Sid Sidberry's Lifestream

Only a few are deployed, but thousands are helped.

Global aid giant, Mercy Corps, has partnered with the high-tech manufacturing and engineering company, ITT Corporation, to distribute portable water treatment systems to Pakistan in the wake of the flood crisis. The system being deployed is innovative in that few are needed, yet thousands of people are helped. According to Randy Martin of Mercy Corps and Bjorn Euler of ITT, the systems have already provided clean water to 110,000 Pakistani flood victims and only five water treatment systems are in place.

"The portable, self-contained water-filtration devices take impure water from a variety of sources including rivers, lakes, and wells and remove bacteria and contaminates via sand, charcoal, etc. Water is then injected with chlorine and stored in 10,000 gallon pillow tanks. Each pillow tank is either unloaded in bulk via tanker truck or distributed via tap stands. Each pillow tank can connect to four to five tap stands," Martin and Euler tell Fast Company.

Mercy Corps has a solid track record of responding effectively under such crises, but their purpose of being in Pakistan and in partnering with ITT is also to systematically assess the country's short and long-term needs. ITT is providing the funding for the initial needs assessment.

The equipment was designed by ScanWater but purchased by ITT. They are "not specifically designed to respond to floods, but are serving NGOs well for this purpose on the ground in Pakistan. ITT initially deployed three systems to Mercy Corps and has also loaned two systems to other international relief organizations working in Pakistan. These systems are useful in any emergency where water-related disease is a threat. In January, ITT and Mercy Corps deployed these same systems to Haiti following the earthquake."

Have you ever wondered why some innovators who are relatively low in the hierarchy are able to get results in big organizations while others flail? Have you ever wondered why some people always seem to be offered incredible opportunities while others get the scraps?

Moving a large organization, even when one wields little power as an entry-level employee or outside vendor, boils down to using two words: Thank You.

The Employee Appreciation Vacuum

Rank and file employees in corporations and government are some of the most underappreciated people on the planet--especially with today's economy where furlough Friday's and corporate layoffs are the norm. The attitude of many companies, (most likely driven by some Machiavellian human resource policy to reign in costs) is that people should not be "thanked" for doing their job.

Yet a wise mentor once explained to me, "The person who holds the pen has more power than you think." Although senior executives make decisions to buy the pen, the "pen holding" employee controls what it writes.

Consider Radar from the hit 1970's TV series M*A*S*H. He had no power on the organization chart, yet he wielded a tremendous amount of power when it came to securing premium supplies for the military base. There are Radars in every organization, executive assistants, first or second line employees, or odd ducks with no direct reports who are extremely effective at working across the organization and making things happen. Often, these employees have a network of contacts who help each other out. Those networks are usually connected by respect and gratitude.

Honor Employees for their Work

Showing gratitude and respect is often a lost art in today's frenzied and digitally-dominated workplaces. In the war for time and attention, personal expressions of gratitude seem to be perpetual losers. Don't let them be.

Although an e-mail thank you is a good start, nothing is more powerful than looking someone in the eye or delivering a handwritten note. Sincere thank yous and truly personal gestures are effective because they are so infrequent today. You have to invest valuable time to make such personal offers of respect and gratitude, but the payoff is worth it. That payoff comes not just in people who are willing to work with you and give you their best effort, but in terms of your own mental health. Expressing gratitude regularly is one of the easiest paths to happiness according to numerous studies.

As we celebrate Labor Day, here are a few very simple (and low cost!) ways you can attract more opportunity and make your workplace more innovative and productive:

Try these steps with a three-month trial. If you don't see more opportunities, more effort, more productivity, and more happiness, let me know. I may even buy you a latte to say thank you for giving my ideas a shot.

Adrian Ott has been called, "One of Silicon Valley's most respected, (if not the most respected) strategists" by Consulting Magazine. She is the author of the new book The 24-Hour Customer: New Rules for Winning in a Time-Starved, Always-Connected Economy (HarperCollins, August 2010). Follow Adrian on Twitter at @ExponentialEdge

©2010 Exponential Edge, Inc., All Rights Reserved

MasterCard is eyeing the emerging middle classes of women in Asia and Cambodia is as good a test case as anywhere else -- and it offers a CSR branding point.

Cambodia has been attracting a fair amount of corporate and "social business" interest in local seamstresses. Socially motivated businesses like Eve Blossom's Lulan Artisans and Elizabeth Kiester's Wanderlust, both for-profit social enterprises that use the talents of marginalized seamstresses, have set up shop here. But now two larger and much more corporate players have entered the scene: MasterCard and the ultra chic Hotel de la Paix, which begs the question of why now and why the focus on women?

Answer: purchasing power.

Goldman Sachs published a report last year highlighting the growing global middle class and the increasingly leading role of women in making financial decisions. The findings are true especially in Asia, where such economies as Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines are expected to grow and increase its middle class populations considerably.

Cambodia is not too far behind and MasterCard is smart to jump in now. The credit card company has been doing research on the subject of female purchasing power in Asia and based on their findings have been rolling out female empowerment programs across the region.

Over the next few months, according to the press release, "MasterCard will donate USD50 towards the reconstruction of Hôtel de la Paix’s Sewing School, for every room bill paid with a MasterCard card." The partnership is also a branding point for the hotel, as guests are taken to see community sites to get a glimpse of local Cambodian life. Essentially, MasterCard is making its name known to the very women who will shortly join the growing middle class with their own businesses and thus have more money to spend.

"I know that de la Paix has been actively involved in helping train women in sewing for quite some time, as well as being involved in social programs throughout Cambodia," Elizabeth Kiester, who relocated to Cambodia in 2008 after a successful career as Creative Director at LeSportsac and a Senior Editor at Jane magazine tells Fast Company. She set up her socially conscious, summery, clothing line in Siam Reap after moving there. She partners with marginalized female seamstresses and just launched a collection for J. Crew. "I think what they're doing is amazing, and I welcome the efforts--I would love to utilize some of their seamstresses some day!"

Little work opportunities exist for women in Cambodia, one of the world's least developed countries, and they're often found working on construction sites. "Sewing and crafting is indigenous to Cambodia, but also sewing offers women, in a country where perhaps they are not yet 'equal,' a chance to own and run their own businesses, which otherwise they may not have the opportunity," Kiester says.

The partnership between MasterCard and Hotel de la Paix may sound like straight-up corporate social responsibility, the same stuff you've heard before, but actually, it's rare to find a set of players and causes that fit so well together. The financial incentive is gravy.

While MasterCard is looking for a way into the female market and continue its CSR efforts in an emerging economy, Hotel de la Paix gets to add an angle to the hotel that doesn't make it look so out of place as a high-end hotel in a desperately poor nation (in fact, this may just fight off some heavy criticism and also encourage local stakeholder buy-in). It's not that similar types of partnerships haven't been done before, but in this case it's been done well, which takes a fair amount of pizazz and a sprinkle of innovation.

In this day and age of disruptive marketing, I find that EVERYWHERE, the social media agency I co-founded is being asked to stretch the boundaries of the term "disruption" in the most interesting ways. By the sheer nature of what it is we offer I find that my team must be prepared to meet client needs in wide variety; though at the end of the day it can all be called communications whether internal or external. There are the basics of helping our clients with developing their social media strategies, writing governance policies, implementing digital pr and even creating content that lives in Web video. However, last month when our newest client SWAGG/Firethorn asked us to change the "vibe" in their office, I had to reach into my Hip Hop/B-Boy backpack and tap into the world of Graffiti as a solution for their needs.

What our client wanted was an attitude change in the form of an art project. Currently they are working hard in their Atlanta offices launching SWAGG, a smartphone app that will tip the scales of today's mobile shopper. Their offering of "smart" technology allows users to purchase, share and exchange gift cards, receive and redeem offers, view loyalty card points or balances, share content and more--straight from the convenience of a mobile device. In order to be successful in this highly competitive mobile app market they needed to change how their employees felt when they walk into the office, which in turn would change the way they think. We were charged with creating a movement that caused an attitude change and inspired the team to communicate with each other on a whole new level.

We wasted no time and hired Totem, one of the best and highly regarded Graffiti artists out of Atlanta, GA. His mission was to create art out of the white walls across the entire office. The project would be a complete secret and none of the employees were aware this was happening. Totem planned to use a weekend to start and finish his work gleaning many of his inspirations from employees who left interesting clues about who they are in their offices. As a graffiti artist, he is no stranger to this type of work. In the streets, the ability to plan and work undercover is normal. Totem has translated his work to the corporate world and also done murals for Coca Cola, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Nike, Sony PlayStation, and Red Bull.

The employees were shocked and amazed on Monday morning when they returned to the office. Their corporate offices which for so long had been stark white, with no life had been transformed to a stimulating visual experience. The graffiti art actually had a positive effect almost immediately bringing people out of their cubes and offices and into shared spaces to talk amongst each other about the work. Employees who had never said much to each other were now engaged in deep conversations. With inspired thinking, changed attitudes and a great product, management is more excited then ever. For our agency we were given a project that allowed us to show the depth of a "disruptive" communications firm. This was the purest form of Social Media; art that inspires people

Today we as agencies must provide value for our clients and become partners not just vendors. As stewards of social media strategies we are often in the role of educator, counselor and personal brand builder because the medium offers so much depth. Today's digital landscape offers opportunities in marketing, pr, customer service, product development, human resources and yes even corporate culture.

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To see additional photos of Totem's work visit http://bit.ly/totemswagg. For more information on SWAGG, visit http://www.swagg.com/.

As a public speaker, I'm always looking for ways to engage my audience. One old trick--which I never use, precisely because it is so old--is to challenge executives and entrepreneurs to imagine their obituary in The New York Times. What impact did you have? What contribution did you make? What kind of life did you lead?

As it turns out, this audience-participation exercise requires a special act of imagination for women. Consider this amazing statistic, brought to you by a Web site called The NYTpicker, which pokes, prods, and otherwise critiques the world's greatest newspaper. For the month of August, The New York Times ran 78 obituaries, but only six were of women. For 2010 as a whole, the Times has published 698 obituaries--and only 92 were of women.

What's going on here? The question is especially vexing since the percentage of women in the paper's 2010 obituaries is virtually identical to the percentage of women chronicled in Times obituaries back in 1990. "Are the world's prominent women--the ones deserving of NYT obituaries--simply living forever?" the NYTpicker wonders. "In the last two decades, has there been zero growth in the number of notable women who've died? Does it stand to reason that no more women have worked their way into the limelight in the last twenty years than in the previous twenty?"

It's always fun to challenge a powerful institution like The New York Times--especially when it is (ahem) dead wrong.

But the real issue, I'd submit, goes beyond a "gender gap" in the editorial offices of one newspaper. It speaks to basic questions of life, work, success, and how society (and all of us) measure those attributes.

For example, Who really matters? So much of how we continue to define impact (one reason to deserve a prominent obituary) involves people with high-profile positions in established organizations--big-time lawyers, Fortune 500 executives, investment bankers and money managers.

Yet in an age of huge problems and great flux, many of the people who have a real, game-changing impact are startup founders, social entrepreneurs, community activists, nonprofit leaders--the sorts of innovators to whom we pay plenty of attention today, but who have been flying under the radar for decades. I'd much rather read about the passing of a gifted educator, or a committed neighborhood leader, or a beloved nun, than yet another starched-shirt banker or lawyer. These unsung heroes and grassroots innovators don't live forever--even if their ideas and impact do.

A related question is, What really matters? As a society and business culture, we still tend to equate money with success. If someone is rich, the thinking goes, he or she may or may not be a no-good SOB, but a fortune is evidence that someone is smart, or at least shrewd, and no doubt a success. Which helps to explain why so many wealthy males get The New York Times obituaries, while women who died with smaller bank accounts, but who may have led richer lives, don't get the attention they deserve.

If we've learned anything from the boom-and-bust cycles over the last 20 years, it's that money is a pretty empty (and fleeting) metric of success. I think back often to an interview we published in an early issue of Fast Company with the philosopher Jacob Needleman, a professor at San Francisco State University, who wrote a great book called Money and the Meaning of Life.

"What's your definition of success?" we asked Needleman. His answer: "To be totally engaged with all my functions, all my faculties, all my capacities in life. To me that would be success. I grew up around the Yiddish language, and in Yiddish there are about 1,000 words that mean 'fool.' There's only one word that means an authentic human being: mensch. My grandmother would say, 'You've got to be a mensch,' and that has to do with what we used to call character. To be successful means to have developed character."

Maybe it's time to pay more attention to the legacy of people with deep character than those with overflowing bank accounts. They may be harder to find (Forbes doesn't publish a list of the World's 400 Best People), but they may offer richer lessons about what it means to succeed.

So as I think about the bizarre gender gap in the obituary page of The New York Times, I worry less about what it says about the newspaper of record--and more about what it tells all of us about who deserves such recognition in the first place, and what their stories might suggest about a life well-lived.

Come to think of it, maybe that exercise I dismissed at the outset of this post isn't such a bad idea. Imagine your obituary in the Times. What do you hope it will say?

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review

William C. Taylor is cofounder of Fast Company magazine and coauthor of Mavericks at Work. His next book is Practically Radical. Follow him at twitter.com/practicallyrad.

The following headline caught my attention recently:

"Lennon's Toilet Sells for US$14,740 at U.K. Auction"

According to the Reuters' article, "A toilet that belonged to late Beatle John Lennon fetched $14,740 at auction on Saturday, around 10 times its estimate," the sale organizers said.

It's amazing what people do with thousands of dollars isn't it? I've recently learned about a way that just $1 can make a profound difference in our world that Fast Company readers need to learn about. And interestingly enough, it starts with your business card.

I became aware of the initiative thanks to Paul Dunn, the Chairman of B1G1, a friend and a mentor with whom I worked in the U.S. and Australia. Paul "retired" to as he puts it, "Give businesses the power to change our lives."

B1G1 has been attracting Members in 14 countries with the really simple idea of linking giving to everyday transactions--you buy (or sell) a coffee, a kid gets access to water; you sell your book, a tree gets planted; you buy a TV, a cataract-blind person gets the gift of sight.

And now, Paul and his team have extended that simple idea to business cards.

And with good reason. Business cards are the singularly most important piece of collateral in the business world. A card speaks volumes about what you do, how to follow-up with you and are a clear representation of your brand--what you stand for in the world.

Every business card brings with the hope of anchoring who you are at some later point in time and, hopefully, ensuring you stand out in the world. As American Express taught us: "Don't leave home without it®."

Now B1G1 makes it possible to make each business card you hand out represent a charitable voucher worth $1 that your business card recipient can redeem. And it will not cost them a penny.

B1G1 simply provides graphics that you can print on the back side of your business card representing a $1 voucher for the recipient of the card to give towards any of the 612 B1G1 projects in 28 countries.

The hope is that the person will learn how they can have a favorable impact on their world and will come back on their own to make additional contributions and, of course, share this giving opportunity with others.

The person issuing the card can track which individuals gave to which cause(s) facilitating the means to thank the card recipient for their generosity and giving an additional reason to reconnect. Monthly, B1G1 invoices the card issuer for any donations that are made via the business card voucher.

How much can $1 do, really, you say? B1G1 got my attention when it said that 1 cent gives a child access to water, $10 provides an implant lens to restore someone's sight in Bali; $12 buys a goat to give sustainable income for a year to a family in Kenya.

So before you order your next batch of business cards, consider a simple, smart, beneficial addition to the back of it. It's a great way for you to really connect. And you too might be amazed at how much $1 can do.

Dave Gardner is a management consultant, speaker and blogger who resides in Silicon Valley. His firm helps clients eliminate business execution issues that threaten profitable and sustainable growth. He can be reached through his Web site at www.gardnerandassoc.com or on Twitter @Gardner_Dave.