SweetRush Culture

How Does SweetRush Inspire Confidence in Our Clients?

July 8, 2016June 28, 2023 by Danielle Hart

From time to time, I check in with our e-learning project managers to find out more about the learning solutions they are working on with clients. As I was chatting with one of them, she said something that struck me:

“You know, Danielle, we really inspire confidence in our clients.”

I made a note and moved on, but it occurred to me later that I wanted to know more about how we do that.

So I asked a few of our e-learning project managers to answer that question for me. Here’s what they said.

Going Above and Beyond

“My current client tells me that they really like that I’ve gone above and beyond to explain our process and to ensure that they clearly understand timelines and implications of changes they may be considering. We have an open line of communication, and they know they can call me anytime. For this client, it’s continuous, clear, and available communication first and foremost.” -Maggie Haenel

Being Transparent, Honest, Conscious and Personal

“I think we inspire our clients by being transparent and honest with them, even during the proposal process. Many times I’ve seen us let clients know more cost-effective ways to do something during the contract phase, and that shows that we are committed to delivering the best we can while being conscious of cost impact to them.

And that happens during the project as well when out-of-scope items arise. I know I’ve had clients with vendor PTSD because of bad experiences with change orders. Being honest with them about potential cost and timeline impacts and being fully transparent builds trust.

I also think we inspire them because we take the time to get to know them on a more personal level, which is just part of our culture and the way we are encouraged to build relationships. I share personal stories with them, and they do the same, and that creates a connection and a deeper level of trust.” – Trina Jones

Communication, Can-Do Attitude, Respect and Loving Our Jobs

“I have been told, and I know, that we inspire confidence in our clients by:

Consistent communication. Weekly meetings, regular emails and clear and concise language.
Working WITH our clients requests with a can-do attitude. Even if we feel it’s right to push back on a request, we do the work to come up with satisfactory alternatives.
Treating our client contacts and SMEs with respect and kindness, but at the same time, being good consultants and standing up for what we know to be true and best practice in our industry.
On one project I managed, I apparently handled a very senior SME so well that I was asked by my client if the company could use a recording of the call for their internal folks.This spirit of collaboration permeates our company and our work with our clients as well.
Finally, our clients can absolutely tell that we love our jobs and believe in our company and the work that we put forth into the world. Management backs up the little guys. They also push us to be the best that we can be. And it shows.”

– Shelby Shankland

These words from our e-learning project managers are from the heart and really point to how important our culture is at SweetRush.

When I heard and noted the “we really inspire confidence” comment, it piqued my interest, and so I thought it worthy to share some of the comments from our project management team. I hope you found them of interest and of value and enjoyed them as much as I did.

Values-based Culture as a Critical Attractor for Millennials

June 27, 2016June 28, 2023 by Andrei Hedstrom

Learning, Training, and Leadership Opportunities for the Rising Stars in Your Organization

Values-based culture is coming into sharp focus for large organizations and small startups alike, particularly when discussions turn to leadership and learning for Millennials. The largest generation in U.S. history at 92 million individuals, Millennials are already having a major impact on the professional world and on society as a whole. They yield great influence, and I would advocate that this is a good thing. Let me tell you why.

Their Fluency with Technology

Millennials are the digital natives. Even the oldest of them have had access to the Internet since they were in high school. Eighty percent are using mobile devices, and 75 percent regularly engage on social media. They are fluent in the language of technology, and as such they are adept at passing on content that they find distracting, inauthentic, or not aligned with their values. Because of their fluency with technology and their ability to quickly hone in on content that speaks to them, they’re looked to by their elders to inform changes and behavior, perhaps more broadly than we’ve seen in modern human history. Goldman Sachs made a nice video about Millennials in the marketplace and their direct and indirect impacts.

Values of the Millennial Generation

So, what are the values of Millennials? And how can organizations speak to those values to attract, retain, and foster the best and the brightest of this generation?

Based on my research and personal observations, collaboration, learning, openness to change, connectivity, diversity, access, flexibility, autonomy, gratitude, and understanding the meaning and purpose in what they do have all been identified as important values for Millennials. (I’ve provided some links at the end for further reading.) When surveying the trends and behaviors of this generation, we see that this group is optimistic and attracted to liberty and the pursuit of increased well-being and happiness for themselves and others.

Millennials don’t just hold these values; they are adept at operationalizing them with the choices they make. Children of the information age, they have access to more information than any other generation has ever had, which, I believe—combined with their youthful confidence—emboldens them and reduces room for doubt.

Consider the amount of cross-cultural and cross-ideological awareness an educated person can now have, given the access we have to thought leaders, experts, and philosophers through a variety of sources—TED Talks being a prime example. Millennials who seek this kind of information potentially have the most integrated view of the human story, which would inspire them to draw the circle of who they include as “us” around more of the human population and our natural surroundings.

The Connection of Values and Culture

Let’s shift now from how Millennials’ values impact society to what this means in the workplace. Millennials want to work in an environment where they see alignment with their values. They’re concerned about the experience of a workplace they spend significant time in. And, importantly, they have a strong desire for transparency and authenticity in how the organization expresses its values.

Here we see the opportunity for companies to identify and communicate their values-based culture. This goes beyond the traditional vision and mission statements, and has the potential for employees (of all generations) to see the alignment of their own personal values and the company’s values.

It also provides a clear path for understanding our current state and where that value can be strengthened. Assessments such as those offered by the Barrett Values Centre help companies identify values that align with those of their employees, as well as the presence of “limiting” values that provide areas of opportunity. This type of data, collected through a short survey, can offer a starting point for discussion on how to impact culture in a positive way.

Meaning, Purpose, and “Soul Searching”

Identifying and building a set of core values may seem a bit touchy-feely to traditionally conservative organizations. Yet when Millennials talk about meaning and purpose, they’re challenging larger organizations to find not only the means to be financially successful, but also to discover how they can contribute to society. What these trends suggest is a mass movement of companies doing what we might call “soul searching.”

As that soul searching progresses and companies wrestle with their meaning and purpose, including, but more importantly beyond, shareholder value, I believe we’ll see a desire and appreciation for truly unique expressions of each organization’s values and how those values are practiced authentically in the culture. While Boomers might have started this movement on some levels and GenXers’ experiments began to build the case for it, Millennials will certainly be the driving force in making values-based cultures the norm in successful organizations.

This is where the real opportunity begins. I believe Millennials have a gut-level awareness of their influence and the urge to put their shoulders to the wheel. While many of them are still gaining practical life experience, they’re ready to not only contribute but influence and lead.

They’re ready to interject their values into the organizations they are part of, and help the communities they serve move past merely navel-gazing to put those values to work. As a GenXer whose generation moved into leadership roles more reluctantly, I’ve been amazed to see how fully engaged Millennials are. And while they might seek wisdom or life experience from we older bulls, they perceive no meaningful reason why they can’t directly engage the opportunities and challenges they perceive.

Organizational Communication and Training Related to Values and Culture

The HR industry at large is becoming focused on culture and values, particularly as they recognize the importance of values alignment for Millennials. However, most organizations that are practicing their values in meaningful ways still do not do a great job of communicating this to their customers, and less so to their employees.

I believe this represents a great opportunity for companies who want to attract, retain, and foster Millennial workers within their organization.

As HR, communications, and training professionals, you’re in a perfect spot to change this dynamic. For example, in partnership with your CSR department, you can directly impact retention by sharing authentic expressions of your organization’s values, such as CSR-related activities. You can find further reading on this in two pieces I previously wrote, “Corporate Values as the Key to Leveraged Business Communications” and “A Match Made in Heaven: Integrating CSR and Training.”

Here at SweetRush, I spearheaded a project to define our values and culture. I started in written form, and then gave our team members an open invitation to share their own expressions of SweetRush’s values and culture. The contributions were beautiful, heartfelt, and surprisingly varied: photographs, videos, illustrations, poems, and even recipes were contributed. I’m tremendously proud of the result and invite you to take a look at our SweetRush Values & Culture book. This is just one example of how creative you can be with your communications.

Attracting and Retaining the Best and Brightest Millennials: Defining Your Values-Based Culture

Below are the important steps that I believe organizations must take to shift in this direction. None of these steps are easy, but I don’t want to water down or sugar coat the moment. To address the various dynamics surrounding Millennials’ influence in the professional world, there’s really heavy lifting to be done. But just because it’s heavy doesn’t mean your organization can’t enjoy the workout as you transform.

That said, if this is too much to take on at once, focus on understanding and communicating the first item below.

Become a values-based culture focused on a more connected view of our society and planet. Do this from an abundance mindset and not one of scarcity—make the “why” to your business as big as you can muster.
Reduce hierarchical structures that create artificial barriers for your team to engage the work of operationalizing those values.
Provide as many meaningful, just-in-time learning experiences for your team as you can and plenty of opportunities for learners to socialize these experiences and affect future learning experiences, directly or indirectly.
Make it easy for your organization to have authentic discussions about values and practices. Make culture hacking your thing.
Make sure you have leaders who care as much about culture as strategy, and don’t be afraid to integrate deeper thinkers and creative types into highly influential positions. With organizations increasingly differentiated by values and cultures, it should not be surprising to find people who have artistic mindsets or even spiritual callings.
Come to terms and find some joy in the fact that your organization is going to change—big time!

This is a defining moment in many ways for human society. On one hand, we’re facing the negative impacts that large organizations have had on the planet as a whole. On the other hand, we’re starting to become aware of the abundance that can come from identifying and deepening the “why” (the meaning and the purpose) of our efforts.

Millennials are at the focal point of this defining moment, with their numbers, technological adeptness, level of education, and desire for authentic alignment of values. This focal point, for those of us who take a broader view of the human story—whether in shaping a successful multigenerational organization or working toward a more sustainable and harmonious world—is one of great importance.

For Further Reading: Human Consciousness View

For those of you who like to look a little deeper at things, there is a human consciousness view that is very interesting. Based on the values they subscribe to, it seems that Millennials may be edging into the highest stages of consciousness. Researchers in that field suggest that these higher stages of human consciousness are defined by the worldview that we are all part of a single living system, and that each life has a unique and collective value. One model of human consciousness called “Spiral Dynamics” calls these stages the “Integrative or Holistic valueMEMEs” or, together, a “Being-based valueMEME.”

I would assert that with this footing in a being-based value meme (as opposed to a subsistence-based meme), Millennials are positioned to offer a significant tipping point for human consciousness, as they challenge the world to practice values that ultimately lead us into a more abundance-minded place. A place in which we see our organizations as unique human parts within a larger and dynamic single planetary community.

As the radical disparity between Millennials in industrialized nations and their counterparts in oppressed, marginalized, or impoverished parts of the world becomes more evident, this tipping point becomes a hotbed for organizations to engage the significant challenges our global society faces. Millennials might just be the pioneers of ending some of the biggies like global hunger, human impact on climate and disease, and much more.

From a business perspective, for those who can embrace this larger perspective, this spells an almost boundless set of opportunities to activate and engage. Becoming a vibrant organization that does well by doing good is the positive impact that values-based cultures have to offer.

Additional Resources

PewResearchCenter, “Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next. Confident. Connected. Open to Change.”

Forbes, “The New Millennial Values.”

Full Circle Public Relations, “Marketing to Millennials (Part 3).”

KPCB 2015 Internet Trends, Slide 110, “Millennial Work Values = Perception Disconnect?”

The Brookings Institution, “11 Facts about the Millennial Generation”—and in particular the last quoted excerpt in this article (see below), which is from a paper written by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais called “How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America.”

“…the force of the changes they are capable of creating is beginning to be felt in all sectors of America’s economy. The initial tremors are already changing consumer markets and forcing corporations to change their workplace practices. But soon, as Millennials become an increasingly large share of the adult population and gather more and more wealth, the generation’s size and unity of belief will cause seismic shifts in the nation’s financial sector, shaking it to its very foundations and leading to major changes in the nation’s board rooms. As Millennials become CEOs, or determine the fate of those who are, they will change the purpose and priorities of companies in order to bring their strategies into alignment with the generation’s values and beliefs.”

For more about Millennials in the workplace, see my colleague Erin Krebs’ post, “Tips for Training Millennials”.

Procedural Justice in a Service-Based Business

February 25, 2016June 28, 2023 by Andrei Hedstrom

About a decade ago, a friend and client partner introduced me to the concept of “procedural justice,” and I have been applying it ever since.

I’d like to share the definition of procedural justice from Wikipedia. It’s a bit unwieldy, but stay with me. Skim if you need to.
Procedural justice concerns the fairness and the transparency of the processes by which decisions are made, and may be contrasted with distributive justice (fairness in the distribution of rights or resources), and retributive justice (fairness in the punishment of wrongs). Hearing all parties before a decision is made is one step that would be considered appropriate to be taken in order that a process may then be characterized as procedurally fair. Some theories of procedural justice hold that fair procedure leads to equitable outcomes, even if the requirements of distributive or restorative justice are not met. It has been suggested that this is the outcome of the higher quality interpersonal interactions often found in the procedural justice process, which has shown to be stronger in affecting the perception of fairness during conflict resolution.

I know, this definition feels like something being explained by a lawyer, so let me give you a pragmatic example to make it relevant to the day-to-day efforts of a service-based business.

Consider this situation faced by a manager of an office: It’s Friday afternoon when the manager learns that a key account is in jeopardy and the only way to save it is for the team to come in over the weekend to make sure deliverables are completed before Monday.

Procedurally unjust action:
The manager asks everyone to join an emergency meeting, then walks into the conference room and says, “Everyone has to come in and work this weekend. Cancel your plans and be here at 8 a.m. sharp tomorrow.” The manager walks out of the office. The team commences a marathon gripe session that lasts through the weekend and into the next week.

Procedurally just action:
The manager asks everyone to join an emergency meeting to discuss a very important account. Before the meeting, she meets with two key influencers, John and Sandy, and explains the situation and the need to rally the team to save the account. John and Sandy are fired up and ready to be there. Then the manager walks into the conference room and says, “I have just learned that our most important account is in jeopardy. There is a deliverable that must be finished by Monday morning or we could lose the account for good. I know that everyone probably has plans this weekend and you have all been working hard, but I need to ask for a team collaboration over the weekend to make sure we keep our business strong. I had a chance to connect with John and Sandy and they have both agreed to join me to get the work done. I need to ask that everyone who can join us does so. I will have lunch and snacks brought in so we can focus together on getting the work done and wrap it up as soon as possible. For anyone who can come in, you can take comp days when it fits with your workload. Anyone who cannot join us, please see me directly after this meeting so your tasks can be delegated to someone else.” The manager stays after meeting to answer any questions. Team rallies and the account is saved.

As you can see, applied procedural justice is not just policy and procedure; it’s the process in which we go about dealing with specific situations.

Here is another situation related to a difficult client conversation that will feel familiar to many of you.

Consider a situation in which a services team is just wrapping up a project with a client. The client is happy and has requested the team take on a second project of similar scope. The project team lead reports that the client had some challenges providing their review feedback in a timely fashion, which caused challenges on the first project. During the project, the team lead had mentioned a few times that the client partner’s performance had caused setbacks for the team, but no formal change order or complaint was shared with the client. However, the team lead was frustrated, as was the team.

Procedurally unjust action:
The project team lead, while still being frustrated by the client partner’s performance, scopes the next project, anticipating the client partner will perform the same way. He builds in new assumptions and additional work effort, and then adds a little more on top of that… well, just in case. He then sends off the statement of work (SOW) to the client partner and goes out on a two-day vacation. The client partner gets the SOW, compares it to the last project, and thinks, “What the…?” She calls the team lead, who can’t be reached for several days, causing the client partner to wonder if she’s picked the right vendor team after all.

Procedurally just action:
The project team leads, knowing the team is frustrated, collaborates closely with a few colleagues to scope the new project in a way that is fair for all parties. Once he has a sense that the new project will take longer or cost more, he has an informal conversation with the client partner. He lets her know that the team had incurred additional expenses on the previous project due to the client partner’s performance. The client partner is given an opportunity to explain how things will be different on the new project or agree that it is reasonable because the new project would present the same constraints that caused the previous challenges. The team lead formalizes the agreement in the SOW and sets up a meeting to address any concerns. The team lead presents the new agreement to the project team so they know that the challenges they struggled with have been addressed. Project 2 kicks off.

While there are exceptions to the rule, most of us have a sense of fairness. It is this sense of fairness and the commitment to finding mutually beneficial agreements that create the trust that can be drawn upon in difficult situations.

At SweetRush, we try very hard to apply procedural justice to conflicts involving employees, contract negotiations, production pushes, price negotiations, and more. And with some exceptions, taking the lead on creating a procedurally just situation has built stronger relationships. It puts everyone on the same side of the table looking for a mutually fair outcome, which strengthens the idea that we are all in it together to create a successful experience and project outcome.

Tough Love: Finding the Right Match in Your Client-Vendor Relationship

November 2, 2015June 28, 2023 by Lauren Granahan

At SweetRush, we often use analogies when speaking to clients about projects. Home decorating is one of my colleague’s favorite analogy themes. John-Carlos will often say things like, “That would be like me trying to decorate your living room before I’ve even been to your house.” Meaning, we should get to know you—your brand, culture, budget, timeline—before we create a solution that meets your needs. It works. Like most analogies, it takes a concept that might be new to people (designing a game or a simulation or an entire curriculum for their employees) and makes it accessible to them (we all, at some point, have tried to decorate a space and make it feel like “ours”).

The analogy I like most when thinking about the work we do with clients, and particularly the client-vendor relationship, is dating. I’d like to think that this analogy is not just relatable and useful for me (in the spirit of full disclosure, I have been through my fair share of failed relationships), but it’s also universal and human. It has the same accessibility of home décor and does double duty by having the ability to tap into emotions that are often hard to describe.

When I was in my 20s, I dated a guy named Justin. Justin was great; he had strong family values, an incredible work ethic, and wasn’t too hard on the eyes. At that time, I was driven, organized, and probably a little too tightly wound, but was still adventurous and loved to travel. Both Justin and I grew up with similar backgrounds and shared similar values and ideologies—on the face of it, nothing would indicate that we wouldn’t get along.

In reality, it was a total mismatch. He’d had bad experiences in the past with his father being “too Type A” and railed against my tendency to plan our weekend days down to the minute. Conversely, I found his laissez-faire attitude to be wasteful. When I’d relent and allow a “go with the flow” Saturday, we’d invariably end up on the couch talking about “what to do,” and my blood would boil when I thought of all the missed opportunities to get away—if only we had planned!

After a year, we parted ways. Yes, it took a full year of these types of tense interactions for us to wise up and realize “you know, it’s cool—we are both great people, but we just aren’t the right people for each other.” Literally two months later, Justin met the girl who is now his wife and mother of his two stunning and vibrant children. His wife is chill and goes with the flow, and I’m quite happy for them.

I’d like to say that after that year, I made only the right choices. If only it was that easy. I had my share of missteps, but as time moved forward I learned from every interaction: I learned who I mesh with and what the wrong fit feels like. I learned to recognize the feeling in my gut when there are elements that jive. And, as we all hope to do, I moved closer and closer each time to the right partnership.

And so it is in business. One of the many unique things about SweetRush is our commitment to working with clients who align with our values and are truly good fits. Working here, I’ve learned that just as in dating, a client-vendor relationship is two-sided.

We both come with different experiences. We both have certain things that feel right and others that raise alarms. Ultimately, we both have a choice: to date or not to date?

One of the hardest decisions we have to make is telling a potential client—even before we go on that first date—that it’s not a match. Done properly, however, we are able to make the suitor realize that it’s not that they’re not a great company (i.e., Justin), but given who we are (i.e., Lauren) we know that it’s just not a fit (i.e., laissez-faire vs. planner). When explained properly, each party goes away grateful that we didn’t try to work together only to confirm what we already knew: it wasn’t a fit (i.e., one year of tense weekends). Through thoughtful explanation, based on years of experience, we set these clients up for success by setting them free to find the right one for them (i.e., wife and two beautiful children). Sometimes we even play matchmaker and connect them with temporary learning consultants or a partner that can better meet their needs.

One example of a mismatch in a client-vendor relationship is rushed timelines. Given the breadth and depth of our client portfolio, we are obviously attuned to the pressures that organizations are up against—and time is obviously a key factor for most businesses. We’re able to realize efficiencies over the course of a relationship with our clients and have truly found a groove in which we’re producing our standard, high-quality deliverables in optimized timeframes. That said, for a first engagement, rushing is never going to produce a good result.

Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—it’s just not a match. It is a very difficult decision to tell a client it’s not a match, because we want to help everyone who approaches us to be successful. And yes, we won’t benefit from the revenue that client-vendor relationship might have brought us. But ultimately, we know clients come to us for expert guidance and the best consultation. We like to think that recognizing a mismatch, and pointing those clients in a more suitable direction, shows that we do truly care about the success of their initiative—and this tough love approach is the ultimate consultation we can give.

First Down Fridays: Celebrating Small Project Victories

October 30, 2015June 28, 2023 by Shauna Vaughan

American football season is here again! It seems like just yesterday that I, a New Orleans Saints fan, lost a bet and had to wear a Dallas Cowboys shirt when they made it to the playoffs.

After all these years of watching the game, the language of it has crept into my everyday vernacular. The strategy of the game has crept its way into how I think about things and how I do things at work. I have been known to find a football analogy for just about anything.

But my favorite analogy is one that builds teams, motivates individuals (and teams), and serves as a good compass. You might say it serves as a page in my playbook. See what I did there?

First downs are a big deal in football. They are small victories on the way to the goal: the touchdown. Without them, the game might even be less interesting. Everyone has heard that we should celebrate small victories in projects, but have you seen the way football players celebrate a first down? What if we celebrated small victories on projects like that? Happy dances, anyone?

I recommend what I call “First Down Friday.” I implemented this previously, and it was a successful way to keep the team motivated and in better spirits during a very long, arduous project. Every Friday morning I sent out an email (subject line: First Down Friday!), and I asked the team for their victories and small wins from the week. It was great to see all the emails that followed: lots of kudos, celebrations, and virtual happy dances.

And there’s research to back this up. Teresa Amabile, Edsel Bryant Ford professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, calls them “small wins.” Amabile has been conducting studies to hone in on the work environments that yield “creative, productive performance.”

She coins the phrase “inner work life”—that’s the feeling that you have about work, and whether you are intrinsically motivated to perform well. Turns out that how you feel at work one day can actually impact how you perform the very next day!

One of key contributors to a positive inner work life? What Amabile calls “nourishers”—just like my First Down Fridays, they are words of encouragement and recognition. Think about how you feel when you are recognized for a job well done. Do you wake up the next morning energized and ready to do your best?

It’s tempting to wait until a project is complete and then send a huge shoutout to everyone on the team. Of course, that kind of recognition is great as well, but it’s also important to acknowledge the small milestones and accomplishments.

Turn them into small, brief celebrations. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy!

What do you do to celebrate small milestones or accomplishments?

Reference: Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer, “The Power of Small Wins,” Harvard Business Review, May 2011, https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins/.

7 Things I’ve Learned from Sports that You Can Apply to Your Professional Life

June 30, 2015September 15, 2022 by Esteban Cascante

I’ve always been a sports enthusiast. In the past few years, I’ve completed numerous running and biking competitions and now I’m training every day for my first triathlon.
Professionally, I have a full-time position as a project manager at SweetRush (a fast-paced learning and development company), and I earned my masters in project management last December.
So, while I am generally pretty driven, pushing myself in sports has helped me to know myself better and to get to know and learn from people I really appreciate. Through sports I have learned life lessons that have also influenced my professional development. I’d like to share some with you.

1. Believe in yourself. You are stronger and smarter than you think.

The number of people who have told me they’d love to run a 10K but believe they can’t do it is staggering. My answer is always the same: “You are able to do it—you just need to believe you can and work for it!”
The same happens in other aspects of our lives. Some time ago, a friend (who also happens to be a runner) told me that when he was about to finish his studies to become a doctor, he was offered a scholarship to study microsurgery in another country. His initial reaction? “I am not smart enough to do that.” In the end, he stood up to his fear and accepted the scholarship. He is now one of the top microsurgeons in my country, Costa Rica, and he has saved dozens of lives.
No matter the goal, the first step is to tell yourself you are good enough to do it.

2. Be disciplined, and work hard.

Not even the most gifted athlete in the world could achieve great heights without an honest effort and hard work. It’s true that talent is important, but you won’t get far without discipline and elbow grease.
All of the people I admire—athletes and professionals—are always the hardest working people in the room. They practice their craft outside their regular schedule and invest time and effort in becoming the best version of themselves.
Nothing you really want and is worth having will just walk in the door. You have to go out and grab it.

3. Be a team player.

Most of the time, the achievements of a single person are the result of a larger group of people.
This is even true for individual sports like cycling. At the end of the Tour de France there are only three winners celebrating on the podium, but no one is able to win this 2,088 mile competition on his own. In cycling, every captain has a big team behind him. Some of them are in charge of carrying the food and water, others set the pace on the hills, and all of them protect the captain from the wind so he can save as much energy as possible.
Have you ever thought you deserved all the credit for a successful project you finished “on your own”? Think twice. You likely received a lot of help without even noticing it, even if it’s your partner cooking a meal to give you time to do your thing.
There are always people “carrying the food and water” for us (or at least the coffee), or friends, family, or co-workers helping us in the “steep sections” of the projects. Remember this when it’s your time to put your chest to the wind and protect another team member. What goes around, comes around.

4. Celebrate your achievements.

There is nothing like achieving something you have worked hard for, even if it seems small to others or even to you. Celebrating small things lets you take on other bigger things. Celebrate if you finish your first walk around the block or a 10K in an hour or whatever your goal. Celebrate if you receive good feedback on a project. Celebrate if you woke up early and went to the gym (just try not to celebrate with a cake!). And shout for joy if you finish the first semester of a new course of study or do something to foster your career!
Celebrating the big and the small things keeps us happy and motivated.

5. Look for a mentor.

Elite athletes almost never coach themselves, even if they have the knowledge to do so. Why? Because they need someone who can be a bit removed and see things with more clarity and less of the personal blindness we all have about ourselves.
Sometimes, when we are in the middle of a complex project or situation, all we need is a fresh perspective.
Having a co-worker you trust give you advice or at least ask the right questions does not mean you are less capable—quite the contrary. I’ve learned in sports it’s those who really want to excel and improve who seek the help of others. It means you are smart enough to understand you don’t have all the answers. It means you know people have a different set of skills and life experiences that can enrich your point of view, and allow you to make better decisions. If you look around, I am pretty sure you will find someone to mentor you, share thoughts, or be a sounding board for just about every situation.

6. Be aware you are setting an example, so set the right one.

Last year, a casual acquaintance started calling me to ask me about the right shoes for running, the right gear, the amount of water, the better gels, etc. Some months later he called me again and asked me to visit him because he wanted to show me something.
I dropped by one day, and he proudly showed me that he had lost almost 35 pounds!
He wanted to thank me because, in his words, I had inspired him to start exercising. He had read my Facebook posts, and heard my conversations with other people and decided he wanted to give it a try. That was why he called me for advice in the first place. Up to that moment, I didn’t realize I could inspire anyone. I thought it was something only great athletes or personalities could do.
What I learned from this experience is that there are always people looking at us. If you have the discipline to work out more, your family will notice. If you work hard, your peers will notice. If you stay up late studying, your life partner will notice. And if you behave with integrity every day, everyone including your children will notice.
There are always people looking at you. Your example is important and can make a difference in their lives.

7. Enjoy the ride.

When I ran my first half-marathon, I tried to do it as fast as I could. The weather was very hot and humid, and I arrived at the finish line completely burned out. I felt I did not want to continue to train and compete. Fifty minutes later a woman arrived and—before going through the finish line she stopped to hug her family and say hello to her friends—then she walked in and posed for the photos, smiling all the time.
In that moment I realized I was doing things wrong, not because I had run too hard but because I hadn’t enjoyed the training or the race. I wanted to train to go fast so I stopped running with my dog, and later with some of my friends, because they were slowing me down. When I finished the race, I felt really discouraged.
Now I’d rather run with my girlfriend and have a good post-training breakfast with her and my friends than run all the time as fast as I can.
If you are so focused on your goals that you don’t enjoy the process of getting there, or if you are pushing your friends, family, or co-workers away, you are doing it wrong.
Work at finding the balance that works for you. Go out and “just do it,” and then celebrate.
I hope sharing what I have learned with you helps in some small way. I am on my path as are you on yours, and would greatly appreciate hearing how this blog might have helped you. I’d like to also hear your ideas and life experiences, so add them to this list. Pura Vida!

Wolves and Rivers — Innovative Ideas for Organizational Development and Sales

May 15, 2014September 15, 2022 by Andrei Hedstrom

What Are Your Wolves and Rivers? Applied Biomimicry Can Yield Innovative Ideas.

Take a second and consider a few tough problems you face at work or in life. More than likely, if you think about possible solutions, they are very direct—if nail, then hammer. We human beings often make some of our biggest mistakes when we are trying to be overly direct (too much force, too little finesse), or when we are short-sighted or overreact in the way we address challenges.

Yet, as we know, there’s more than one way to solve a problem, and those who step outside the obvious path are heralded as innovators. What is one of the most inspiring sources of innovation? Nature.

When considering design inspiration in nature, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. So, it’s movie time! (This video is 4:33 minutes and well worth your time!)

Can you feel it? The awakening that occurs when we consider that the energies we apply, even if small, can have earth-moving potential? The rippling impact of the Yellowstone wolves on their environment is an example of a trophic cascade: “An ecological process that starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom.” The wolves were not a direct solution to a destabilized river system, but their actions had cascading positive effects, allowing for more overall abundance.

Applying the Concept of Wolves and Rivers: Innovative Ideas for Education Challenges

Let’s see how we can apply the concept of trophic cascades to some organizational challenges. Pretend you are a school principal and you are facing declining math test scores. What do you do? Have students spend more time in classes doing math? Cut other programs and add math tutors?

Where is your wolf? Instead of using the aforementioned direct solutions, consider investing in a top-notch music program. Multiple studies over the last few decades have illustrated that music instruction increases math ability. But the music program (WOLF) wouldn’t just impact math scores (DEER) because music programs have been statistically proven to significantly and positively impact students in many other ways (RIVERS, BEARS, BIRDS, TREES, and so forth.)

Such positive effects include:

Improved attendance rates
Improved overall grades
Better overall performance on all standardized tests
Better overall language skills
Increased performance of people with learning disabilities
Boost in student confidence
Reduction in rates of drug addiction
Increased likelihood of graduating from high school and college
Increased SAT scores

(See this research summary at VH1’s Save the Music Foundation.)

A solid music department could change the course of the rivers at your school. Strange that we often hear stories of schools closing these very programs because they need to narrow the curriculum to address standardized tests. Actually there are plenty of examples of the wolf in education—check out Stephen Ritz, a South Bronx teacher, and his students addressing challenges by growing food and all of the amazing, rippling effects of their simple acts.

Innovative Ideas for Sales and Marketing Challenges

Recently one of our clients put us in the wolf’s role. A marketing and sales group for a large manufacturing company was headed up by a dynamic leader and a great team of folks. They were thinking outside of the normal ways to attract new customers—spiff programs, Super Bowl ads, and other familiar paths. They were looking for a wolf.

Creating an education-based marketing strategy both for sales associates and consumers was where we came in. It was a bold move: creating a curriculum that supported independent dealers and stores to better train their sales associates, not only in how to sell the client’s specific products, but how to be better sales professionals in general. We also supported the people coaching the sales associates—creating a cascade of job aids, communications, and courses infused with gamification. All of this was tied into a highly engaging, gamified online portal.

In addition to these steps, since our client cares about the environment, they have invested sizable amounts into R&D for sustainable products. They are real innovators, and a great fit for the customer demographic called LOHAS (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability). LOHAS customers care about sustainable products, and are more receptive to advertising and marketing in the form of shareable educational materials that highlight products and the values behind them. LOHAS consider where they spend their money to be a form of activism, and educational marketing materials allow them to share their purchases with people who have similar values.

Consider some of the rivers:

Sales associates sell more, which benefits them, our client, and the dealers
Training impacts retention and engagement for associates
Reduced work effort on the part of independent dealer managers
Better customer service
Better informed customers make happier customers
Better informed customers and sales associates lead to product selection that matches the customer’s needs and increases likelihood of repeat business
Targeted marketing to LOHAS gives our client a competitive edge in one of the fastest-growing customer demographics
Success in marketing to LOHAS emboldens sustainability-related initiatives for our client and the industry as a whole

Can Examples of Biomimicry Inform Innovative Ideas For All Kinds of Business Challenges?

Part of what excites me about trophic cascades is that once again I see how many rich and innovative solutions can be derived from natural systems and elements. I have long been a fan of the emerging field of biomimicry (see also Janine Benyus’s TED talk).

In a future post I will share more ideas around biomimicry, but for now, I want to broaden the discussion and demonstrate that the metaphorical well is deeper and wider than just wolves and rivers. Here are some quick, inspiring ideas:

As a CEO concerned with business development, I can’t help but consider this piece on elephants as gardeners. (Watch this video from BBC.) Instead of cold calling and direct sales, how do we consume and generate new opportunities?

Or this one, where mangrove forests act as shields against rough weather. (Watch this video from BBC.) Is this a model for Internet security developers? How do you create such a complex network of activity and digital mass that no one can come out the other side?

Or as a consultant for a Big 4 firm, what can I learn from the Amazon’s Flying Rivers that could help a manufacturing client deal with water shortages in the long term? (Watch this video from BBC.)

My Own Wolves and Rivers: Seeking Innovative Ideas for Organizational Development

I have two current organizational development (OD) challenges to which I am interested in applying this kind of thinking. First up are business development efforts, including consultative sales, account management, proposals, awards and speaking opportunities, and overall marketing. The second is operational: while some production environments lend themselves to the more simplistic factory model, others do not. As a CEO of a creative firm delivering customized training and communications solutions, I am interested in scalable production models that do not become overly obsessed with efficiency at the cost of creativity.

Considering these challenges in the light of lessons learned from the wolves and rivers of Yellowstone Park, I’m mapping them in new ways. My approach is less linear and direct cause-and-effect, and more, as Carl Jung would look at content in psychoanalysis, circumambulation—walking around each interaction within the cascades. In this exercise, even if I have not landed on the exact strategy in quick order, I become a better observer and find myself asking better questions. Sometimes it is the willingness to remain the state of questioning that delivers the real innovations and often opens ourselves up to the fact that a cascade within any system involves others—other people’s answers and questions contributing to the larger system of possibilities. It is at once both bewildering and inspiring.

If you have noticed interesting trophic cascades and applied biomimicry yielding innovative ideas for organizational development, marketing and sales, education, or any other endeavor, please share them with me. I am very excited to integrate this into my approach to work and life, and welcome an open dialog with others.

Corporate Values are the Key to Leveraged Business Communications

December 12, 2013June 28, 2023 by Andrei Hedstrom

I’ve become somewhat obsessed lately with the relationship between HR and CSR. I’ve posted on this topic using a metaphor of a budding romance between training and CSR, and I’ve written about some business examples of the value of good training and communications for CSR.

This article takes a more visual approach to the topic. Inspired by a simple Venn diagram from Elaine Cohen’s excellent book CSR for HR, I’d like to propose a new leveraged approach to business communications.

I’ll begin with a shout-out to Elaine for her groundbreaking work linking the HR and CSR functions. Where all too often these two areas of business are siloed from each other, HR is now picking up on the value of CSR activities to enhance core HR areas such as employee recruiting, retention, engagement, training, health and safety, diversity, volunteering, and of course employee communications more generally. With her Business Communications 2.0 framework, Cohen shows how linking HR and CSR communications can help companies better engage their employees through communicating CSR activities internally.

We love this idea and recognize that it is a new one for a lot of businesses. Yet even in businesses where the idea has traction, it seems that implementation is where the rubber meets the road.

So from my role as a CEO of a company that is as much interested in implementation as it is in strategy, I want to pose taking this idea one step further. Our approach focuses on tactical efficiencies in aligning CSR, HR, and PR/marketing. It builds on Elaine’s more strategic approach but brings all three perspectives together so that there is a sweet spot in the middle, born of alignment around shared communication needs. From this sweet spot, a platform for the communication of the company’s values can be created, not just at a high-level messaging perspective but as a suite of content and communications assets.

Aligning Internal, External and CSR communications

Through a process of content analysis, values assessment, and needs assessment, a team can design and develop a central online expression of the company’s values and a strategy for leveraging that expression beyond this one core asset. Thus, a values-based communications platform is built.

The idea here is we convene your best team from marketing, HR and/or employee education, CSR, sustainability, and PR/marketing to co-create the best-leveraged asset strategy for your business communications needs. By combining your budgetary powers, you can make a truly best-in-class set of values-based communications assets.

One obvious starting point for the heart of the values platform is an interactive CSR report. This report speaks to both external and internal audiences in a way that engages and inspires. We believe that a best-in-class interactive CSR report takes an education-based marketing approach and does not just look to add more bells and whistles. Ideas include:

An interactive CSR report microsite
A video or click-through avatar-guided learning tour of your core business values and CSR contributions
A game-based approach (e.g., leveraging our pub-style trivia game) to teach visitors about your CSR programs
Interactive charts and graphs showing the results of CSR-related changes
Interactive education-based banners and infographics

We believe this is an all-too-often missed opportunity for real learning and emotional engagement that can replace the sterile and unremarkable standards we see today. You know what I’m talking about—those plain text corporate responsibility policy documents and those thrilling CSR report PDFs, spiced up only by pie charts and pictures of people planting trees.

Within the framework of the interactive CSR report, there are messaging and graphic elements that can be repurposed for other needs such as recruiting, new-hire and ongoing employee trainings, dealer and vendor communications, or for parts of the websites the company maintains for various audiences.

Building on this foundation, a full platform of repurposable and multi-stakeholder assets adds depth and addresses specific needs. Additional elements might include:

A slide deck on community service activities
Integrating eco-rewards into your company SPIF programs
A video message from the CEO on the company’s environmental policies
Internal messaging such as:
- Intranet banners
- Talking points for managers for building buy-in and champions internally (e.g., a PPT deck that gives the basic case for why CSR is important in that company)
- E-mail blasts and regular newsletters
- Dealer brochures, posters, and collateral
- And more. You tell us what kinds of assets would serve your business!

I’m happy to report that branding thought leaders are beginning to recognize the value of this kind of thinking. A recent Sustainable Brands post on the topic of the need for marketing chops to improve CSR reports definitely gave me some hope. Taking this and Cohen’s ideas combined, we can kill all sorts of birds (in the most humane way…) with the stone of this kind of values-based business communications platform.

Perhaps business unit politics makes this win-win-win idea too good to be true, but I’ll take a stand for idealism here and simply state that the more we can bring the messaging and messengers for an organization together to collaborate on the best and most meaningful practices a company is engaged in, the better. If for some reason the ideal situation does not emerge, we do believe that even within one area of the business—say, marketing—there is a real case for this values-based platform for people to draw from within the department.

Any way you slice it, from the statistics we have been seeing, the likelihood is that people inside and outside your organization right now would be more engaged by better communication of your organization’s values and how you practice them.

The Ecology of Good Things

October 15, 2013September 15, 2022 by Andrei Hedstrom

(This post is the follow up to Andrei’s last post about ecology and business.)

Life is all about thriving. You could even call it a shared value of all living systems. This value often manifests as an urge or impulse to move toward that which supports life. Plants reach for the sun, roots move toward water, social species move toward the community. To me, a business is a living system as well. The urge to thrive manifests itself as a need to make a profit. But just as a plant needs sun and water to thrive, so also a business needs more than just profit. Our core value at SweetRush lies in being what is commonly called a triple bottom line (3BL) business — one that moves toward a mutual good that encompasses economic, social, and ecological considerations. People, planet, and profit. Maximizing thriving, minimizing harm. Good Things!

So at its core, this value is what the Good Things Initiative here at SweetRush is all about. But moving from the old profit-only mindset to the more complex 3BL approach has not been easy. Like the Osa Rainforest in Costa Rica, this sort of complex harmony requires evolution, time, and opportunities to thrive.

As I mentioned in my last post, “How a Rainforest Changed Our Company,” one of the key lessons learned has been that the people part of the 3BL approach starts with the company’s internal team. As The Body Shop® founder Anita Roddick famously said, “We were searching for employees, but people showed up instead.” Even as CEO, standing on my Good Things soapbox is of little value until I am actually awakening and empowering that same impulse in the minds and hearts of everyone on my team. For our complex ecology to thrive, everyone has to be moving toward the light, so to speak, and I can’t just tell them from the top to do so. I have to inspire them to bring their own innate life-affirming values to work with them every day.

And once I got this, it’s been a lot easier! Our people are inherently values-driven individuals — we have always had a strong culture of caring at SweetRush, and we are very intentional about discovering this quality in our HR process. We look for people who care about their craft, the people they work with, and the world around them. This alignment helps our organization in the practice of our values, of course, but also in offering better service.

Now, “I” has shifted to “We,” and with ongoing employee engagement and education around our nuanced approach, our team is more and more focused on encouraging and nurturing a sense of “good things” in many ways across our business. Here’s a teaser of some of the keystone parts of our ever-evolving Good Things ecology:

The Good Things Rebrand

2013 has been a year of self-expression for SweetRush with a whole new brand, website, blog, and active social media presence. All of these efforts are expressions of our commitment to more actively share our values and to share our services with new audiences. We use our web presence to promote Good Things in the world in many ways, such as with our “thumbs of change” series, our new portraits of world-changers project on Facebook®, and our upcoming sustainability pub quiz (on our website soon, stay tuned…).

We’ve also focused our business development toward finding client partners aligned with our values and whose own CSR endeavors we can support with our customized services). These efforts have already differentiated us to client partners seeking a team with shared commitments to sustainability and socially responsible business practices. And we are thrilled to be supporting more and more inspiring 3BL business approaches with our training and design skills. You can get a taste of some of the work we’ve done in this arena in our Good Things Facebook album.

The Meaning of Work Campaign

Recently, some of our team met to explore how we could bring more of the meaning and purpose of work into our training design.
Why? Because meaning improves both work performance and satisfaction!

Learning is improved when leaders have an emotional connection to learning.
Intrinsic motivation is much more powerful in improving performance and creating change.
Meaning and purpose connect us to more complex and dynamic values than the simple single financial bottom line.
When we are making progress on meaningful work, we thrive better — even in suboptimal work environments. (Check out Teresa Amabile’s The Progress Principle for more on this.)

For us, this commitment to bring meaning to training also helps to embed our company values into how we offer our services. Our team unanimously agrees that this in turn enhances our services and differentiates our approach and process. So for SweetRush, asking whether there is an opportunity to enhance the training with connecting to meaning and purpose is now a sweet item on our best practices checklist for clients and a way that we enact our values in our day-to-day project work. For more on this innovative approach, check out my colleague Catherine’s blog post, “Does Your Training Have Meaning?”

Virtual Team Volunteering

SweetRushians love volunteering — check out this inspiring little project from this past spring in Costa Rica, for example. Getting together like this is rare for our virtual teams, though, so we use a theme-based rolling campaign approach. Our current theme is food justice. This fall, employees will get paid for volunteering for food-related causes of their choice in their local areas with groups of SweetRush employees encouraged to volunteer together where possible. There will also be ongoing education and awareness opportunities for staff throughout the campaign. Stay tuned for more on this on our SweetRush Facebook page!

Quality of Life Officer

Absolutely central to any effective approach to 3BL business is walking the walk internally and caring for your own employees first. One way we have devised to do this is through the role of a Quality of Life Officer (QLO), who is responsible for advocating a healthy life-work harmony for our team, in line with our values. This year we are revising our approach to have this be a rotating position among our department heads and their deputies. This will help vary the voice and focus of this role, and also create new leadership and learning opportunities for our team.

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These are a few of the components that make up the ecology of Good Things at SweetRush. The everyday practice of bringing our values to life through our services is of course our most central offering, and I’m pleased to see our team come together to find more and more creative ways to integrate our Good Things values into our core services. Stepping back, I see a healthy, productive, virtual forest beginning to take root at SweetRush. And from my home office in California, suddenly that magical rainforest in Costa Rica that first helped me see the light doesn’t seem so far away.

How a Rainforest Changed Our Company

July 31, 2013September 15, 2022 by Andrei Hedstrom

Some time ago, I took a trip that changed my life and the future of our company. The life-changing lesson was about the nature of design, and the power of business to help build a better future. And I learned it, of all places, from a rainforest.

The “Aha” Vacation

At the time, I was living in San Francisco: an amazing city to live in. During the ’90s and 2000s, it was filled with intrigue for everyone from yogis to barfly hipsters to artists to entrepreneurs. It seemed to me an absolute paramount of collaborative social design — an ever-evolving expression of humanity and what it is capable of on many levels. When I had the chance, I would drive out to Treasure Island at night with friends and look back at the City by the Bay, lit up and bustling with the activity of a world going online. I was amazed to think that what I was looking at had essentially been built in a just a few hundred years.

In 2005, I went to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica and saw what the natural world was capable of in its design. Countless layers of life and process were going on in that old growth rainforest, with endless complexity and ruthless harmony. Without exaggeration, this is one of the most biodiverse places on our planet, with four species of monkeys, flocks of scarlet macaws, sea turtles, and blue morpho butterflies the size of your outstretched hand. Trees, bushes, and vines were layered one on top of the other with some of the rarest orchids in the world hanging from them. It’s a system that is prolific in its mass, activity, and beauty — as it has been for thousands of years.

When I returned to San Francisco, its mere hundreds of years of social innovation seemed child’s play in comparison to the scale, complexity, and ingenuity I experienced in Osa. The business world in particular seemed very immature in its design when I looked at what it was doing in the world, and how simplistic it seemed to need things to create or perceive any sort of abundance. How limited its feedback mechanisms are with what seems like a single feedback of a single bottom line, whereas the rainforest measures itself on so many levels and responds in kind.

Soap boxes set aside (and used as a compost bin, of course), this isn’t a rant about corporate greed, but rather about corporate influence and inspiration over its own design. The level of awareness, process, design, and systems that I saw making up the business world and other aspects of human society just felt infantile in comparison to the ancient systems I witnessed in the Osa.

I began stewing over how business might learn from nature’s design principles. I also woke up to the urgency of our need to learn to exist in greater harmony with the natural we are a part of so that we can address global challenges like peak oil, materials, and climate change.

Lessons in Green Business Leadership

It was around this time that I began attending the Green Festival in San Francisco, and learned from pioneering business leaders who are working to enact just this sort of nature-inspired change in our systems design.

I heard Ray Anderson of Interface Carpet Corporation (learn about Ray’s own “aha” moment here) talk about businesses moving from plunderers of the earth to beneficiaries and stewards of sustainable economic and ecological systems. His vision seemed so consistent with the abundance I saw in the Osa, and I saw how businesses could become more robust by aligning and being inspired by natural constraints.

Learning from Ray and others shed light on the challenges of bringing society, economy, and nature into harmony, I became inspired by my own role and influence as a business owner. With SweetRush, I could be a contributor in this movement of rethinking business as not just a user of abundance, but as contributor to an abundant system.

Discovering Our Own Green Business Ecology

Initially, I was rather green myself as I bumbled into what these insights meant for my business. Like many early-stage eco-enthusiasts, I first got on a soap box and started preaching. While there were some like minds around me, for the most part I was not convincing. (Check out this great video on “green jujitsu” to get a sense of why this approach so rarely works!)

Through this process, my assumptions about where this change would be most meaningful have shifted. Initially, I felt we should rush out and help other businesses wake up to a sustainable way of doing business. Now I believe our team should be focused on nurturing, expanding, and evolving our existing cultural and values foundations to a more-holistic approach to “doing good” as a business. We have great skills and abilities — now, how do we use them to help larger organizations with their best practices and initiatives?

There’s no preaching in the rainforest. The complex ecology is created through ongoing, dynamic, and sometimes tense collaboration amongst all players in the system. Over the years, I have learned my way into this healthier approach with the ecology that is SweetRush: building team buy-in, co-creating our vision of what doing good looks like for our business, and working with our existing values and resources to grow our positive influence both internally and externally.

As a leader, I am really a steward of the health of our business ecology: the well-being of our people, the vibrancy of our resource base, and the enactment of our foundational culture of caring internally, with clients, and with the greater natural, industrial, and social ecologies in which we are embedded.

Seeing the Rainforest Through the Trees

My time in the City by the Bay is less frequent, and perhaps that makes its continued evolution more striking each time I visit. Some changes are positive: concrete medians replaced with permeable surfaces and drought-tolerant plants — an effort to reduce the burden on city drainage and create ecosystem. Like the Osa, San Francisco seems to be leaning toward diversity while searching for a cacophonous harmony.

SweetRush continues moving in this direction as well. We seem to understand that abundance is all around us, and by opening up to and showing up for that abundance, we can increase it rather than just taking it away from others. We are connecting our systems to the systems of clients who share our values and want to create more dynamic and collaborative commerce: better products in more ethical ways. And we’re directly supporting nonprofits and foundations, amplifying their impact with our craft under the banner of services we call “Good Things.”

This post is about seeing the rainforest through the trees — the birds eye-view if you will. Our evolution as a company in a landscape of companies is inspired by this very new and yet ancient way of organizing. I have shared only the very beginning of an unfolding story about how one organization continues to evolve and create itself. Learning what SweetRush has to offer the world around it and the people who comprise it has been an epic journey on many levels, yet at the same time, always feels like the start of a new adventure.

Enjoy this article? We’re so glad you did. Read more and connect with our CEO Andrei Hedstrom on LinkedIn!