Business Owner Blog: Playing to Win

Thoughts from TAB

I?ve spent most of my short career doing marketing work for not for profit companies.? At these nonprofits, my hyper-competitiveness was often criticized; a lot of the executive team didn?t like it when I made disparaging remarks towards competing businesses.?

Not fostering competition between our company and companies in direct competition for our business was not the strangest of our corporate (should I say non-corporate) culture.? Once we entered an actual social media competition, hosted by a newspaper, and I was dressed down for trash talking a vote stealing company in an internal email.? Another time, I was chastised for bad mouthing a company that was engaging in the most clear cut case of consumer fraud I?ve ever seen.

As far as I could gather, our total disregard for anything having to do with competition was a function of creating a work environment with the smallest amount of possible stress.? Non profit work does not offer a lot of monetary incentives, so the companies that I worked for previously did things like offer: great health insurance, gift cards, passes to amusement parks, comp time, EWPs, nice office chairs, ample PTO, really just about everything you can imagine to make us forget that the 1^st and the 15^th even existed.? It wasn?t a bad ploy, but because there wasn't a competitive atmosphere, I never felt like I was making a difference.?

I?ve often wondered what would happen if a forward thinking shark from the for-profit sector took over a non-profit.? Based on my previous experiences, I?d have to think that the philanthropic organization would either make a world of difference, or go out of business because it couldn?t find enough compassionate, but tough as nails employees to fill the desks at headquarters.? This morning, an article from Forbes taught me that a non-profit intent on never settling can function.? In fact, the non-profit featured in this article doesn?t just function, it thrives.? Chuck Feeney, who created the Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation, has spent the last 30 years donating almost $7.5 billion to causes that he deemed worthy.? Mr. Feeney came into his enormous fortune when he was bought out of his duty free empire.? Instead of keeping the money generated from the sale of his business, this civic minded business owner made his foundation, instead of himself the owner of his tax free bazaar conglomerate.? All of the money from his buyout went to The Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation.

Mr. Feeney applies the tactics he used to build a retail empire to his charitable trust.? When giving away money, he pits worthy causes against each other in a competition, demands transparency, and will pull funding if one of his wards departs from an established plan.? The far reaching effects of his enormous giving efforts are catalogued in the article.? Reading the story really made me what kind of world we would live in if more non profits focused less on diplomacy, and more on taking home the big tamale.?

All business owners can take a lesson from Chuck Feeney.? If you're doing something, doing anything, why not strive to be the best at what you do?? Also, most of the business owners who are reading this blog have a lot of experience working a lot of jobs.? Don?t be shy to apply a lion taming trick you learned as a zoo keeper to close a sale in your real estate business.? Don?t be afraid to use a trick you learned closing closing sales at your real estate business to tame lions.

Has your company learned anything from a business in the non-profit sector?? Chime in on Facebook.

Source: http://blogs.thealternativeboard.com/2012/09/playing-to-win.html

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