Photo by Mattel
CASE STUDIES
Kim Culmone,
SVP Global Product Design, Mattel
Coaching Principles Applied:
- Creating a Living Vision
- Shifting Inner Leadership
- Transcending Preference for Purpose
- Opening Aperture of Possibility
Context:
Kim was a VP at Mattel and in charge of design of the Barbie brand. She attended one of Kirk’s workshops and connected with the True Self, and with it, her entelechy of a deep calling to be in service to the disenfranchised and marginalized. She chose to let her True Self and calling lead her life and career, her ego-mind now becoming servant to that master [Shifting Inner Leadership].
Liberation:
Upon having this revelation in the workshop, Kim approached Kirk Souder, about coaching her through this work for her to architect a way of living her calling fully. Kim had already started bringing diversity to Barbie, but she yearned for a more “all in” experience of her entelechy. At that point her mind had defaulted to 20th century conditioning in assuming this meant starting a non-profit of some kind, which would have been a fine outcome. Yet, while deep in one of the very first sessions she dared to leave that first conditioned form (non-profit) and return to deeper calling and purpose to see if other forms might emerge to serve her [Transcend Preference for Purpose]. By no longer holding on to her original thought tightly, which confined her to only see it and no other possibilities, and moving to pure inner purpose, she was able to suddenly access a multitude of new possibilities. The most world-changing and profound for her was seeing the entire global presence of the Fortune 500 company she worked for as actually existing, in all its power and resources, to bring her entelechy to life [Opening Aperture of Possibility]. Kim then crafted a Living Vision of a future state where her inner purpose and her personal qualitative experience of life were being realized [Creating Living Vision].
Outcome:
Kim went on to make Barbie, what was once the least diversified, the most diversified doll in the world, including Barbies with disabilities, Barbies that taught children to meditate to address new wave of youth anxiety, and every race, color and ethnicity on the planet. In addition, with her Aperture of Possibility opened even wider, she launched the world’s first gender neutral doll line, called “Creatable World.” 2020 3rd Quarter earnings for Barbie increased by 29%, the largest in 20 years largely attributed to the diversification of Barbie. Kim’s work also made TIME’s Inventions of the Year twice in the last few years. Most importantly, girls around the world are getting to see their true selves represented in the toys they love, as is Kim. Kim’s Living Vision is no longer a vision, it is a living reality that is her life and work.
Passing it Forward:
Kim’s coaching project became the design and facilitation of a program based on the principles she had learned for her entire design division at Mattel. The C-suite had seen the impact of the work on Kim, and the business itself, and were eager to see it passed on to the team where innovation was centered. Kim executed flawlessly.
Dorcia Whitebrake is Everytable’s first Social Equity Franchisee.
Sam Polk,
Founder/CEO of Everytable
Coaching Principles Applied:
- Transcending Polarity of Thought
- Opening Aperture of Possibility
- Shifting Inner Leadership
- Transcending Preference for Purpose
Context:
Sam had been a ninja hedge-fund trader on Wall Street before an event had him reevaluate his life, go on a walk-about (he wrote a marvelous book about it), and land in South Central LA to found a non-profit called Feast to unite local populations with healthy food as distinct from the fast food that had strangleholds on these neighborhoods. Feast continues to this day, graduating multitudes of mothers every year. Yet something in Sam yearned for even more impact.
Liberation:
In a session, Sam confessed to feeling the ninja businessman inside of him wanting to emerge again, but also feeling worried and distrustful of that aspect of himself given his previous experience on Wall Street. But utilizing new tools and principles to gain an elevated connection to his true nature and inner calling [Shifting Inner Leadership], Sam saw these tethers were just self-limiting beliefs, and in letting them go, a whole new expression of his personal mission of healthy food being a human right began to emerge. Sam now could see that there was no polarity between profitable business and helping people [Transcending Polarity of Thought], and developed a novel business approach to make healthy food available to people with limited income. It is called Everytable, a restaurant chain that would include affluent neighborhoods with the challenged ones and charge neighborhoods in accordance with their average income, generating a collaborative and symbiotic dynamic to provide healthy food to everyone. Sam quickly scaled Everytable. And then COVID hit. Things looked dire. But rather than stop and circle the wagons, Sam accessed his inner tools and went back to his inner purpose again [Transcending Preference for Purpose]. “If this is not happening to me, but for me, then what might be the way forward?” Very soon, a call with the Mayor’s Office had Everytable move from a B-to-C model, to a B-to-G model [Opening Aperture of Possibility], commissioned by the City of LA to deliver healthy food to giant populations and first responders unable to risk going out and getting healthy food.
Outcome:
Sam’s 2020 revenue was six times that of 2019, meeting his mission of supplying healthy food to people previously not able to access it expanded by multiples of that (Fast Company story here), and Sam got to hire hundreds of new people to serve as food preparers, drivers and delivery people to the very neighborhoods they came from. Demonstrating a whole new revenue channel helped a new funding round of $16M that Sam is using to fund a franchising program to serve entrepreneurship for people of color in the underserved neighborhoods he sought to impact. Now Everytable isn’t only getting healthy food to those in need, it’s enabling self-determination and local wealth creation where it’s needed most.
David Paine,
CEO of 911Day.org, and Co-founder of 911 Day of Service and Remembrance
Coaching Principles Applied:
- Shifting Inner Leadership
- Transcending Preference for Purpose
- Transcending Polarity of Thought
- Opening Aperture of Possibility
- Creating a Living Vision
- Accessing Co-Creation
Context:
David and his colleague, Jay Winuk, had co-founded the 911 Day of Service and Remembrance, and with the Obama Administration, made it an Official Day of Service in America. Their main service project was giant meal preparation gatherings of thousands of volunteers in major cities on that day to provide food for hungry populations in America. As the 20th Anniversary approached, and COVID hit, suddenly the mainstay service project of the organization was no longer safe to do. At the same time, David was questioning how this event could more greatly serve his original intention behind this day, and his personal purpose and entelechy.
Liberation:
David used a session to deeply unite with his true self and the deeper “why” for bringing this powerful day and event into the world [Shifting Inner Leadership]. He saw that while COVID might stop the current form his purpose was taking, it could not stop his purpose and inner calling from continuing to express and create in the world [Transcending Preference for Purpose]. With that, a plethora of new possibilities began to blossom in David. Possibilities that he was even more excited about, that even more united him with true self and purpose [Opening Aperture of Possibility]. A new vision and personal north star was architected by him [Creating a Living Vision], and then an opening up to a greater level of creation that enabled all kinds of synchronicity and serendipity to occur [Accessing Co-Creation]. David realized the greatest kind of service possible right now, was to feed not just the body but the spirit of America given the divided nature of our society. He saw that the original survivors and responders to the 9/11 event could attest to how all divisions were dropped on that day to be in service to each other.
Outcome:
In freeing himself from his own old thinking, David had the insight, in his words, “We’re not divided. We just think we are.” [Transcending Polarity of Thought] The “9/
Andrea Guendelman,
Founder/CEO, Speak_
Coaching Principles Applied:
- Shifting Inner Leadership
- Opening Aperture of Possibility
- Transcending Polarity of Thought
- Accessing Co-Creation
- Creating a Living Vision
- Plan of Impact
Context:
Andrea is a Latinx entrepreneur, and a Harvard Law and MIT Sloan MBA grad. She also is the co-founder of Speak_, a company whose mission is to bring diversity and inclusion to the world by creating a bridge of programming and connection to enable software engineers of diverse backgrounds to be more successful getting jobs in big tech. While Speak_ was succeeding, Andrea was not feeling “brought alive” by her experience and there was a sense of inner interference preventing her from being in the joy she knew must be available in what she was bringing the world.
Liberation:
Not one to ever back away from a challenge, Andrea threw herself deeply into the inner work. When connecting to her true self and inner purpose, she finally saw that while being of great ability to achieve and succeed, she had neglected a big aspect of her true nature [Shifting Inner Leadership]. While her mind was a skilled business person and entrepreneur, her heart was a creative and an evangelist, and she identified more as those than anything. Not having given herself permission to act and create from this core self was preventing her from the true reward of her work. She moved through the polarity that one could not be a successful businessperson and be a creative and evangelist for a better world [Transcending Polarity of Thought]. She created a new vision for herself [Creating a Living Vision] and life that was not about her doing something entirely different, but doing what she was doing entirely differently [Opening Aperture of Possibility]. Being true to her new vision meant making some hard choices in terms of the make-up of leadership [Plan of Impacts] so others could do what she no longer had interest in doing, while also opening up to Co-creation in attracting a creative class of collaborators that would bring her joy to work on business solutions with.
Outcome:
In almost no time, Andrea found herself in the midst of creative design sprints with the creative types she yearned to work with, bringing greater innovation to her programming, while discovering there were also people who loved doing the things less aligned with her as creative and artist. In alignment with her Living Vision, she now purposefully views business opportunities and challenges through the lens of her true self and entelechy, as an artist and creative, bringing greater innovation and joy to her work Wallbreakers will be expanding from purely serving diversity in tech, to diversity in the creative fields as well. Speak_ is currently working with Amazon, Visa, Airbnb, Bonusly, etc., bringing diversity to their engineering solutions which in turn will generate a better world.
