Doing Business Differently for Greater Profits and Creating a Better World

This is my Jerry Maguire moment when he wrote his mission statement (Yes, it has been 27-years since this movie was released.)

A wee bit of context:

Intactix is on a journey to revolutionize safety. There are too many preventable serious incidents harming people, property, and the environment. The International Labour Organization reports that every 10-seconds 12-people are seriously injured or killed on the job. The human and economic costs are staggering. The harsh reality is that our current safety practices are not up to the task and have reached their limitations of effectiveness. The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) has stated that new paradigms are required to improve serious incident rates. We have worked over the last 22-years to develop a new paradigm and new measurement standards that significantly improves safety performance and provides a roadmap to easily replicate the Paul O’Neill Alcoa story to achieve better business.

This is our business however, we are also on a journey to show how business can be done and structured differently.?

Journey to show how business can be done differently:

I am fortunate given my education and experience in occupational psychology. This is the intersection between people and organisations to create high-performing business. I also work as an applied behavioural scientist which is about practical on-the-ground tactics for the betterment of humans.?

Intactix will be a working example of putting science into practice.

We will utilize science-based best practices to create an environment where people thrive and collectively create ecstatic customers which is essential to business success.?#sustainableworkplace

Figure 1: Socio-technical Process for Creating Desired Outcomes

Governance and leadership is responsible for creating the environment that shapes the behaviours necessary to achieve desired outcomes. Success is 85% social, and this is where leadership need to spend their efforts. The path to doing so is well prescribed with well researched science and real-world application utilizing and embedding the tools of:

1. Emotional Intelligence,
2. Psychological Safety,
3. Positive Psychology, and
4. Self-Determination (needs fulfillment).

On the technical side:

1. Pay more than a living wage,
2. Cap executive compensation – tie it into lowest paid employee,
3. Create working boundaries and flexibility specific to individual’s requirements, and
4. Remove corporate hierarchical structures.

The last bullet is the most challenging aspect. The problem with hierarchies is that moving up the food chain provides power, prestige, and more money. This is a structural problem that erodes teamwork in favour of self-interest. The result is backbiting, politics and toxicity.

It is imperative for success that 21st Century agile structures be implemented. Steve Denning has written extensively on this in Forbes For Intactix this is easy as we are small and don’t have egos associated with position titles so there is no difficult change to be made.

What is shocking is that behavioural economics and short-termism has led to these tools not being applied despite the evidence of greater profits and evidence of harm - (see U.S Surgeon General "Our workplaces play a significant role in our lives")

Purpose of a corporation “leave the world a better place than when you found it.”?

Intactix is a mature start-up meaning proven and field-tested IP, advanced technology and strong product market fit. What we don’t have currently is deep market penetration. Our core offering is SaaS performance assurance platform (think Salesforce ) that has application with:

1. Supply chain and contractor management,
2. Insurance underwriting (Property & Causality), and
3. Investment managers (ESG) e.g., the Blackrocks of the world.

These three groups have a high need for reliable and valid data that provides performance assurance and predictability with future performance.?

Cue Jerry Maguire:

The business model provides a captive market with the potential to be a profit generating machine. Our plan is to use a healthy portion to help others do good. What can we help achieve? What big time problems can be solved for the betterment of society and humankind beyond our core offering of protecting people and planet?

This a key part of our journey; to model how business can be done differently to create a better world through conscious capitalism. It is starting to gain momentum and we are adding our voices to it.

People want to have purpose; they want to be part of something big and feel that they are making a real difference. This creates a virtuous circle where the business benefits allowing it to continue to do more good works.

Putting it all Together: A Case Study of Conscious Capitalism

Backwoods Energy Services provides a recent case study of this in action with a small construction contractor that is owned by the Alexis Nakota Souix Nation? where we played a small part in their success. Truly inspirational.

In 2015 the Nation brought in new leadership to transform the business. It was determined that poor safety performance with contractor HSE qualifications was a barrier in penetrating the marketplace. It was decided to take the disadvantage and turn into an advantage. To that end, Intactix was engaged: https://www.backwoodsenergy.ca/about/safety/

Safety was developed as a key market differentiator using science-based approaches and by tapping into High Reliability Organization principles. The objective was to have Hiring Clients see Backwoods as safety innovators and an organization that they themselves should emulate.

Further, just like Paul O’Neil and Alcoa, safety was used to rally and align the organization using safety as a keystone habit to drive operational excellence.?

The journey produced significant results over the next 4-years revenue grew by 1500%, increasing economic benefits to the Alexis Nation by 614%, and employment of Nation members by 269%.

This resulted in a

• Decrease in social issues, and
• Implementation of an affordable housing program.

?"Construction is just a tool we use to drive our purpose — which is empowering Indigenous people."

The company succeeded by leveraging safety turning it from a disadvantage to an advantage. ?Backwoods has been recognized twice by Hiring Clients for their safety culture, leadership and safe operating capability winning Kinder Morgan 2017 contractor safety award for outstanding safety performance and TC Energy’s Chief Executive Officer safety leadership award in 2020.?Further they were The company was named a winner by Waterstone Human Capital in the mid-market category of its Most Admired Corporate Cultures in 2019.

To this day Backwoods lives conscious capitalism "by driving economic opportunity by empowering Indigenous people and communities." https://www.backwoodsenergy.ca/about/

"It is our belief that business can be a force of good in the world and work a place of meaning."

Need New Success Measures

Similar to how we have created a new performance measurement standard with safety we need to look at new measurement standards for business success. Perhaps something similar to a new economic model beyond GDP such as a Wellbeing Economy measure. Not surprising that this is being mostly led by women political leaders.

What a great business to be in. Our core offering allows us to ensure that people and planet are protected from serious harm while helping our clients leverage safety to achieve increased profits and increased employee engagement. The business model affords us the ability to take profits and help others do even more good.

Join us on our journey and follow Intactix Systems Inc.