This week, three different news headlines pointed to the same idea: strategy becomes real when you build it into the foundation.
A restaurant chain is turning surplus food into a conduit for combatting hunger. A professional-services giant is allocating $100 million to helping its workforce build distinctly human skills. And Uber is cutting thousands of jobs to remove organizational complexity. Different businesses, same question: What does your company actually reinforce every day?
🍗 RONNY SAGE: PURPOSE WORKS BETTER AS INFRASTRUCTURE THAN A CAMPAIGN
Guest: Ronny Sage, Founder & CEO, ShoppingGives
Episode: Ep. 36 Ronny Sage, Founder & CEO, ShoppingGives
Published: November 28, 2023
Revisit the Ronny Sage episode
When Ronny recorded with me on the Worthy for Thirty podcast, he explained that ShoppingGives works through three interconnected pieces: identifying the right cause relationships, incorporating social impact throughout the consumer journey, and then managing the compliance and measurement needed to understand whether those programs actually work. He also shared examples where brands saw more than a 40% increase in customer lifetime value among consumers who participated in giving programs. (Worthy for Thirty)
That conversation came back to me this week because Chick-fil-A kicked off Hunger Action Month with plans to match up to $1 million in donations to Feeding America partner food banks (you may have heard of Feeding America through my conversation with Marcin and Amit at Mission Craft Cocktails) across more than 40 markets. But the more interesting story is the operating system supporting it: its Shared Table program now involves more than 2,700 restaurants and 1,600 nonprofit partners, redirecting surplus food into meals rather than treating hunger relief as an isolated event. (Chick-fil-A)
That distinction matters.
A donation is an event.
Repetition becomes part of the business model.
Ronny’s contention wasn’t that every company should partner with a cause at checkout. It was that when impact is linked to how a company already operates, and measured with the same seriousness as other business initiatives, it has better odds of surviving budget cuts, leadership upheaval, and changing marketing priorities.
The Worthy idea: If your mission disappears when the campaign ends, it probably wasn’t embedded deeply enough. Also a reason why we submitted an SXSW panel — to help mission-minded / focused brands on how to embed that mission into their business infrastructure and foundation.
🧠 DAN REICH: AI IS MAKING CURIOSITY MORE VALUABLE, NOT LESS
Guest: Dan Reich, Co-Founder, Troops.Ai and TULA
Episode: Ep. 13: Dan Reich, Co-Founder, Troops.Ai and Tula
Published: November 4, 2022
Revisit the Dan Reich episode
Dan had already founded, scaled, then sold businesses, while investing in numerous other companies, when I asked him what actually sustains entrepreneurs over time. His answer pointed to passion and curiosity: Are you genuinely interested in the problem? Are you willing to keep asking why it works the way it does and whether there is a better answer? (Worthy for Thirty)
Four years later, major companies are effectively putting a price on those qualities.
EY announced this week that it will invest $100 million in employee rewards tied to skills including judgment, adaptability, business acumen, experimentation and innovation as AI changes professional services. Awards can reach $25,000, and EY’s framing is newsworthy: technology adoption matters, but so does knowing what to do with the technology once you know how to use it. (Fortune)
Shopify COO Jess Hertz made a similar argument this week when she described the ideal AI-era employee as “X-shaped”: someone capable of developing depth across multiple areas while continuing to learn quickly as the work changes. (Business Insider)
For years, we assumed automation would make expertise more valuable.
It may also make learning velocity more valuable.
Knowing something matters. Knowing how to question it, connect the dots, and pivot quickly when the answer changes may matter even more.
Dan was talking about founders in 2022.
Increasingly, he may have been describing the employee of 2030.
The Worthy idea: In a world where information continues to get cheaper by the minute, curiosity becomes more expensive.
✂️ MIKE + KASS LAZEROW: GROWTH CREATES COMPLEXITY. GREAT LEADERS REMOVE IT.
Guests: Mike & Kass Lazerow, Co-Founders, Buddy Media & Golf.com
Episode: Unpacking “Shoveling $h!t”: Mike & Kass Lazerow’s Raw Truths on Entrepreneurship & Impact
Published: June 5, 2025
Revisit the Mike & Kass Lazerow episode
Mike made a point during our recording that is easy to agree with and incredibly difficult to practice and execute consistently: startups have limited resources, so focus has to be ruthless. He and Kass also described Buddy Media’s culture in detail: transparency, celebrating wins, and keeping people connected as one of the many things that allowed the business to survive tremendous growth and even acquisition. (Worthy for Thirty)
This week, Uber announced its largest round of layoffs since 2020: approximately 3,300 employees, the equivalent of ~10% of its workforce. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the restructuring is intended to flatten management layers, simplify decision-making, and make the company faster as it competes in an increasingly complex transportation market. (Axios)
There’s a leadership lesson hidden within the layoff headline.
Companies spend years adding people, departments, and processes because growth seems to demand them.
Eventually, someone has to pose the question:
Is all of this helping us grow, or just proving how large we’ve become?
That’s the uncomfortable side of scale.
The challenge isn’t only knowing what to build.
It’s knowing what to stop doing.
The Worthy idea: Complexity accumulates naturally. Focus has to be intentional.
🚨 GUEST RADAR
Bill Shufelt → Athletic Brewing
Athletic Brewing named Dan Kleinman as its new CMO, effective September 8. Kleinman previously spent nearly a decade at Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, including helping build Josh Cellars; the hire comes as Athletic increases national media investment and pushes from category pioneer toward a broader global brand. (Marketing Dive)
Rob Tod → Allagash Brewing
Allagash White was inducted into the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame this week, one of only five beers selected this year. The organization described it as a benchmark Belgian-style witbier, backed by awards from 19 competitions in the U.S. and Europe. (WGME2)
Luke Mickelson → Sleep in Heavenly Peace
The nonprofit’s eighth annual Bunks Across America is now underway from September 5–12, bringing chapters together across North America to build 12,000 beds for children who currently lack one. (Sleep in Heavenly Peace)
🧠 ONE IDEA TO STEAL
Companies tell us what they believe all the time.
The more useful question is:
What does the system encourage people to do?
Chick-fil-A built giving into restaurant operations.
EY attached money to curiosity, judgment, and adaptability.
Uber decided streamlining the org chart was valuable enough to restructure it.
That’s where culture becomes visible.
What gets rewarded gets repeated.
What gets repeated eventually becomes the company.
Until next week,
Eric
Worthy for Thirty
Doing good while doing well shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.