Session A Engaging Employees

Speakers
Alexander Kjerulf, Woohoo, Inc (starts at 5:25)
Hans Henrik Heming, Copenhagen School of Design & Technology (KEA) (starts at 28:40)
Jacob Rais, Hotel Skt. Petri (starts at 54:20)

Session B Mobilizing The Crowd

Speakers
Lærke Ullerup, TEDx (starts at 4:30)
Laura Storm, Sustainia (starts at 27:00)
Esben Danielsen, Roskilde Festival (starts at 49:45)

Session C Having An Impact and Making A Difference

Speakers
Ole Kassow, Purpose Makers (starts at 5:30)
Hanne Lindblad, Call me (starts at 32:30)
Thor Thorøe, Social Food (starts at 1:00:00)

Session D We Need Companies With A Purpose

Speakers
Laila Pawlak, DARE2 (starts at 3:45)
Thomas Stack, Brandhouse (starts at 31:00)
Eric Witzgall, Film Photographer (starts at 59:05)

This is really exciting :-)

On 19 February Better Place and Purpose Makers are proudly co-hosting the conference Why We Love Companies With Purpose during Social Media Week (18-22 February 2013). Social Media Week is a global phenomenon and unfolds in 10 cities worldwide during that one week in February  and it’s packed with cool events all week.

Why We Love Companies With Purpose is organized into four sessions. Each of which features 3 powerful and inspiring talks, lasts 90 minutes and can be attended independently of each other at the Better Place Center in Hellerup, Copenhagen. You’re also more than welcome to attend all 4 sessions.

So why do we organize this conference? At Purpose Makers we’re united by the belief that the future belongs to purpose-driven companies and organizations. They will have strong cultures, engaged and happy employees and enthusiastic customers, patients, citizens and users. They’re here to change the world. This conference will gather some of the best and most inspiring purpose-driven minds and our ambition is that the audience will feel inspired, empowered and ignited to go out and start their own revolution.

This is the programme. Follow the links to SMW’s website to sign up for each of the sessions. It’s free.

Session A: 9:00-10:30 Engaging employees
Speakers:
Alexander Kjerulf, the one and only Chief Happiness Officer
Hans Henrik Heming, Transformation Catalyst, KEA
Jacob Rais, General Manager, First Hotel Skt. Petri

Session B: 11:00-12:30 Mobilizing the crowd
Speakers:
Lærke Ullerup, Co-Founder Purpose Makers and TEDx Licensee and Co-Organizer
Laura Storm, Executive Director, Sustainia
Esben Danielsen, Innovation Director, Roskilde Festival

Session C: 13:30-15:00 Having an impact and making a difference
Speakers:
Ole Kassow, Partner & Co-Founder, Purpose Makers
Hanne Lindblad, CEO, Call me
Thor Thorøe, Founder, Social Food

Session D: 15:30-17:00 We need companies with a purpose
Speakers:
Laila Pawlak, Co-Founder, DARE2
Thomas Stack, Co-Founder, Brandhouse Customer Experience
Eric Witzgall, Film photographer, Freelancer

Session E: 17:00-17:30 A political view on social media
Margrethe Vestager, Minister of Economic Affairs and the Interior, Denmark

Southwest Airlines has remained profitable in every single of its 42 years of existence, even after the events of 9/11. In fact post-9/11 they didn’t fire one single employee. And bear in mind that this feat has been accomplished because they invest heavily in their culture, not despite it. They offer their employees:

• Free flights across the world
• Competitive Retirement Plans
• Free Health Insurance
• Freedom to Create and Innovate (whatever your role)
• Extensive Training Opportunities and Character Building Programmes
• Happiness, everyday in their 9-5

Who would have imagined that recording talks from conferences and putting them online would be such a game-changer to learning, communities, education and conferences. Congratulations to TED and especially June Cohen (The media producer of TED) for seeing the potential of making videos accessible and shareable to the world. Read more about the milestone and get access to a great list of featured TED talks curated by Bill Gates, Jill Boylte Taylor and Ben Affleck: http://blog.ted.com/2012/11/13/ted-reaches-its-billionth-video-view/

The purpose of TED is “Ideas Worth Spreading” and we guess their milestone today shows that this purpose is still relevant and that the world luckily is still curious and eager to learn and share great innovations across the globe in order to make the world a better place. There is hope!

Congratulations again. We are proud to be part of this inspirational community of makers!

…

Zappos have about 1,500 employees in their HQ in Las Vegas and another 1,000 in the warehouse in Kentucky where all products are shipped from. And what truly separates them from many other organizations is how they treat their people. Zappos has committed itself to great service and has realized that the only way to consistently deliver great service is to have happy employees.

1. They have a culture that promotes happiness at work

Zappos is committed to defining and living a positive, happy culture.Their values are:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

They hire people based on who will fit into the culture, and they’re quick to fire those who turn out not to fit. Their hiring mantra is “hire slowly, fire quickly”.
Typical interview questions include:
If you had a theme song, that played every time you walked into a room, what would it be?
On a scale from 1 to 10, how lucky are you?

2: They pay new employees to quit

To make sure that new hires join Zappos for the culture and not for the money, they will give all new people the offer. It’s simple: If you quit in the first 2 months, you get your salary plus an extra $2,000. Yes, you read that right: Zappos will pay people to quit. And since most new positions are in the call center or warehouse (jobs that don’t pay all that well) $2,000 is serious money.
Zappos have had to adjust that policy recently: Because of the financial crisis, less and less people took the offer, preferring to stay in a stable paying job even if they weren’t that thrilled about the workplace. So Zappos have now upped the amount to $3,000. In addition they also pay their people a salary that is above average and offer great perks like free food, free snacks, etc.
Here’s an interview where Bill Taylor (formerly of Fast Company) talks about it.

3: They behave like human beings. Great human beings

The fact that people are happy at work (yes, even the ones answering the phone) means that they give incredibly good customer service.
And often that service goes above and beyond. I dare you to readthis story and not shed a tear.

The upshot

The result of this and more (like great parties, freedom to design your own workspace, etc.) is a happy workforce and excellent customer service.

It doesn’t stop with the culture – their business model is equally great. 1 year return policy on all products, free return shipping, their 1-800 number is right at the top of every web page (they actually want customers to call them) and when you do call in, a live rep is only one keypress away, not buried somewhere in a phone menu labyrinth. In fact, average wait times hover around 20 seconds – when other companies can easily take 20 minutes to reach on the phone.
All of this and more is described in Tony Hsieh’s excellent book Delivering Happiness and I highly recommend it. Not only is it a fun and easy read, it offers a great insight into the history and practices of Zappos and it’s always fun to hear from people and organizations who are not only unafraid of trying new ideas but who seem to revel in it. Zappos definitely do.

This is not rocket science – and companies like Google, Southwest Airlines, SAS Insititute, Disney, Pixar and many many others will testify to the fact that this philosophy works.

Read the full story in ZURBsoapbox.

Fuck, man. I have just stepped out of TEDxCopenhagen’s magical universe and my brain is about to explode. It. Was. Crazy. Eight hours packed with talks about everything from school systems strangling kids’ curiosity and desire to learn to Higg’s Particle. From edible towns to the Syrian civil war. There were also acrobats and a telling-off to bad food and bad manners. A refreshing look at Christiania’s independence process and a moving talk by a scout, who managed to elevate the legitimacy of the scout movement above bonfire level. Difficult to explain, right?

Above qoute is from blogger and TEDxCopenhagen attendee Suzette Frovin immediately after the TEDxCopenhagen event on 18 September 2012. It captures the potent cocktail of energy and inspiration being released at a TED event.

At TEDxCopenhagen more than 100 volunteers worked countless hours to make it all happen. This video is a tribute to those volunteers who made a difference.

Hanne Lindblad, CEO, Call me

Call me is small Danish mobile phone operator – one of a dozen fighting brands. In March 2011, like the rest of the industry, Call me was caught in a deep trench, where business was all about being 10 kroner cheaper than your competitor and selling discounted phones to customers in an attempt to win them over.

Annual customer defection rates of 40-50% among most operators were not uncommon and the industry spent in excess of 1 billion kroner each and every year in advertising. Yes, they lose 4-5 in 10 customers each year and have to spend millions winning over new customers to replace them. Because, as it turns out, most people will admit to having changed their mobile phone provider several times over the last few years because of price or promotion – or both. Some change every 6 months.

In other words the mobile phone industry was characterised by rampant customer disloyalty and as a result most operators were struggling to make money.

Leaving the hamster wheel

At that point Call me decided to stop playing by the conventional rules. Their new CEO Hanne Lindblad announced that she was fed up with the way the industry worked as a vicious hamster wheel. She took inspiration from companies in completely different industries, who had successfully moved away from manipulation as a way to attract customers – to inspiration. The companies included Zappos, Southwest Airlines, Zane’s Cycles and Wegmans. All companies whose customers not only come back time and time again, but rave to friends, family and even strangers.

These companies may be price competitive, but that’s not why they’re successful and why they turn millions of customers into raving fans. It’s because their customers are in love with them. Their customers are ambassadors and promoters of the kind that can drive explosive growth via mail, blogs and social media.

As it turns out these companies not only have a good standing among their customers. They also have a remarkably good standing among their employees and in society in general. What really distinguishes them is that they operate in accordance with the Golden Rule: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. In short, these companies are purpose-driven, which gives them a license to operate and an abundance of social capital.

At Call me this epiphany led them to make a number of fundamental decisions, the first of which was to identify and write the company narrative. The second of which was that trust was the fundamental principle. They realized that their entire industry was permeated with mistrust. In customers, in employees, among business partners and legislators. And they decided to take a leap of faith and, as a core principle, trust each other and their customers. It became known in the organization as Call me’s trust strategy and its formation involved the whole company. At Christmas 2011 the employees had completed a culture book about the “The Call me way” in which everybody, including business partners, got a chance to write their opinion about Call me – completely uncensored.

The 5 core values

So how does this translate into day-to-day actions? How does an employee know how to act and behave differently? To help this along the organization came up with 5 core values, which embody trust. They are:

• We build our successes on many small ideas and decisions.
• We believe that trust comes from within.
• We give our colleagues courage to make a difference and go new ways.
• We get far quickly with few resources.
• We use the energy it gives to have fun.

Trust means always trusting people to do the right thing and sharing stories of people who live the values. One such story comes from the customer service department. Shortly before Christmas 2011 Hanne Lindblad wrote the following:

“Here are some examples of our skilled Community Agents having turned Detractors into Promoters. They fight and it goes really well.

We have also started working with Random Acts of Kindness, which is really exciting to work with, since there is no magic formula. But the concept is really powerful. Here is a story from today: One of our customers had talked to Bitten from our customer service the other day. The customer uses all her savings to fight for better animal welfare, so it’s important to her that her mobile phone bill doesn’t exceed her budgeted amount.

Bitten helped her check her minute usage and she subsequently asked Bitten if we were really so happy and kind as we sounded like or if we just pretended to… Bitten assured her that Call me is genuine all the way through :-) og Bitten ended up thanking the customer for her great efforts to improve animal welfare.

Bitten told me the story this morning and together we made the decision to give the customer a Christmas present from Call me. We credited her account 2,000 kroner which Bitten called her up and told her :-) She was so happy that she cried on the phone – and Bitten nearly did so too…”

The fight against bad language

A public manifestation of ‘The Call me way’ is the campaign “Tal ordentligt – det koster ikke noget” (Speak nicely, it’s free). The TV ads are attitude and opinion-based and problematize the Danes’ tendency to hurt each other using bad language. The fight against bad language became Call me’s cause and during 2012 it put this small mobile operator firmly on the map. The media and the public loved the ads (stripped of any mention of price and promotion), in which all roles were played by Call me employees, Hanne Lindblad appeared in TV talkshows and they won several awards for innovation and ingenuity.

Effects on employees

Being a purpose-driven company has many positive side effects. Employee churn at Call me is now lower and number of sick days are at a record low. In general the employee engagement and happiness is much higher than it was before.

Effects on customers

In the mobile phone industry customer churn rates are crucial, as every extra month an operator can keep the average customer, is worth millions in annual revenues.

Since Call me took its 180 degree turn, the customer churn rates have been reduced significantly and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is among the best in the industry. And despite a raging price war among the other operators in Denmark, Call me has even managed to exceed its sales targets.

The future?

Call me is relentless in its pursuit of areas where it can make a difference, both for employees, customers and society in general.

For more information

Tal ordentligt commercial number 2
Hanne Lindblad interview in TV2 Lorry, 23 Feb 2012
Winning two True Awards, 5 Oct 2012