The Hunt for the How Intentional Futures

We revisit Season 2 with our prior guest and Yale Executive Fellow, Jon Iwata to assess where we're at in the Hunt for the How. Together, we discuss Jon's work at Yale and where it intersects with themes our guests employed, ranging from workplace culture, to transparency and systems change, to finding joy and meaning at the office. 

How do you build and maintain a healthy culture, even when you're managing a rapidly growing organization? In the latest Hunt for the How episode, we sit down with Ginger Hardage, Former SVP of Culture & Communications at Southwest Airlines to understand how she approached this challenge during her 25-year tenure at the company. Ginger points to many instances during her time at Southwest that demonstrate that “When you focus on your employees, giving them the right low level of training, organization, everything they need to do their jobs, that's when you start seeing a return on your culture.”

How do you create company culture with intention? In today's episode with respected HR leader Margo Downs, we explore how culture impacts not only the internal functions of an organization, but the ways in which a company operates on the global stage. 

Margo Downs spent years helping build healthy, authentic cultures at Lululemon, Starbucks, and Stitch Fix, and uses her experience today to coach organizations through change and innovative practices. Margo joins us on The Hunt for the How to share what she's learned about organizational culture, and how it shapes the actions and impact a company has externally.

What are field builders, and why are they necessary to catalyze and implement systems change? With the help of Lija Farnham, Partner at the Bridgespan Group, we seek to answer that question and more. 

With over 15 years' experience in nonprofit advising, Lija specializes in education, early childhood, and racial equity, and in today's episode we lean into Lija's work and the implications it holds not only for the philanthropic world but the business community as well. We make progress towards the "how" with an emphasis on what kind of policies, structures and changes could be explored and a deeper look at how large scale impact is approached.

In today's episode, Michael and Chris are joined by Alison Omens, Chief Strategy Officer for JUST Capital, a non-profit working to align the actions corporate America takes with the American public’s priorities. We discuss how Alison and JUST are evaluating when organizations are living up to their promises around stakeholder capitalism, and what sort of best practices should become common in order to build a more inclusive economy. In this conversation, we take a measurable step closer to the "how", as we gain greater perspective on the landscape as a whole, from the private sector to government and beyond.  

Michael and Chris sit down with the CEO of Syndio and co-founder of Smartsheet, Maria Colacurcio. As a pioneer in her field, Maria shares her pay equity insights and why it is no longer optional for business leaders to invest time and resources into it. Together, we foray into what "equal work for equal pay" truly means, and how Maria and her team are helping Fortune 500 companies measure it in a meaningful and actionable way.