🎙️ Choosing Your Own Adventure, Purpose & Profit Edition
This week’s Wave Report is a Choose Your Own Adventure-style journey through the power of redemptive entrepreneurship and the intersection of culture and brand.
Have you ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure book?
Above: In Choose Your Own Adventure books, you are the hero, and your decisions throughout the pages of the book dictate the ending.
I had a love-hate relationship with these books as a kid. The sense of choice and being the hero of my own journey was exhilarating. But on the other hand, what if I made the wrong decision and didn’t like the outcome of the story?? 😬
We can learn much about innovation and making decisions from Choose Your Own Adventure books. If you’d like to go deeper into that topic, I would encourage you to read my Wave Report on the topic from last year – Choosing Your Own Adventure 🏔️.
The key takeaway can be summed up in six words – “Make a decision, and make it right.”
Indecision can be particularly detrimental to innovation efforts. By definition, innovation is a process of wading through the unknown to establish a new version of the future. It requires making decisions, and lots of them.
💡 Takeaway: Unlike a Choose Your Own Adventure book, life is a series of decisions that can’t be remade. But like a Choose Your Adventure book, making decisions is the only way to move forward.
Today’s Wave Report is Choose Your Own Adventure-style because we’ve recently dropped TWO episodes of the Purpose & Profit Podcast that you might find helpful.
The Purpose & Profit Podcast is a show that I co-founded a couple of years ago to explore ideas at the intersection of causes and brands. Every other week, we release an episode exploring a cause, brand, or trend that we think leaders can learn from, bridging the worlds of for-profit brands and nonprofit causes.
Your Choose Your Own Adventure for today:
Choose Your Own Adventure
Which of the following podcasts might be most helpful to you as a leader?
Option 1:
Purpose-Driven Leadership: Navigating Redemptive Entrepreneurship and Impact-Driven Business with guest Dan Reed
Option 2:
Culture Built My Brand: Navigating Transformation with guest Ted Vaughn
If you need a little more detail to make your choice, let me describe what we cover in each episode:
Season 4, Episode 4
Purpose-Driven Leadership: Navigating Redemptive Entrepreneurship and Impact-Driven Business
In our most recent episode, we interview Dan Reed, partner at Praxis, a group that works with founders, funders, and innovators who are motivated by faith to address the major issues of our time.
The episode discusses the concept they call “redemptive entrepreneurship” and the intersection of nonprofits, for-profits, founders, and funders.
In our conversation with Dan, we discuss:
The qualities of redemptive leadership in both nonprofit and business contexts.
The power of redemptive entrepreneurship and its relationship to sacrifice—an idea that is not often discussed in business.
What it looks like to redesign the workplace to create what Dan calls “redemptive spaces,” shifting from using people to blessing people.
💡 Takeaway: There is an other-centered approach to leadership focused on achieving creative restoration through sacrifice. This redemptive leadership approach emphasizes benefiting others and contributing positively to culture and society, and Praxis has developed Redemptive Guides for Business, Nonprofits, Philanthropy, and Investing.
For your other Choose Your Own Adventure option, might I suggest a conversation on culture, trust, and navigating transformation?
Season 4, Episode 3
Culture Built My Brand: Navigating Transformation
EPISODE LINK: Culture Built My Brand: Navigating Transformation
In episode 3 of the season, we spent time with Ted Vaughn, partner at Historic Agency, co-author of Culture Built My Brand, and the host of the Future Nonprofit Podcast.
Ted has worked with hundreds of organizations, guiding them through the intricacies of brand-building and executive leadership. Ted’s role as the leader of client transformation at Historic underscores his commitment to helping both for-profit and nonprofit brands thrive in today's dynamic landscape.
In our conversation with Ted, we discuss:
How a brand starts with culture and bridging the two within your organization.
Examples of for-profit and nonprofit brands that integrate culture and brand well.
The relationship of culture and brand to innovation in the face of crisis.
💡 Takeaway: Organizational culture and brand are connected more closely than you might think. A great culture has positive implications for the organization’s brand, and vice versa—good cultures contribute to strong brands.
I hope that one (or maybe both!) of these episodes blesses you this week.
Until next week… Surfs Up! 🌊
- Dave
About the Author | Dave Raley
Consultant, speaker, and writer Dave Raley is the founder of Imago Consulting, a firm that helps non-profits and businesses create profitable growth through sustainable innovation. He’s the author of a weekly trendspotting report called The Wave Report, and the co-founder of the Purpose & Profit Podcast — a show about the ideas at the intersection of nonprofit causes and for-profit brands.
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