Jackie Norris, CEO of Goodwill of Central Iowa, invited me to be a “shark” judge recently for their “Shark Tank”-style company idea-generation event. The organization leveraged its staff and board members for a half-day event led by the talented team at Baton Global (see Q and A: https://bit.ly/2MZd2iA) in an effort to generate business strategies to diversify their revenue streams. Five or six teams then presented their business ideas, and I can’t tell you how impressive their ideas were. 

Norris could barely contain her excitement at the number of ideas generated and the excitement it generated for her team. Ask her about it the next time you see her. As a shark, I served alongside Principal employee and recent emerging Woman of Influence recipient Mandi McReynolds, and Mary Sellers, the U.S. president of United Way Worldwide. Sellers, of course, was previously president of United Way of Central Iowa, and while still living here in the area, is now spending much of her time traveling around the country for her new role. 

While on a recent trip to visit the United way of Central Florida (fun fact, it’s also located in Polk County … Florida), the leaders of Legoland theme park provided Sellers with a gift ? her very own Lego character.

But back to sharks. At the Business Record we actually did our own version of “Shark Tank” a few years back, and I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of engaging your staff in this way. We pulled away at least two concrete ideas that resulted in new revenue sources for us, and a variety of other ideas that were the early seeds for what later sprouted.