Jim Collins, executive director of Harvest Hands, was very active in the day-to-day operations of Harvest Hands, but he also bore the responsibility for planning for the future of the registered charity. Jim together with his wife, Jacintha Collins, founded Harvest Hands in 2020 in St. Thomas, Ontario. In less than three years, their charity had distributed over $7.6 million in rescued food to food banks, missions, and over 120 local agencies. An impressive accomplishment for a volunteer-run charity. Their policy of “We never say no” was quickly pushing the capacity limits of the organization and Jim needed to consider the options for expanding Harvest Hands to keep up with both growing demand and supply.
In February 2007, Diego Papalia, founder and owner of Ottawa Pianos, was getting ready to meet with his daughter, Carmen, to discuss the strategic future of the company. Five years prior, the father–daughter duo had started separate projects within the business. Diego had launched the digital music centre and Carmen had started a piano school, with a plan to reassess which might be the more lucrative endeavour in five years’ time. The DMC sold guitars, amplifiers, drum kits, and various other electronic musical equipment; however, there was a high turnover requirement as music technology was constantly evolving. Carmen’s piano school had grown to over a dozen instructors and 300 students. The downside was that it took up a lot of space— in this case, the entire basement that could otherwise be used for stock storage—and yielded low profit margins. Diego and Carmen had to decide which of the two projects to retain.
In March 2021, a group of junior investment banking analysts at the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., an American multinational investment bank, told senior management that they were suffering burnout from having to work 100-hour weeks. Nearly a year since the start of the pandemic, this workplace culture crisis heightened the importance of senior leadership prioritizing employees’ mental and physical health. In addition, it drew attention to the importance of person-organization fit and to the changing labour market. A top-ranked undergraduate business student recently received a full-time job offer from Goldman Sachs. After learning of critical incidents of employee burnout at the firm, she was considering whether the company culture aligned with her values and whether she would be a good fit there.