Reinvent Your Profession

You got your MBA or your law degree and worked your way up to the top...only to discover you  didn't become the person you set out to be.  Now what  to do?  

You can join a self-help group for recovering lawyers,  a support circle for executive burn-out.  Maybe even find a Bankers Anonymous for financiers shamed by the scandalous behavior of their CEOs.  But there's another alternative besides opting out.  It's changing your profession from the inside out.

This is the story of three visionaries who went straight to the core of the problem--making their professions more palatable to their fellow practitioners and  more responsive to the people they serve.

These three  had the courage to ask:  If my job isn’t aligned with my core beliefs, what would it take to fix it?   

Read on to find out how they changed their disciplines and reclaimed their original ideals.

Lawyers Can Be Peacemakers

Twenty-one years ago, San Francisco divorce attorney Pauline Tesler considered the adversarial nature of her profession. Families emerged broken and bitter from protracted litigation, and because of the way the system was set up, attorneys often made the outcome worse.

“In law school we are taught to put on armor to protect ourselves from conflict,” Tesler says, “but this walling off of feelings and emotions has been a source of enormous misery. Studies show that by the third year, 40 percent of law school students are clinically depressed.”

Tesler’s solution was to become a pioneer of Collaborative Divorce, a win-win approach for both attorneys and their clients. This process helps families come out whole, and allows their legal teams to work with other professionals like psychologists and financial advisors. The Collaborative Divorce movement now has more than 25,000 members worldwide who believe that law can be a healing profession, and lawyers can play the role of peacemakers. These practitioners no longer have to put their feelings aside; they approach their work with compassion and the will to serve.

 

As founder of the Integrative Law Institute (ILI), Tesler hopes to return the practice of law to its original purpose—to help heal conflict. One of the areas she’s exploring now is the law that governs business partnerships. “We want to help entrepreneurs get clear about their working environment,” she says. “So we ask: What are the values that brought you together as a team, and made you want to build this company together? When you disagree, or things go wrong, how would you like to deal with that?”

Integrative law starts with the belief that conflict can be creative, and that it’s part of growth, as long as there’s a constructive system in place to deal with it. Tesler compares it to integrative medicine, noting that both serve the whole person. Her hope is that attorneys will pave the way for a more humane way of doing business. In the meantime, she has shown her colleagues how to tap into their own idealism and good will.

Non-profit Bankers  Build Community

As a piano technician Christopher Sikes found a perfect niche: repairing Steinways and other high-end pianos then selling them to professors at Harvard or MIT. But when he needed capital to expand his business, he was surprised to be turned away by local banks.  Determined to change the system, and create more opportunities for entrepreneurs and small business owners, Sikes got his MBA and is now in the vanguard of a new profession as a “non-profit banker.”

“We structure our loans to meet the needs of the businesses, rather than asking the business to meet the requirements of a bank,” he says. “Our goal is to provide what’s called ‘patient capital’ because it gives startups time to get their product off the ground.” 

Since 1989, Common Capital has supported housing projects, dairy farms and sustainable agriculture, a natural foods market, a coffee roaster, and a local cinema that uses film to teach literacy in the public schools.  Some 250 regional loan funds have cropped up in the US, investing in local enterprises and building strong regional economies.

Three years ago, Sikes created the Community First Fund, asking residents to invest in local businesses. “Folks feel good supporting local shops and services. It’s more personal than investing in the stock market,” he says, “and the fund contributes to a strong regional autonomy.” 

There are now 250 organizations like Common Capital around the country, helping thousands of entrepreneurs to turn their dreams into reality.  

Socially Responsible CEOs Reorganize Their Companies

What do we do about an economic system that rewards the elite—like CEOs and shareholders?  How can business also take care of the workers, and reach out to the community?  The answer: Change the nature of commercial enterprise. Make doing business is compatible with doing good.  

This is the aim of the B Corporation (the B stands for “benefit”). These innovative companies are making a pledge to give back to society as well as to their shareholders. Certified by the nonprofit B Lab, they meet rigorous standards of accountability and transparency. And they also have a strong commitment to social and environmental causes.

With his friends for over 20 years, Bart Houlahan and Andrew Kassoy,  Jay Coen Gilbert shares a passion for creating a better world through business. Coen Gilbert and Houlahan were Co-Founder and President, of a $250 million basketball footwear and apparel business when they decided to create the B Corporation (the B stands for “benefit”), a new structure for companies concerned with giving back.  Certified by the nonprofit B Lab, these firms meet rigorous standards of accountability and transparency. They also have a strong commitment to social and environmental causes.

“All the world's wisdom spiritual traditions say the same thing: We are interconnected, we should treat others as we wish to be treated, and we must be the change we seek in the world,” says Coen Gilbert.  “Our work, and the work of each individual B Corporation are simply imperfect attempts to manifest these truths in the marketplace.”

Today there are more than 1,000 Certified B Corps in 33 countries and over 60 industries. Examples include Patagonia, makers of outdoor gear; Badger Balm, producers of natural cosmetics; Ingage Partners, a management and technology consulting firm that gives a quarter of its profits to good causes and allows employees time off to volunteer; and Etsy, a global marketplace for handmade goods that provides loaner bicycles and organic meals to its employees, and offers its office compost to a community farm. These innovative companies have made a pledge to society as well as to their shareholders. They’ve made doing business into an opportunity for doing good.