship and education.

The community also features several extraordinary Millennial women who serve as ambassadors for the program and regularly post entertaining, engaging and inspiring stories. In addition, the community includes several high profile personalities, including Janelle Monae and Zooey Deschanel. “[Young women] are… fiercely independent. Which I think is pretty cool. But they still see the value of coming together. Which I think is even cooler,” writes Mary Alderete, Vice President of Levi’s Global Women’s Marketing.

Shape What’s to Come is just one example of how a company was able to utilize this research on Millennials. While it's certainly not the first to focus specifically on this generation, it will be interesting to see how the program develops over time. One benchmark I'll be looking at in the coming months is whether or not sales, consumer loyalty and brand awareness among Millennials are at all impacted.

What other notable marketing campaigns are there, and what do you think these campaigns are doing right or wrong when it comes to reaching Millennials?  How can other sectors integrate and leverage this research to better communicate their messages?