By Vanessa Akhtar
MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, along with a few others, is changing the game with her trust-based approach to philanthropy. She committed to expeditiously giving away her wealth, giving to under-served organizations and causes and trusting those on the ground to make decisions about how best to use the funding. While it might be too soon to fully assess the impact of her giving, there’s already evidence that her unique method will lead to dramatic impacts in communities across the country. It might not seem obvious what the connection is between philanthropy and business, but there are a few critical lessons business leaders can garner from Scott’s approach.
Empowering more leadership from more people
Expand the Definition of Leadership
In addition to her own giving, a big emphasis for Scott is helping people expand their definition of philanthropy. She is uncomfortable with the connotation that it is only about the wealthiest in the world giving their money to specific, targeted causes. As she points out, the actual definition of philanthropy is much broader – it includes smaller donations, one-on-one support, humanitarian speech and demonstrations in support of important movements.
The same is true for leadership – it’s not something that’s solely reserved for executives. From our research, we know that the key to organizations’ ability to move quickly and respond to today’s rapidly changing environment is to create more opportunities for more leadership, from more people. This means more employees, at all levels, inspired about the future and truly empowered to take action when they see an opportunity – whether that’s improving a process that streamlines work for employees, finding a creative solution for a customer, or identifying an unmet need in the market.
Empower Those Closest to the Work to Drive Solutions
Most funders, particularly large foundations, require extensive data collection and reporting to prove the impact of their investment. While this data helps tell the story of what their giving made possible, it also takes attention away from the on-the-ground work and can limit flexibility and creativity of how non-profits provide services to their communities. Scott takes a very different approach – trusting her diverse team to identify experts and practitioners, and then getting out of the way, allowing them to make decisions about how to utilize the funding most effectively. Having no control over how the money is used may seem risky. But Scott recognizes an important point – those on the ground have the greatest understanding of what their community needs.
The same is true in business. Those closest to the work – the factory floor workers, the call center representatives, the middle managers navigating employee dynamics day in and day out – have the deepest understanding of what’s working, what’s not and what solutions might have the greatest impact. This doesn’t mean business leaders have no role to play and should allow everyone to make decisions with zero oversight. However, when leaders set a clear and compelling direction for the future and provide necessary guardrails, it’s imperative to then unleash their greatest asset – their people.
Again and again, we see this approach foster incredible results. For example, one healthcare system struggled with very poor employee engagement, leading to high turnover rates and negative stories in the press (damaging their reputation in the community). The leadership team came together to articulate what was possible – for employees and patients – if they could make meaningful changes to the way they worked. They tapped into a diverse group of informal influencers across the hospital, including nurses, facilities staff, HR professionals, psychologists, and people from the IT department. Within six months, this group developed a whole new approach to employee recognition, reworked processes for knowledge sharing, and found various ways to breakdown silos – resulting in a 12-point increase in Best Place to Work scores.
Embrace the Notion that “Small” Wins Add Up
With Scott’s broader definition of philanthropy, she’s highlighting how important all the “small” actions are. Nearly one third of the $471B donated in 2020 came from donations of $5,000 or less. And this doesn’t account for all the ways of giving that aren’t tracked, like giving a homeless person a sandwich or shoveling your elderly neighbor’s driveway. But, as Scott calls out, those smaller acts of kindness have a cumulative impact over time – leading to larger scale outcomes.
In organizations, we too often wait to celebrate until we achieve the big wins – the realization of the long-term KPI, the new product launch, the quarterly shareholder report. These outcomes are all important. But they aren’t enough on their own to drive momentum. People need to see progress along the way and understand how their efforts contribute to the target outcome. Imagine if a parent waited until their child won a cross country race, and never celebrated when they first crawled, took their first steps (and then fell down), or committed to their first track team? And yet, in business, we tend to treat hitting milestones – or pivoting after important lessons learned – as just part of the job. Highlighting day-to-day contributions and successes helps skeptics see that progress is possible and provides motivation for those taking initiative to keep going when barriers inevitably pop-up.
Just as Scott is challenging the status quo in philanthropy, it’s time for more business leaders to do the same. The complexity, uncertainty and speed of today’s world demands a new way of working that allows for greater agility and adaptability. By expanding the definition of leadership, allowing those who are closest to the work to drive solutions and capitalizing on the small wins, businesses will begin to see dramatic shifts in what is possible.
