“Work Can Be Amazing,” Here’s How:
Scott Shute, Founder of Changing Work, a company on a mission to change work from the inside out.
Scott Shute is the Founder of Changing Work and an award-winning author, speaker, entrepreneur, photographer, and teacher. Formerly, he was at LinkedIn as the VP of Global Customer Operations and, later, as Head of Mindfulness and Compassion. Shute has made it his mission to change work from the inside out.
“When done right, work can be a place of community, creativity, and inspiration. It can be a place where we can all contribute and utilize our unique talents.” Shute hopes to create a coordinated movement around the ideas of conscious business.
A conscious business is aware of and takes care of all its stakeholders, including customers, employees, and shareholders, for the benefit of the whole. Historically, many companies have fixated on the needs of financial shareholders to the detriment of employees and customers.
Business is more than just “being in business.” It’s to provide long-term value for customers and employees. With the right environment, employees will not only grow in their work lives but also their personal, and even spiritual, lives. “The research shows that companies that promote this kind of stakeholder balance are 14 times more profitable than the S&P average” (Raj Sisodia, Firms of Endearment), according to Shute. He dreams that people demand these conscious business practices to the point where we’re not talking about them as exceptions but as standards. “When companies solve for the whole, instead of just one group, everyone wins.”
This move from ‘Me’ to ‘We’ typically starts with company culture. Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” When Shute was at LinkedIn, his team and the company were growing 50-70% for six or eight consecutive years. During that growth, Shute said what was critical was that LinkedIn’s culture held the company together. It was a competitive advantage. “The culture at LinkedIn during that time was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was amazing.”
Recently, Shute teamed up with Nicholas Whitaker to form The Changing Work Collective, a community of conscious business practitioners and leaders dedicated to making work a more humane and compassionate experience. Whitaker, who has spent his career in academia, media and tech, also helped manage the mindfulness programs at Google, has felt the sting of business when it wasn’t done consciously. He recently found out he was part of a big layoff at Google when he tried to log in to work one early Friday morning and found that he no longer had access. “No conversation. No, ‘thank you so much for your service’. After 13 years with the company, It was a very disappointing end to a work relationship that I had invested so much of my life in.”
Unfortunately, he’s not alone. As the economy has become uncertain, the trend of mass layoffs has created an increasing sense of uncertainty and fear. Nicholas says, “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do Better.” Impersonal layoffs are just the latest example. Yes, layoffs are going to happen. That’s part of the natural cycle of business. The problem is when we start treating people like numbers instead of the incredibly valuable resource that they are. There’s a better way.
Shute and Whitaker started The Collective to amplify the message of conscious business practices. It’s designed as a place to share best practices, build community, and amplify the overall message of conscious business.
Whitaker says, “Scott and I are now both coaches, trying to make a difference in this space. We realized that if the mission is to Change Work, we won’t be able to do it by ourselves. We want to be fire starters and help build more of a movement that can build and grow. Like most good entrepreneurs, we’re building something that we wanted and needed for ourselves. We think it will be super valuable for others as well.”
The Collective aims to help conscious business practitioners, like coaches and creators, build their businesses to have a bigger impact. It’s also a community for business leaders to share ideas and best practices for implementing these concepts into their organizations.
As the Changing Work Collective scales, their next focus will be to curate a toolbox of best practices for managers. “It’s important that managers get their own program. Our relationship with our manager is the single biggest factor in how we view work. And work is the second biggest factor in our overall happiness, second only to our mental well-being,” according to Shute. The average amount of time when someone receives their first managerial training is 5-10 years after becoming a manager (Harvard Business Review). “That’s a huge part of why only 20% of the workforce is highly engaged” (Gallup, 2021), says Shute. “Creating a work experience that is healthy for everyone is critical and would make an enormous difference in our tumultuous world.”
Through Changing Work and the Changing Work Collective, Shute and Whitaker aim to alter people’s perceptions of work itself. Visit the Changing Work site for more information.
Compassionate Leaders Circle provides services for compassionate leaders like Shute and Whitaker. If you want to learn more about our services, check out our site.
- Laurel Donnellan, Founder of Compassionate Leaders Circle
