Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Evolving Role of Social Entrepreneurship | Abby Falik - Founder & CEO of Global Citizen Year

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Lessons - The Evolving Role of Social Entrepreneurship | Abby Falik - Founder & CEO of Global Citizen Year · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this episode, we break down what defines social entrepreneurship and how it differs from
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  traditional business. You'll learn how leaders can balance profit with purpose, measure real impact,
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  and approach education as a tool for change. We also explore key leadership traits like empathy,
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  resilience, and agency, and how they shape the future of responsible business.
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  Now, this is what I want to understand. What is social entrepreneurship? I ask that because if
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  somebody is looking at, for example, like an Elon Musk, and he's putting people on Mars,
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  and he's creating an electric car, and he's doing all these incredible things, and he's like,
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  well, that's advancing humanity. How is that not to the benefit? But ultimately, as driving
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  incredible profits, there's shareholders, stakeholders. Obviously, he's incredibly wealthy himself.
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  So how do we define what social entrepreneurship is? What isn't it? Is there some gray area for
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  some causes? Or is it very black and white? Oh, it's simply not black and white. I think
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  fairly, fairly, fairly, you think is our ever black and white. And I think that the lines between,
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  what we've called entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship are blurring. I think the lines
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  between the sectors, the traditional, non-profit, for-profit, public sector distinction,
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  also totally blurring. And frankly, don't make sense anymore. I think those are outmoded and not
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  useful designations in many ways. For me, my favorite definition of entrepreneurship is the
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  pursuit of resources. Sorry, the pursuit of an opportunity independent of the resources
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  under control. It's this notion of stepping off a cliff and having a little confidence that you
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  will assemble the airplane or the parachute as you, before you land. But it's a pursuit of an
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  opportunity before you know where the resources come from. And in social entrepreneurship,
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  I think that the opportunity or pursuing holds people and our planet and some sense of social
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  purpose as your bottom line. I think we get tied in circles when we think about double and
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  triple bottom line businesses. So this is probably the gray area where, you know, when push
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  comes to shove at the end of the day, and you're making decisions as a leader of an entity,
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  one line is on the bottom period. So we set ourselves up as a not-for-profit
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  global citizen year by design so that we could be clear that impact and not profits at the end of
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  the year were the singular bottom line. That doesn't mean we don't raise, you know, money or
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  think about revenue strategically or fine paying customers. It just creates a clarity about
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  to what end we will make decisions when things are marquee. Very smart. And how do you measure impact?
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  Transformative experiences for young people who wouldn't have otherwise had them. We with a
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  framework for training and measuring what we call the real 21st century skills, R-E-A-F,
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  your resilience, empathy, agency, and leadership. And leadership we define not as a position or
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  an arrival point or a title or salary leadership as a practice. And they're set to be eighths
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  that we believe our leaders need to exhibit. It's, you know, practicing curiosity before judgment,
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  aligning your life with your convictions. Have encouraged to do hard things connecting across
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  lines of difference to build empathy. And our belief is that we can embed those behaviors and
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  practices in young people whether 18 and create a community that supports them in continuing to
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  exhibit them as they move into their careers. So over time, it's about launching new leaders who
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  will approach their sense of responsibility in a completely different way. And how do you,
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  as because obviously businesses don't operate in silos? So how do you convince the shareholder
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  is a stakeholder is the investment, the philanthropist? How do you convince them that this is the
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  model that's going to move the needle in the future? Because that's probably a very difficult
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  conversation. That's half the battle with social entrepreneurship, right? How do you get everybody
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  on board with it? When I have an opportunity to sit with somebody and if they are open to listening
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  and reflecting on their own lived experience, it's pretty universal that education was formative.
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  It's fairly universal that there's a distrust and frustration with the way that
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  leaders across sectors are approaching their roles and responsibilities. And it's not a leap of
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  faith to then recognize that if we want the future to look better than the present, the input
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  to that shared future is changing way we approach education. The status quo will get us more of
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  the same and revolutionizing our approach to education gives us a shot at actually preparing
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  young leaders, a new new cadre of leaders who are more representative, more courageous,
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  more humble, more empathetic, and who can actually outpace the existential challenges work against.
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  Actually, I'm going to ask you a question on that one first. Then I just want to talk a little
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  bit about leadership. But when you find leaders that are listening to this and they're like, yes,
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  I do want to have more of an impact. I want to take my organization in one way, but I'm in
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  this particular position. And when I report my Q1 financials, my board doesn't care that much
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  about the impact. They're when we're not making the money that we're supposed to be making.
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  How do you remove yourself out of that position? How do you make your situation better so that you
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  can focus on or perhaps better educate the people that you work with about that long-term vision?
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  What's your leadership lessons for getting people on board with what you believe?
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  How do you change that change management? That's taught.
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  Seeing if I'm understanding right, it starts with the foundational purpose of the entity.
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  And I think so many businesses have been founded
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  with a very singular and focused and easy to measure and define profit, maximizing purpose.
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  Period. And I think it's actually really hard. It's not just about managing change around that.
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  It's about a whole reset that says, whoa, as an entity, what do you exist to do?
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  Because what you measure is what gets done. It's what you manage toward.
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  And the form and the function of what you're actually oriented around follow from what's that
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  north star. So I would just encourage people who are thinking of starting new businesses
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  to be very clear about what the purpose is. And one externality is your accounting for,
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  right? So you can have, I don't mean that the sort of profit maximizing orientation is
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  necessarily bad. I think the problem is when you're not then accounting on your balance sheet
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  for all the externalities or harm you may be causing. So it doesn't work for society to have
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  companies, you know, maximize profits for shareholders with, well, ignoring other stakeholders,
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  including humans and health and the planet's sustainability. And then out of those profits,
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  you give some of it away to help, you know, you've made the money in one hand and you're giving it
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  away with the other to sort of often put band-aids on problems that may have contributed to solving.
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  So it's just a much more holistic way that I think we need to see the role of the corporation
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  in society as accounting for its positive and detrimental contributions.
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  Very good. I love that. And it's something that hopefully if you are in an organization,
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  you can move forward and start to bring up those ideas so that you're right. If it's a large
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  organization, it's hard if it wasn't founded on the correct principles or principles that
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  should matter. But ultimately, that's the direction you should be moving in.
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  And I always share one thought, Scott, as you talk, you've used the word should. These are
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  the things we should be doing, should be doing. And I just hear that as a little bit of a,
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  I think that's a really hard place for as a human to respond from because it feels like an
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  obligation or a corporate social responsibility. As there's something that needs to shift from the
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  should to the must to the, I can't not do it this way because of experiences I've had because
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  of the way I see the world. And I think that's where the clarity comes from. And we get quite
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  mushy or gray when there's a, well, we do it this way, but we should be doing it this way.
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  As I think the language may matter as we're inspiring people to think about new forms and
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  functions for business. I want to get your perspective on on leadership because I thought that
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  was a good point as well. So let's talk about what leadership is and what leadership isn't.
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  From your definition, leadership is what exactly? How do you, how do you become a leader? What is a
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  leader? Leader is not just a title or a role or a salary. Leader is, leadership is how you approach
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  the world is. What is leadership and who can be a leader? Leadership is knowing your ability,
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  exert power and influence from wherever you stand. It's being grounded in a place that on the
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  you stand and only you know from the full accumulation of your experiences and life and
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  you know, it's important. View on the world. And it's knowing that inside of you is an engine to make
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  choices that inspire and influence people around you. And every single person, every single person
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  has that inside them. Absolutely. Absolutely has that inside them. And it is not a role, it is not
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  a salary. And if you feel like you cannot influence your incorrect. So I would say on that,
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  on that a little bit more and whatever you do, whatever you do in your life, it's important to
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  know that you do have that power. You have that agency too. Your agency, which I think is most
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  essential is especially clear word in this. Well, I thought a bit about this, but thinking about
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  you know, in an era when big tech and social media hijack our attention and sell it, unless we
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  know our ability, choose how we respond, what we attend to, what we invest in with our time and
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  energy and resources. If we are just carried along without a sense of our own
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  independent decision making ability, we end up in a spot where there's a threat of authoritarian
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  leadership or we are the product. And we live at a time that requires every human to know
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  important talks about, to citizen is a verb, everybody knows their responsibility to contribute
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  to solving problems big or small. Because without all of us having that orientation,
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  we will just get sort of swept along and swept off a cliff. We need everybody to sort of see
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  their power as change agents. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to
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  hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this
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  conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.