Co-authored by Sarah Hopkinson and Dr. Johanna Pagonis
Love is not a word you hear very often in business. But there’s a team of people from Softway that are aiming to change that. Softway is a tech company that provides software to help companies maximize their potential, and they do it through love.
A few years back, Softway was at the top of their game, crushing their goals and increasing their revenue every year. However, the company reached a point where their aggressive growth strategy failed them and they began to lose clients and profits in a downward spiral. They were only able to reverse this trend by rethinking their business culture and by starting to implement a strategy of love, putting people back at the heart of the company.
On a recent episode of Tackle Tuesday, I had the chance to sit down with Mohammad Anwar and Jeffrey Ma from Softway, who are two out of the four co-authors of Love as a Business Strategyand had a thought-provoking conversation on how love and business are not mutually exclusive concepts. They can co-exist to drive business results.
Why love a business strategy? Where did that idea emanate from?
We began to operate from love because nothing else was working for us. We’d reached a crossroads in our business and had to make the decision to lay off nearly 100 employees. This was such a tough move that none of us really wanted to accept responsibility for it, and we were all struggling with the aftermath. During that period, Mohammad went to watch a football game at his alma mater and was blown away by the victory the team achieved. They won the game with just seconds left in the game. What Mohammad learned was that the secret to their success was how the Coach integrated the concept of love into the team’s way of being. This approach was what the Coach accredited the team’s success to. This sparked something inside Mohammad, who decided to bring a culture of love to Softway.
What have the benefits been for Softway after integrating love into your business strategy?
So much! The company has been completely transformed by this strategy of love, which rests on the six pillars of empathy, forgiveness, vulnerability, trust, inclusion, and empowerment. We use these pillars to give our employees the tools they need to meet their goals, and we have continued to excel and grow since then.
A concrete example of this was Mohammad’s inability to forgive others for mistakes. If one of his employees made an error in judgement or decision-making, he would never let them forget it by constantly referring to it, believing this would increase their performance. Since integrating the six pillars of love, Mohammad’s approach is grounded in forgiveness, which has created a culture of compassion that sees mistakes as opportunities to learn, rather than leverage for blame and shame.
How do these changes lead to greater diversity and inclusion?
One of the six pillars of love is inclusion, as we believe that companies thrive when their culture is diverse and inclusive. The six pillars have also helped create a company with a diverse workforce that actively embraces people from all walks of life.
At Softway, diversity comes from real empathy for each other. We use storytelling to encourage people to share their perspective so that we can really connect with one another. When you understand someone else’s lived experience, it becomes harder not to love and accept them.
How can other companies begin to adopt a strategy of love?
There are many ways in which you can change your company’s culture to bring in elements of love. A key part of changing the culture is to build a series of micro commitments, coaching people to buy into love one step at a time, reinforcing positive behaviours to shift mindsets and biases.
Listen to the podcast episode to discover Softway’s platinum rule and how using empathy has increased diversity and inclusion in their teams.
Dr. Johanna Pagonis is the CEO of Sinogap Solutions, a leadership consulting firm that supports organizations in achieving their purpose by maximizing the human potential across their workforce. Johanna is also the author of Choose to Be a Leader Others Would Want to Follow: How to Lead with Heart and Purpose available on Amazon.
