Today’s business success can no longer be measured by short-term profits alone. Companies are called upon to take responsibility for their actions toward shareholders and stakeholders—employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and the environment. At RoundMap®, we recognize the critical need for businesses to thrive while acting ethically and distributing the value they create more equitably. That’s why we’ve created the Flywheel of Shared Success: a model designed to help businesses grow responsibly, distribute profits fairly, and generate long-term impact.
Why Most Frameworks Fall Short—and How RoundMap Bridges the Gap
Traditional business frameworks are built to strive for profit, with strategies, models, and plans centered on maximizing short-term financial returns. Impact, when considered at all, is often an afterthought—tacked on as a secondary goal, detached from the core design of the business.
RoundMap’s Flywheel of Shared Success fundamentally redefines this approach. It starts with intentionality, placing the Impact Strategy, Model, and Plan at the foundation. This isn’t about balancing profit with impact; it’s about understanding that thriving requires making meaningful, measurable impact on stakeholders.
What makes the difference? Designing for impact from the outset. Where other frameworks remain constrained by organizational borders, RoundMap emphasizes that true impact—and sustainable thriving—requires collaboration across boundaries. It connects value creation within the organization to value amplification across its ecosystem, creating a virtuous cycle of shared success.
In short, while others strive for profit and hope to thrive, RoundMap ensures thriving is built into the system by embedding impact at its core.
Let’s explore how:
Quick Summary of the Flywheel of Shared Success
To understand the Flywheel diagram, here’s a quick summary:
- Striving for Profit (Top):
This phase is focused on value creation, where the organization prioritizes Value Orchestration to maximize captured value. It adopts a profit-first approach, centered on delivering immediate customer value through a present-oriented mindset. Drawing lessons from empowered (autonomous) teams, such as in the military, this phase relies on collective insights and empowered decision-making to remain adaptive and responsive in a fast-paced environment. Striving for value creation leverages internal strengths—the organization’s unique capabilities, resources, and historical success factors—to achieve profitability and operational excellence. The business plan and business strategy are central to this phase, aligning efforts to deliver maximum customer value while ensuring financial health. Captured value (e.g., profit, loyalty, and insights) provides the fuel for reinvestment, building the foundation for future growth and supporting impact creation in the Thrive phase. - Thriving through Impact (Bottom):
This phase shifts focus from value creation to impact creation, emphasizing Impact Orchestration and the generation of captured impact. The Thrive phase prioritizes building robust shared value networks, which extend beyond supply chains to encompass partnerships, community relationships, and collaborative ecosystems. It shifts from an internal focus to an external orientation, where success is measured by collective impact rather than individual gains. Key principles here include responsible growth and equitable profit distribution, ensuring sustainability and inclusivity across all stakeholders. The impact plan and impact strategy guide efforts, outlining commitments to amplifying positive impact, mitigating adverse effects, and fostering systemic resilience. By creating and capturing impact—such as loyalty, trust, innovation, and long-term partnerships—the organization builds a thriving, sustainable ecosystem aligned with ethical and environmental standards. - Cycle Interdependence:
The Flywheel represents a seamless, interdependent process. On the one hand, value creation in the Strive phase enables value capture, generating the financial resources and insights needed for impact creation. On the other hand, impact creation in the Thrive phase enables impact capture, fostering loyalty, innovation, and trust that loop back into value creation. This cycle ensures that financial success is not an endpoint but a means to enable greater, lasting impact. The business plan and value strategy drive the Strive phase by harnessing internal strengths to maximize captured value, while the impact plan and impact strategy enable the Thrive phase by building external relationships and networks that amplify captured impact. Each phase reinforces and enriches the other, balancing short-term gains with long-term purpose. - Stakeholder Relationships & Sustainability:
To thrive, businesses must build strong, trust-based relationships with stakeholders across their shared value networks. This external orientation aligns with the principles of responsible growth and equitable profit sharing, ensuring that thriving is achieved ethically and sustainably. By committing to shared value and inclusive growth, organizations can ensure that their impact benefits not only shareholders but also employees, communities, and the planet, fostering a holistic approach to ethical prosperity. - Embracing the Drive to Strive and Thrive:
Rather than trying to suppress the innate human drive to strive—testing limits, maximizing effort, and achieving success—the Flywheel channels this energy toward purposeful outcomes. While financial rewards are important, people are equally driven by recognition, acknowledgment, and the opportunity to create meaningful impact. By linking profit-making with impact-making, organizations can inspire individuals to strive not just for financial success but for a deeper, more fulfilling purpose—becoming contributors to society, community builders, and ethical leaders. This integration transforms business into a meaningful challenge, where the pursuit of success is balanced with the pursuit of lasting impact.
RoundMap’s Flywheel of Shared Success offers a balanced pathway where striving for profit and thriving through impact work together. This dual approach harnesses the human drive for achievement, directing it toward outcomes that benefit all stakeholders.
The Paradox of Growth: Striving vs. Thriving
Traditional business models focus heavily on striving—pursuing profit and growth by externalizing costs and prioritizing short-term results. While this may yield immediate gains, it often undermines long-term sustainability, creating a cycle that is difficult to sustain.
The Flywheel of Shared Success reveals the paradox at the heart of growth: businesses must continue striving to grow, but to truly thrive, they must do so responsibly. Growth cannot come at the expense of society, the environment, or future generations. Thriving businesses balance short-term profitability with long-term impact, ensuring that success is not only financial but also ethical and inclusive.
This balance is achieved by integrating short-term value creation and capture with long-term impact creation and capture, creating a continuous process where striving supports thriving, and thriving reinforces striving.
Value Strategy versus Impact Strategy
Here’s how to perceive the process of value creation versus the process of impact creation:
- Value Strategy focuses on creating and delivering solutions that fulfill customer needs profitably. However, in doing so, it must also consider the consequences of these actions, ensuring that value creation does not come at an unchecked cost to other stakeholders or the wider ecosystem.
- Impact Strategy emphasizes the responsibility to amplify positive outcomes and mitigate negative consequences resulting from value creation and delivery. It acknowledges that every action—or inaction—has ripple effects and seeks to align business goals with the well-being of all stakeholders and the ecosystem.
Every action—or lack thereof—has consequences. It is no longer enough to merely provide for a need when the process of providing itself creates adverse effects. Businesses must move beyond hiding behind the excuse of “meeting a demand” and take full responsibility for the unintended downsides of their actions, ensuring they address the needs of today without compromising the well-being of future generations.
In short:
- The Value Strategy ensures solutions are provided sustainably by delivering value in a way that is both profitable and mindful of the immediate needs of customers and stakeholders.
- The Impact Strategy holds organizations accountable for their broader role, ensuring the means of value creation, not just the outcomes, are responsible, equitable, and regenerative.
This combined approach makes clear that businesses are both enablers of progress and stewards of the ecosystem in which they operate, embracing their role in creating a sustainable and equitable future.
Flywheel Performance: Patagonia
The lens of Striving & Thriving offers a unique lens to evaluate a company’s performance by balancing two critical aspects:
- Striving: Reflects the company’s ability to generate profits, maintain financial health, and meet short-term goals.
- Thriving: Reflects the company’s long-term impact, including sustainability, purpose-driven initiatives, and stakeholder well-being.
Using a 1-5 scale on both aspects, here’s how Patagonia sets the benchmark:
Patagonia
- Striving (Profit): 3/5
As a private company with a clear emphasis on purpose over profit, Patagonia’s financial performance is steady but not aggressive. It generates sufficient revenue to sustain operations and reinvest in its mission.- Why not higher? Patagonia intentionally prioritizes purpose, often sacrificing short-term profit for long-term impact.
- Thriving (Purpose): 5/5
Patagonia is widely regarded as the gold standard for purpose-driven business. Its commitment to regenerative agriculture, environmental activism, and corporate transparency consistently leads the way. Initiatives like donating 1% of sales to environmental causes and transferring ownership to fight climate change demonstrate unmatched purpose alignment.- Why a perfect score? Patagonia integrates purpose into every decision, setting the benchmark for thriving.
Breaking Down the Framework
The Flywheel of Shared Success is built on twelve foundational principles, each represented by the letter of the acronyms, dividing the framework into two parts: STRIVE (leveraging profit) and THRIVE (for lasting impact):
Let’s look at the S.T.R.I.V.E. part ─ leveraging profit:
- S – Sustain Operations:
Ensuring consistent cash flow and operational stability to maintain day-to-day business activities. This creates the financial stability needed to support future investments. - T – Target Market Optimization:
Identifying and capitalizing on immediate market opportunities to generate revenue, with the intent to secure a foothold that will support future expansion and impact-driven initiatives. - R – Resource Allocation for Future Growth:
Allocating profits and resources strategically, ensuring that short-term gains are reinvested into areas that will enable long-term growth, such as R&D, talent acquisition, and new market entry. - I – Immediate Value Capture:
Maximizing revenue generation from current products and services to build the financial reserves needed for reinvestment. Focus on monetizing short-term opportunities while keeping an eye on the bigger picture. - V – Velocity in Execution:
Quickly implementing strategies and capturing market opportunities to generate immediate returns. This speed allows the business to gather the necessary capital to fund future growth while staying competitive. - E – Efficiency Gains for Reinvestment:
Streamlining operations and improving efficiency to reduce costs, thus freeing up resources for reinvestment in long-term initiatives. This ensures that short-term profits don’t just sustain operations but also fuel future potential.
Now, let’s consider the T.H.R.I.V.E. part ─ for lasting impact:
- T – Transparency
Transparency is the cornerstone of trust. In the Strive & Thrive Cycle, businesses operate openly and clearly in decision-making, governance, and communication. Stakeholders need to understand what a company does, why, and how. This transparency builds stronger stakeholder bonds and sets the stage for long-term impact. - H – Holistic Impact
Gone are the days when businesses could afford to think in silos. Holistic Impact means looking at the bigger picture—considering not just the financial bottom line, but the environmental, social, and economic impact of business activities. The Strive & Thrive Cycle helps businesses internalize both positive and negative effects, ensuring their footprint is sustainable and beneficial. - R – Responsible Growth
Growth is essential for businesses to survive, but responsible growth means thriving within ethical constraints. It’s about growing in a way that respects environmental limits, values human rights, and fosters long-term prosperity for all stakeholders. Profit remains essential, but it is no longer the sole driver—it’s a means to achieve a more significant impact. - I – Inclusivity
The Strive & Thrive Cycle is deeply stakeholder-inclusive. No business can thrive in isolation. It requires cooperation and alignment with a diverse network of value actors—employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and the environment. Inclusivity ensures that every stakeholder has a voice and that their well-being is considered in decision-making processes. - V – Value-Oriented
At the heart of thriving businesses is a value-oriented mindset. The Strive & Thrive Cycle ensures that value isn’t just created for shareholders but for all participants in the business ecosystem. This value goes beyond financial gain and includes the emotional, societal, and environmental benefits that a business can generate. - E – Equitable Distribution
Equitable Profit Distribution is the defining feature of a thriving business. Shareholders or executives must not hoard profit; it must be fairly distributed among all value actors—employees, suppliers, and communities who contributed to its creation. Equitable distribution ensures that everyone benefits from the business’s success and that profits fund sustainability efforts, reinvest in communities, and drive future innovation.
The Four Keystones of Striving and Thriving
The Flywheel of Shared Success clarifies that businesses must not only generate profit but also take responsibility for how that profit is distributed and leveraged. This distinction determines whether a company is merely striving to survive or thriving in a way that creates lasting value for all.
At the center of this model are the four keystones that guide the transition between striving and thriving. During the Strive phase, businesses rely on Collective Insights and Empowered Action, enabling teams to make informed decisions and act decisively in a fast-paced, competitive environment. These elements help organizations harness internal strengths to create and capture (customer) value.
In the Thrive phase, the focus shifts to Responsible Growth and Equitable Profit Distribution, forming the foundation for building sustainable, stakeholder-focused ecosystems. These principles emphasize the importance of internalizing responsibilities—such as mitigating adverse effects—and sharing the benefits of growth fairly across the entire value network. Together, they ensure that the value captured in the Strive phase is reinvested to create long-term, purpose-driven impact.
This model also highlights the transformative potential of shared value networks—ecosystems where businesses collaborate to achieve common goals. These networks encourage organizations to recycle, repurpose, and reuse resources, reducing waste and advancing sustainability. By working together within these networks, businesses amplify their collective impact, fostering innovation, trust, and resilience while mitigating the negative effects of growth.
By integrating the four keystones into a continuous cycle, the Flywheel enables organizations to align short-term profitability with long-term impact, ensuring both financial health and societal prosperity.
Real-World Examples of Equitable Profit Distribution Driving Impact
The following examples from diverse industries highlight how companies use profits to benefit all stakeholders, from employees to communities, while ensuring long-term sustainability. From profit-sharing programs to corporate philanthropy and sustainability investments, these cases show that equitable profit distribution enhances business success and contributes to wealth and well-being for many. This aligns with the core principles of the Flywheel of Shared Success, where responsible growth and fair profit distribution create value beyond immediate financial gain:
Profit-Sharing Programs: Many companies have implemented profit-sharing models where employees, regardless of rank, share in the company’s success. For instance, some companies, like mid-sized firms in the tech sector, have shown that profit sharing increases employee satisfaction and productivity and helps close the income gap. This results in more engaged employees who feel a sense of ownership, leading to better performance and long-term stability for the business (eFinancialModels)(Harvard Business School Online).
Salesforce’s 1-1-1 Model: Salesforce has pioneered a model that distributes 1% of equity, product, and employee time to non-profits, proving that businesses can balance profit with social impact. As Salesforce’s revenue grows, so too does its social contribution, showing that philanthropy and profit can coexist and drive sustainable business. By embedding this into their business model, Salesforce demonstrates how companies can share their wealth with the communities they operate in while continuing to grow (Harvard Business School Online).
Lego’s Sustainability Commitment: Lego’s approach highlights how businesses can reinvest profits into long-term, impactful projects. Lego has committed to using sustainable materials for all its products by 2030, showing that profits can be reinvested to support circular economies and environmental health, benefiting the company and society (Harvard Business School Online).
ESG Integration for Long-Term Growth: A McKinsey study has shown that companies that integrate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into their core strategies tend to outperform their peers in the long term. These “triple outperformers” don’t treat ESG as an afterthought but as part of their core profitability strategy, proving that businesses can grow sustainably while reducing their environmental footprint and improving social outcomes (McKinsey & Company).
These examples illustrate how equitable profit distribution and responsible growth can drive business success and broader societal benefits. When companies adopt this mindset, they help create a fairer and more sustainable future, aligning with the principles behind RoundMap’s Flywheel of Shared Success.
A Call to Action: The Future of Business is Equitable and Impactful
The Flywheel is not just a framework for responsible growth—it’s a call to action for businesses to take full responsibility for their actions. We believe companies must strive for more than profit; they must strive for impact, sustainability, and equity. And when they do, they will thrive in ways that benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
It’s time to move beyond the traditional value chain—one that often externalizes costs and prioritizes short-term gains—and embrace a shared value network that prioritizes long-term impact, collaboration, and shared responsibility.
At RoundMap®, we believe that businesses of the future will thrive by caring not just for themselves but also for the ecosystems they are part of. The Flywheel of Shared Success is the blueprint that will guide them there.
Will your business be one of them?
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