MotherLetter.com is on a Mission

Seth is a successful attorney in one of the leading law firms in the South. Needless to say, he is busy, and his work is important. Seth had a friend who traded a comfortable life and career in the United States for a benevolent cause in Southeast Africa, helping teach impoverished and disease-stricken communities how to farm and, thus, restoring health to these communities. For years, Seth promised to visit his friend and experience the cause. For years, he put it off because of his busy work schedule. But not last year. He finally made time to spend eight days in Southeast Africa with his friend.

And he was changed forever.

Upon his return, Seth and I had dinner with our wives to hear about the adventures in Africa. During dinner, it was easy to see that Seth was not the same. This professional attorney whose job it is to play it cool couldn’t get through the appetizer without breaking down as he told story after story of his experience with the Africans. He gained new perspectives and insights. His views on life were richer and more profound.

Today, through his experience, Seth is a man on a mission. Seth, as a gift to his wife – Amber, began a movement called MotherLetter, an online community for people to share amazing and personal stories of their moms and their mommy experiences. This movement is taking off and connecting moms and their stories all over the world.

Now Seth and Amber are allowing the MotherLetter movement to fight malaria through Compassion International’s malaria intervention fund. I encourage you to get involved in the MotherLetter movement and to help fight malaria by going to www.motherletter.com. Onward!

—————————–

If Seth Haines’ story is inspiring to you, Champ him at www.ChampEm.com.

Tags: africa, africans, amber, attorney, champem, champion, haines, help, helping, letter, mission, mom, mommy, mother, motherletter, movement, responsibility, Seth, social, stories, story

Making it Personal Will Demand Sacrifice

A contributor to this blog, Bryan, reminded me today of something I know well, but don’t think about often enough. If I love something so much that it becomes a personal mission of mine, it will demand personal sacrifice.

Bryan left a lucrative career for the mission field. I left easy money for a “wrestle to the mat” in people development. My brother’s wife, Jayme sacrificed life balance (impossible) for her music career.

Seth Godin has an interesting read on how difficult it is to make great money doing something you love. I hope that’s not true. But this is for sure – doing what you love will demand greater sacrifice than playing it safe.

Tags: balance, career, champions, Godin, Leadership, life, mission, organizational, Sacrifice, Seth

Even Small Businesses Have a Social Responsibility

Last week I learned a very valuable lesson – even my small company is on the hook for social responsibility.

For a couple of years now, I’ve been preaching to large corporations the importance of being socially responsible. I was able to preach this without personally embracing it because, after all, we weren’t a $30 billion company. What could we do? And no one really expects us to do anything anyway, right?

In 2007 we decided at SVI, my company, that we were going to be a socially responsible company who served social needs. Therefore, our plan was to identify one mission every year and our entire office would be shut down so that everyone on the SVI team could serve.

Easy enough … to say, yeah. Executing it was completely different. Early this year, our clients have been preparing for a recession. So we’ve been working with them to reduce budgets and drive payout as it relates to organizational development. Needless to say, this caused SVI to reduce our budgets, drive payout and get creative.

During this budget reducing time, SVI has been connected to a food bank in Torreón, Mexico through a 21st Century Leadership program we’ve been responsible for with one of our clients. For a number of reasons, this food bank was losing some of its support. Not only were they losing support, they were a few months away from closing their doors if something significant didn’t change immediately.

SVI could provide that support, but not without it hurting. SVI was very busy, February was a very tight month financially, and we had to figure out how all of us could get to Mexico with one week’s notice. It would have been easy to say that this snuck up on us, that we weren’t prepared or that we couldn’t afford it. But in service, need sometimes approaches you in the most inappropriate times. We had a decision to make.

Were we going to be a company of integrity operating on values and principles – or were we going to be a company driven by short-term profits?

My hope is both.

One statement rang clear to me at the point of decision – the mission chooses us, we don’t get to choose the mission. There was no decision, only a charge. Our office shut down the following week and all nine of our team members went to Torreón, Mexico to support and help sustain a food bank there.

This was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was a hugely productive trip with several great outcomes for the food bank. But it was so much more than that too. Our team came together like never before. Engagement increased. Commitment increased. Pride in each other increased. Our team’s agility, creativity, patience, energy, emotions, and intelligence were all tested to the extreme and pushed to the max. We saw who we were under the most intense circumstances in some of the most challenging times.

Our entire team got to participate in a “clothing drop” in one of the most poverty stricken areas in all of Mexico. This gave us incredible perspective and appreciation. But it also did one other thing. It taught us that there is no way anyone can argue that businesses have a responsibility to social causes and issues. Those who argue against this point have never participated in social responsibility causes as a business.

Since our return from this trip, we have received numerous calls and emails of encouragement from many of our clients, partners and friends.

The hard decision to serve in a tough business climate helped build our brand, strengthen our culture and build our business acumen. Great lesson!

Tags: 21st Century, corporate responsibility, Leadership, mission, organizational development, service, Social Responsibility, triple-bottom line