—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Dr. Libba Pinchot is a consultant, coach, and speaker, building the capacity of leaders to create transformational change in organizations for the betterment of their firms, society and the environment. Libba’s long experience and research in workplace engagement, organizational innovation and corporate sustainability give her intimate knowledge of ways leaders can spread systemic and innovative perspectives through their organizations, transmute endemic limitations of organizations, and devise and implement leading edge practices to bring their organizations responsibly into the future.
Most people want to work from their highest values and be more engaged in making a positive difference through their jobs. Libba believes that there is an enormous opportunity for leaders to help liberate the energy and passion of their colleagues to make the world better through their work, which can ensure institutional viability as well. She works with leaders and teams to devise and implement ways to bring long-term health and sustainability to organizations and the surrounding society and environment.
Gifford Pinchot III is an author, keynote speaker on intrapreneuring and other topics focusing around innovation and sustainability. He has been an organic dairy farmer, a blacksmith, software CEO, and an angel investor. He is the grandson of Gifford Pinchot the American forester and politician who served as the first Chief of the United States Forest Service from 1905 until 1910.
He has published three books. Intrapreneuring introduced a new way of fostering innovation by creating space for innovators to express their entrepreneurial spirit within existing organizations, was a bestseller and published in 15 languages. Tom Peter's claimed the book "Must reading for any corporate executive wishing to survive to the year 2000."
In 2002 he co-founded Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI) which was the first school to offer an MBA in Sustainable Business. In June of 2014 Mr. Pinchot stepped down from the presidency of BGI and is now Founder and President Emeritus of Pinchot University, the container in which BGI now resides. This is allowing him time to continue thinking about the future of intrapreneuring.
He has been awarded numerous awards in his life time, among them, Executive Excellence naming him number 32 on the top 100 leadership thinkers. In 2009 he was awarded the Olympus Lifetime Education Award
Their book The Intelligent Organization took self-organization a step further, to include the everyday work of ordinary employees and a follow-up book in 1994, Intrapreneuring in Action co-authored with Ron Pellman gave guidelines for moving intrapreneuring further.
Pinchot & Company, which they have been running since 1983, has served half of the Fortune 100 and helped them to launch over 700 new products and businesses. In 2010 they were named Purpose Prize fellows.
Rarely do you meet someone who created a word that became common. My guests today, Gifford and Libba Pinchot, created the term intrapraneurship. In the world of leadership and entrepreneurship, they created a discipline. After years of activism in the 60s, through entrepreneurship in the 90s, and what attracted me to them most, they started a business school from scratch, the first to offer an MBA in sustainable business. Beyond teaching students, they changed the field, as you'll hear in our conversation. I've worked with a lot of business schools. Today they all have to work on sustainability. As a professor, I can't imagine sustainability and nature not infused into my courses. The Pinchots helped start that trend. In earlier conversations, we talked about them starting a new branch of leadership and the environment, so toward the end of the conversation, we go meta and talk about how to start a podcast. (I hope you listeners consider starting a branch yourselves. It will give you the opportunity to lead a movement. It will also set you up to meet the most important people in a field of your interest and make them feel great. Anyone listening who wants to meet the most valuable people they want and make them feel great about helping create an environmental legacy, contact me and I'll get you started.)