Integrating survival-level needs of your organization with your vision of having a significant positive impact in the world requires living into these five principles:
Impact arises and gets its power and effectiveness from deeply personal places.
We’ve found that most leaders’ vision for how they want to impact the world for the better arises from deeply personal history and experiences, and that is what makes it real and gives it enduring power, bigger than an idea or philosophy.
When impact and survival level needs are integrated, they are multipliers.
Most leaders experience impact and survival needs in tension or conflict with each other. When they are integrated, instead of creating friction with each other, they multiply each other in exciting and generative ways.
Impact brings creativity and contacts/relationships to a business that are not otherwise accessible when only using the profit motive.
When you persistently and consistently express your values and work for the good, that creates trust and admiration in others, and those relationships are powerful both for impact and for profit.
Belonging and contribution are deep needs in people, which arise out of shared values, and are not found in profit or money.
When you have integrated impact within an organization, your people pull together because they feel like they belong to something meaningful. It decreases turnover because fulfillment is a key ingredient in loyalty and attracts the right people.
Significant decisions are made easier when values and impact are clear.
When you're only chasing money, it can be uncertain which way is going to be more profitable, creating impossible choices. Knowing the impact you're pursuing simplifies and lightens the weight of decision-making, large and small. Once those decisions are made, then the creativity and access already mentioned can be brought to bear to influence the outcome of the decisions for success.
Once you integrate the positive impact you want to have on the world with your organization’s survival needs, you start to gain momentum, the business starts to really work, and you and your team feel so much happier and more fulfilled.