7 Questions with Drew Bonfiglio
This ongoing Q&A series profiles a few of the speakers we're looking forward to seeing at this year's Net Impact Conference. Drew is Co-Founder & Partner at Emzingo Group. He'll be speaking at the Crash Course in Social Business Model Ideation 2015 session at this year's conference.
Describe the work you do in one or two sentences.
Emzingo works with organizations, universities, and individuals to instill a mindset of responsible leadership and accelerate the pace at which they drive positive workplace, social, and environmental change as well as achieve financial success. We accomplish this by designing leadership solutions that integrate experiential learning, social impact, and a human-centered approach.
What was your personal “Game On!” moment?
A fews days after leaving my job and moving from the U.S. to Spain to pursue my MBA, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy - a defining moment in the financial crisis and my career. The conversation about business completely changed. For me and my co-founders, this was profound. It led us to create Emzingo and take part in shaping how the next generation of leaders views business’s role in society.
What’s the most exciting solution (or potential solution) you’ve seen lately in your field?
There are three movements in people development and employee engagement that I find very interesting. Each may not be right for every company, but they are certainly exciting and create thoughtful dialogue.
- Transparency: Emzingo has followed - and uses - Buffer. It is the most transparent company I have seen. (Read more.)
- Holacracy: This concept, which was recently embraced by Zappos, is powerful because it is challenging a decades-old hierarchical paradigm. Emzingo integrates this concept into workshops and facilitated dialogues to encourage businesses and individuals to see people management from different points of view.
- Strategic Corporate Volunteerism: IBM pioneered the Corporate Service Corps in 2008 just as Emzingo was starting. Over the past 7 years, we have observed a very strategic shift in the way organizations view volunteering. As a proponent and provider of local and international corporate volunteerism efforts, Emzingo and I are fired up to see how far we’ve all come in recent years. There is a lot of work to be done, but with giants like IBM, Microsoft, and Intel investing in the space, there is reason to be optimistic.
What’s an unexpected quality that makes a great leader?
What I have observed, and what Bill George does a great job of showing through his book, True North, is that a leader takes on different characteristics depending on her/his personal story, innate talents, the team that surrounds him/her, and the context/industry/time in history in which the person is asked to be a leader. Although I believe there is not a “right” answer to what makes a good leader, a couple of unique qualities I have observed are:
- Being soft-spoken - the larger-than-life charismatic leader is not always the most effective. Being soft-spoken can be a big advantage and preferred in some cultures
- Fully embracing failure: this is not just resilience or a positive attitude. This is truly embracing failure in a way that makes it impossible not to learn from it and “fail forward.”
If you’re in the position of hiring people, what question do you most like to ask?
“How would you change our business?” I want someone who has bought into our vision, values, and purpose, but I don’t want her/him to blindly assume that we know it all. I want them to come in firing on all cylinders with ways we can be better and provide a perspective that will open new doors either in the way we operate or in the form of new market opportunities. This question also provides a lot of insight into what the person really wants to do and how much they have thought about the “space” we work in.
What book do you wish everyone would read? Why?
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It was given to me years ago and is still a source of inspiration. I like it so much because it reminds me to live the life I want to live, to prioritize the things that are important to me, and to value the things I already have. The fact that he writes in such an inspiring, playful way despite the personal pain he and his family were going through during his bout with cancer makes it that much more powerful.
If you were given an extra hour every day, what would you do with it?
Spend it with my wife. She is amazing. We both love our work, and that means we probably have the laptops out too often.
About the Conference
We're excited to bring the 23rd Net Impact Conference to Seattle, where student and professional leaders will come together to tackle the world’s toughest social and environmental problems. The challenges we face are complex, and it’s time to come together and create innovative solutions. It’s time to suit up, push your limits, and leave it all on the field. This year's theme is Game On! Want to find out more?
