Sustainability Leaders Go On Record (podcast)
Why? Sustainability touches every aspect of an organization, from corporate stewardship to brand communication to transparency and governance to environmental interaction to employee relations to health and wellness. And while examining your business from this vantage point may seem overwhelming, it quickly becomes less burdensome when you recognize sustainability directly impacts your company’s longevity and success.
Is it really important?
Thoughtful leadership questions a paradigm shift or the need to adopt a new behavior prior to actualization. But when it comes to embracing sustainability, a strong business case exists already.
For example, on Deloitte’s website, sustainability is termed “a fundamental change driving long-term profitability,” referencing opportunities for innovation; human capital and technology changes; the implementation of high value processes; waste, emissions, water and energy issues; regulatory requirements; new growth markets; and shareholder expectations.
In May 2010, David Lubin and Daniel Esty talked about the “sustainability imperative” in the Harvard Business Review. They referred to sustainability as an emerging megatrend, citing environmental issues as steadily encroaching “on businesses’ capacity to create value for customers, shareholders and other stakeholders.”
When a survey of chief executive officers was released by the United Nations Global Compact and Accenture in June 2010, sustainability was identified as critical to the future of companies, citing the growing number of environmental, societal and governance concerns.
And, these CEOs considered the corporate attributes of brand, trust and reputation as the primary drivers to act on sustainability. Other motivators, in descending order, were the potential for revenue growth and cost reduction, personal motivation, consumer and customer demand, and employee engagement and retention.
Tapping into resources
Whether you are starting your sustainability journey or have it underway, a plethora of resources and volumes of data are available to assist you. In fact, Google produces 39,700,000 results for “sustainability” in .05 seconds.
But before you seek help, it is critical to understand where you are in this process by identifying how your resources are allocated in terms of corporate stewardship, environmentally-friendly behavior, diversity initiatives, corporate ethics and transparency, employee relations and other sustainability matters.
After completing a comprehensive inventory, you must determine where to concentrate initially and what your long-term goals are.
Ceres, a national network of investors, environmental groups and other public entities, emphasizes the necessity of business sustainability to achieve a global economy that supports today’s population and the projected 9 billion people in 2050. It’s Roadmap for Sustainability identifies four areas considered key for a comprehensive and coherent sustainable business strategy: governance, stakeholder engagement, disclosure and performance.
But, there are numerous other well-known and highly reputable nonprofits, businesses and government entities that offer guidance, tools, or collaborative opportunities, such as the Conference Board for the Center of Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability; Institute for Sustainability; Business Civic Leadership Center; Harvard’s Kennedy School Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative; Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship; Business Social Responsibility; the Environmental Protection Agency; and University of Cambridge Program for Sustainability Leadership.
Embed into the culture
Sustainability is more than producing an annual report, signing a public commitment, or winning corporate philanthropy and environmental awards or certifications. It must permeate a company’s culture, engaging everyone from the board of directors to the least paid employee.
There are roadblocks. Capital investments in eco-friendly technologies may not be predicted to generate sufficient return on investment or in a timely manner.
Current corporate infrastructures may have barriers that prevent implementing environmentally-sound practices. Broadening the corporate perspective to include societal issues or the impact of the company on a community may require changing a business plan or corporate objectives.
Changing human resource guidelines that have served the organization well for many years may face major challenges. Introducing a new strategy across business functions can be extremely complex.
Such inhibitors, however, can be overcome when everyone makes sustainability a priority and focuses on innovative solutions for issues.
Thus, the board of directors must demand a commitment to sustainability; and executive management must demonstrate its importance by leading, educating, recognizing and requiring accountability. Only then can the entire organization begin the cultural change necessary to bring the sustainability platform to life.
Easy? No. But sustainability is a necessity for companies focused on their future and their reputation.
Ruth Ellen Kinzey, The Kinzey Company is a corporate reputation strategist, consultant, and professional speaker. Want to hear more about a specific topic? She can be reached at (704) 763-0754 or http://www.kinzeycompany.com.
Sustainability has moved up in the corporate agenda over the past three years and become recognized as a source of innovation and new growth, according to a recent Corporate Sustainability: A Progress Report, published by KPMG International.
In a broader analysis of 50 global companies, Towers Watson found that companies with low engagement scores had an average operating margin just under 10 percent. Those with high traditional engagement had a slightly higher margin of 14 percent. Companies with the highest “sustainable engagement” scores had an average one-year operating margin of 27 percent.
Forty percent of employees with low engagement scores said they were likely to leave their employers over the next two years, compared to 24 percent of traditionally engaged employees, and just 18 percent of employees with the highest “sustainable engagement” scores.
So what is energy, exactly? In physics, it’s simply the capacity to do work. In other words “energy” and “capacity” are essentially interchangeable. In simple terms, energy is the fuel in our tanks — what’s required to bring our skill and talent to life. Without sufficient energy, skill is rendered irrelevant. You can’t run on empty and that’s increasingly what employees are being asked to do.
Feelings of overload and burnout are default emotions in today’s organizations. Nor is this likely to change soon. Higher demand and fewer resources are the new normal. Effectively addressing the issue of capacity — energizing the workplace — depends on the willingness of individuals, leaders and organizations to each take responsibility for their roles.
For organizations, the challenge is to shift from their traditional focus on getting more out of people, to investing in meeting people’s core needs so they’re freed, fueled, and inspired to bring more of themselves to work, more sustainably.
Specifically, Towers Watson concludes that organizations must create policies and practices that make it possible for employees to better manage their workload, live more balanced lives and exercise greater autonomy around how, when, and where they get their work done. Policies focused on flexibility and working remotely contribute to a more energized workplace, we’ve found, and so does setting organization-wide boundaries around the length of meetings and the hours during which people are expected to respond to email.
For leaders, the key is to begin thinking of themselves as Chief Energy Officers. Energy is contagious, for better and for worse, and disproportionately so for leaders — by virtue of their influence. “The manager is at the heart of what we might think of as a personal employee ecosystem,” the Towers Watson study concludes, “shaping individual experience … day in and day out.”
Read full article in Harvard Business Review
Vault.com, Inc. (http://www.vault.com) is proud to announce the release of the company’s first digital-only book, the Vault Guide to Green Programs. The guide details how many prominent North American companies are incorporating environmental concerns into their business practices.
Companies profiled in the guide include: Accenture, Apple, Boeing, Burt’s Bees, Citi, DuPont, Gap Inc., GE, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Northwest Airlines, Random House, Seventh Generation, Sony BMG, Starbucks, Whole Foods and many more.
http://www.vault.com/store/book_preview.jsp?product_id=53449&industry=190
Recent Aberdeen research on sustainability initiatives has revealed that top performers place the transformation of enterprise culture at the center of their sustainability and corporate responsibility platforms.
Findings demonstrate that sustainability best practices are as much about change in organizational culture as they are about process transformation. Among the Best-in-Class, vision, leadership, education, and communication are as important as changes in operational processes and technology. In fact, this focus on people and processes results in a variety of qualitative improvements across the enterprise.
Best-in-Class organizations indicate that their Corporate Responsibility (CR) and sustainability platforms have positively impacted employee / management relations and company communication (56%). This Analyst Insight will compare Best-in-Class outcomes from two Benchmark Reports; Building a Green Supply Chain, from March 2008 and Getting from Green to Gold from July 2008 – both of which indicate that culture is the lynchpin to sustainability success.
http://www.aberdeen.com/summary/report/perspective/5537-AI-green-business-culture.asp
This SIRAN study finds that 86 of S&P 100 companies have some level of sustainability communications. The imc2 report identifies best practices in four sustainability communication categories:
- holistic definition
- integration
- engagement
- ransparency.
The study documents a clear connection between sustainability action and communication.
Download the free whitepaper.
The economic situation is certainly affecting all of Corporate America in so many ways. Budgets are tight, but there is even more of a need for CSR and Philanthropy in these tough times. Here is one man’s take on the need to not cut back on your CSR efforts.
Link to the video message from Stephen Howard, CEO of Business in the Community.
Spada, a UK public relations consultancy, has come out with a study that links the length of corporate sustainability reports with the likelihood of winning corporate sustainability awards. Here is the study.
Environmental Leader has looked at the report and summarized the findings in their daily newsletter. Check it out here.
Do you think this is true from your experiences?
My wife and I had dinner recently with several young people – 25 to 30 years old – who were convinced that because of the nation’s financial crisis, the U.S. government is poised to commandeer everyone’s 401(k) accounts to have more working capital. They cited recent pronouncements by Argentine President Cristina Kirchner that her government intends to nationalize the country’s private pension system. Some quick research indicated that the Internet is abuzz with speculation that if it can happen in Argentina, it can happen here.
Frankly, I’m skeptical that we’ll ever see such a money grab in the U.S. Still, it made me think about the harm done when our basic institutions violate the public’s trust. A country known for protecting the rights and interests of individuals suddenly has its young people believing their government would steal their hard-earned 401(k) money.
Why wouldn’t they think so? They’ve watched the future being stolen from them, and they’re old enough to know what they’re seeing.
We’ve been slow to react to environmental degradation. We’ve piled up a national debt that threatens their future. We fell asleep at the switch while the legislators we elected, and the regulators paid to watch out for us, allowed the underpinnings of our financial system to crumble. Regaining the trust of our young people could take years if not decades.
The good news is that the situation presents an opportunity for corporations to distinguish themselves with credible responsibility initiatives, starting with the basics of honesty, fairness, transparency and open reporting. One more requirement, I believe, is a real openness to engagement and interactive forums.
Even more than the baby boomers, this generation is used to personal involvement with issues that matter to them. In their use of Facebook and other online forums, they’re finding ways to learn from one another, fight for causes they believe in, and become involved. Corporations that do the best job of gaining their trust will be those that find meaningful ways to bring them into the fold.
B. L. Ochman wrote an interesting article this week for Ad Age – Why Big Companies Are So Scared of Social Media. She briefly discusses Motrin’s recent venture into social media, in which the pain-relief product offended some young mothers with an online video. The video discussed the pain that can come with carrying a baby in a sling all day and suggested Motrin as a remedy. A large, vocal contingent of mothers complained that the video was condescending and out of touch through postings on Twitter, YouTube and other outlets. In no time, Motrin killed the video and accompanying ad campaign and issued a public apology. (You can, of course, still find the video and its hordes of detractors on YouTube.)
I’m sure this spooked many CEOs familiar with the incident. It provides them with ammunition against the use of social media and the notion that active, sustained engagement with customers and stakeholders is a good idea. I’d argue, however, that Motrin’s error was not in using social media but rather in failing to understand the consumers they were trying to engage. In the long run, avoiding social media and stakeholder engagement is only prolonging the inevitable.
For all the skepticism and distrust that surrounds modern corporations, we can never lose sight of the fact that they exist because they provide products and services that meet human needs and desires. Despite how it sometimes feels inside a corporation, most people don’t want to see big business disappear.
They do, however, expect corporations to live up to common principles of honesty, openness, fairness and justice. With the democratization of publishing made possible through social media, interested parties now have powerful tools to express how they believe those principles should play out in practice. Organizing protests and boycotts is easier than ever.
Smart companies will engage with their major stakeholders to come to common agreement on key issues – or at least to have an honest discussion of differences of opinion. Traditional executives still balk at this notion, protesting that no one other than directors and shareholders has a right to tell them how to run their business. But a company that ignores or hides from key stakeholders only riles them more, and it pays a price in more intense media scrutiny, heavier regulatory interest, and a more difficult time in recruiting and retaining employees.
The real fear in the C-Suite is lack of control. Stakeholders don’t take a paycheck; they can’t be fired or disciplined. Executives ignore them at their own peril, however, especially when stakeholders have more tools at their disposal to organize and be heard.
It’s always been an axiom of media training that you can’t control the media; you can only try to shift the odds in your favor by engaging with reporters and trying to be heard. The same is true in this new world of social media. Stakeholders can’t be controlled, but smart companies will listen to them, engage them and adopt their best ideas. It’s the way to build and strengthen reputation in this new, online world.
Dell Inc. has found itself in the spotlight over the past couple of weeks after taking on Apple’s claims of producing the greenest generation of MacBooks ever.
Dell fired a shot across Apple’s bow on Dec. 19 with a blog from corporate VP Bob Pearson called The Real Meaning of Being Green. In it, Pearson said among other things that Apple should focus on action, not ads, and cited Dell’s commitment to carbon neutrality, indicating that Dell had reached carbon neutrality in August 2008.
It didn’t take long for the Wall Street Journal to pick up on the story, raising questions about Dell’s claim in its article, Green Goal of Carbon Neutrality Hits Limits. The Journal noted that there is no generally accepted definition of carbon neutrality. Dell defined it to mean that it was neutral in terms of its boilers and company-owned cars, its buildings’ electricity use, and its employees’ company-owned cars. It didn’t factor in such carbon issues as supplier performance, the emissions created to ship parts to Dell or the coal-fired electricity used to run Dell computers worldwide.
Honestly, anything Dell does to make the world a little better ought to be applauded, as should anything Apple does. And certainly Dell has a right to express its opinions about how the industry as a whole should approach its environmental responsibilities. Pearson was well within his rights to encourage Apple to be a bigger part of the conversation and to set stretch goals for environmental performance.
The environmental conversation can backfire, however, when companies start bickering over who’s greener. Then people get the impression that “responsibility” and “citizenship” are being used as shortcuts to grab a little more market share. Certainly it’s legitimate to discuss the environmental advantages of one product over another or one approach over another. But if it’s not handled well, with a good, long-term strategy beyond selling a few more units, companies are once again opening themselves to inspection, criticism and renewed charges of greenwashing.
In our house, we have both a Dell unit and an Apple unit. We’ve felt good about the performance of both and about the efforts of both companies to be responsible and responsive to society. This kind of squabbling, though, is leaving a bad taste.
In an effort to start rebuilding confidence in the ethical integrity of American business, 17 companies have come together to found the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance. The companies are inviting both private and public companies to join them in pledging to uphold four core values: legal compliance, transparency, identification of conflicts of interest, and accountability.
The founding members include such industry giants as Wal-Mart, PepsiCo, Dell and United Airlines. Any company accepted into membership, as a minimum requirement, has to subscribe to the core principles of the alliance. If within a year of joining, the company cannot demonstrate that it meets BELA’s minimum standards and practices, it can be removed from membership. Member companies will be audited every two years to make sure they are in compliance with BELA requirements. Of course, egregious unethical behavior that could have been prevented can be grounds for removal.
So, do efforts like this work? They certainly can. Think of other industry initiatives that have tackled shortcomings in other areas, such as ISO certification to improve quality and environmental performance. Once expectations are articulated and made formal, companies usually can do a good job of training employees in principles and guidelines.
ISO has done a good job of continuing to ensure that certification means something. The group has kept rigorous standards in place and made sure that certification is not only hard to earn but equally hard to keep.
BELA potentially can have the same impact over time. It plans to make sure that good systems and practices are in place to foster and demand ethical behavior inside a company. A public so badly burned by ethical shortcomings in so many American companies will be cynical for years to come, but BELA is to be applauded for trying to turn the situation around. To learn more, check out the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance.
So, we’ve all been wondering whether corporate America would walk away from corporate responsibility commitments when the going got rough. Shareholders might tolerate some dabbling on the social and environmental fronts when there’s plenty of cash in the coffers, but wouldn’t corporate executives feel pressured to reroute the money back to earnings and dividends – or to mitigate losses – during a downturn?
The surprising answer, according to Fortune magazine, is that many companies are taking the long view. Rather than decimate these programs in tough times, they’re continuing to provide resources. Prudent management will, of course, always look for efficiencies and cut support for efforts that aren’t producing results, and citizenship programs are undergoing this kind of scrutiny. But to a surprising degree, companies are continuing to back their citizenship efforts.
The farther down the road a company has gone, the more likely it is to continue its commitment to citizenship. For example, companies that serve on the board of Business for Social Responsibility indicate that cost-cutting efforts will leave their citizenship programs mostly untouched. These include the likes of Ikea, Microsoft, Rio Tinto, Chiquita and Shell. Starbucks and General Electric also have become strongly identified with citizenship efforts and are keeping their budgets intact.
These companies all have committed to corporate citizenship as one of the pillars that supports their reputation. They’ve weighed the costs of damaging their reputation against the dollars saved by reducing their citizenship efforts, and they’ve decided that reputation has the greater value. That’s a real ray of hope during some extraordinarily difficult times.
Many of us grew up apprehensive that an Orwellian world of an omnipresent Big Brother would invade our lives. We never anticipated that the people, as well as the state, would have the power to see and report virtually everything, everywhere – at least in wired countries.
Hertz just learned what it’s like to live in this new world of empowered stakeholders. In Fort Lauderdale, one hapless employee was left alone to staff the car rental counter about 10:30 p.m. one recent evening. About 15 customers stacked up in line, each waiting to be processed; they never should have been put in such a difficult situation. The employee ended up walking away, telling one angry customer that she was now off the clock. She never should have been put in such a difficult situation.
That customer used his cell phone to video the incident and post it to CNN’s iReport Web site. The video has been viewed nearly 1,500 times on iReport, and it may be going viral before long. I learned of it at Ragan Communications’ PR Junkie Web site. Follow the link, and you’ll be able to see the video and Hertz’s tepid response from a PR trooper, who, of course, never should have been put in such a difficult situation.
Granted, this incident is just one data point in Hertz’s customer service record. It becomes a prominent, memorable point, however, because of the outrage Hertz created and the power now in the hands of everyday people to document and share their lives on highly visible platforms.
All this is a lesson for companies trying to strengthen their reputation. Excellence across the board, or at least garden-variety competence, is more important than ever. At any point at which companies interact with a stakeholder – be it customer, employee, vendor, shareholder or neighbor – people now have the tools to package and distribute their complaints and disappointments. A company’s efforts to pursue higher-order goals such as citizenship, responsibility and sustainability will be met with a jaundiced eye if they’re built on a platform of everyday mediocrity – and odds are that everyday mediocrity, sooner or later, will be documented and revealed.
So, for now, I won’t be interested in hearing data points about what a good corporate citizen Hertz is, no matter how true they might be. I want to know that the company has its act together on the everyday basics of quality, value, reliability and service.
Cupid must have hit columnist Nick Nichols with a vinegar-dipped arrow this year. Mr. Nichols chose Valentine’s Day to publish his latest column, History’s Cesspool of Bad Ideas: Socialism and Corporate Responsibility.
After a lively diatribe against the government’s stimulus package – or “congressional crapola,” to quote Mr. Nichols – he says: “When Americans actually start investing in the markets again, I suspect they will not take kindly to the Corporate Social Responsibility crowd who pressured hundreds of publicly traded companies to spend hard-earned shareholder cash on socialist projects that had little to do with the bottom line. I pray that investors will relegate the Corporate Social Responsibility movement to history’s cesspool of bad ideas and once again reward CEOs who focus on making a profit rather than posing for publicity shots with left-wing political activists.”
At least Mr. Nichols didn’t argue that the downfall of so many businesses can be traced back to their CSR spending. Instead, he says we’re in a mess “that past social engineering programs created—to wit, forcing lending institutions to offer mortgages to those who could not afford them.” I’d say there’s just as much evidence that lenders, caught up in the need to keep producing results for shareholders, wrote bad loans to cash in on servicing and processing fees with little regard for how the loans could be repaid. I don’t recall many government bureaucrats putting the screws on loan managers to write million-dollar loans to people making $40,000 a year.
I’d also submit that the shareholder money directed toward CSR in this country is dwarfed by the shareholder money lost to mismanagement, dumb decisions and malfeasance. If we want to start protecting shareholders again, there are plenty of places to look other than companies’ CSR budgets.
I’m not sure which CSR projects Mr. Nichols had in mind when he described them as “socialist.” The CSR efforts I recall have to do with projects like protecting wetlands, building hospital wings, improving education, building parks and the like. I can’t remember any company putting its CSR money behind comrade recruitment or indoctrination.
I am, I believe, every bit as much a red-white-and-blue capitalist as Mr. Nichols. (Interesting how the words “red” and “blue” come together in that phrase.) Unlike him, however, I don’t equate CSR with socialism but with good business. It makes good sense for companies to do their part in strengthening communities just a little beyond providing jobs and quality goods and services. Good CSR programs enhance reputation, build trust, help attract and retain good employees, and provide a quality of life that helps keep communities viable for the long term.
No sensible person is asking companies to shirk their responsibilities to shareholders. No one is forcing companies to jeopardize their earnings statements or their balance sheets to solve all of society’s problems. Well-run companies, however, will pursue prudently managed CSR programs. They serve both society’s interests and their own at the same time.
This past week, I attended a Phoenix-area event, the Third Annual City of the Future 2020 Summit. The event grows out of the efforts of Arizona LeaderForce and the Collaboration for a New Century, which work to bring together nonprofit organizations with Arizona business managers so each can learn from the other.
The groups’ work is noteworthy, and I might discuss it another time. But for now, I want to tell you about the event’s keynote speaker, Brad Casper.
Casper is the youngish-looking CEO of the Dial Corp., the folks who help keep your body, your clothes and your home clean with such products as Dial soap, Right Guard antiperspirant, Renuzit air freshener and Purex bleach. Dial was purchased in early 2004 by the German-based Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, and Casper came on board as CEO about a year later. He previously had worked for Procter & Gamble and Church & Dwight (the Arm & Hammer people).
Casper detailed all the good corporate citizenship work being done by Dial and its parent company, and you can learn about that at the Henkel Web site. It includes a number of initiatives to conserve resources, make products more environmentally friendly and partner with service agencies in fields as diverse as supporting the “Lost Boys” of Sudan in Arizona, furthering science education in cooperation with the American Chemical Society and providing aid to children undergoing physical therapy in California.
His personal story illustrates the importance of top-level commitment in making corporate citizenship happen within a company. Casper graduated in 1982 with a degree in finance from Virginia Tech University. After a short stint in finance with General Electric – which he described as boring – Casper joined Procter & Gamble and soon found himself and his young family in Japan. He credits his time in Asia with teaching him what it feels like to be a minority and believes he is a stronger leader as a result.
About 20 years into his career, Casper said, he took his first Myers-Briggs test, which is used to reveal insights into personality and personal style. He learned he was an ENFJ, which in a nutshell, means he is warm, empathetic, responsive, responsible and capable of providing inspiring leadership. His fellow ENFJs include three U.S. presidents – Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.
Casper’s experience with Myers-Briggs led him on a journey of self-awareness during which he read a book by Bob Buford called Halftime. The book challenges its readers, who usually are successful in their careers, to think about how they want to build on their success to do something significant in their world. In part, this question led him to join Dial and Henkel, which, like many European companies, has been engaged in sustainability and social responsibility initiatives for more than half a century.
In December 2008, Dial and its Scottsdale, Ariz.-based employees moved into a new building (LEED-certified, by the way). Casper said he considered giving employees a day off after the move, which demanded a lot in terms of individual packing, adjusting to new routines and the like. Instead, he declared a day of community service, and even with the holidays fast approaching, employee response was overwhelming. He plans to make this a regular event for Dial.
The point of all this is simple: Commitment to corporate citizenship really does come from the top, and thoughtful leaders see it not just as something to be checked off a list. Instead, they understand that it can energize employees, help communities and help their companies to find added significance beyond the good their products and services create.
If your organization hasn’t discovered its “brand essence” or “voice” yet, it’s time to gather all hands on deck to chart a new course through the Sea of Change.
And while we’re at it, let’s rebrand Corporate Social Responsibility or Corporate Citizenship to Global Stewardship. Corporate Citizenship isn’t just for corporations — whether your business is a one-person shop or a global giant, global stewardship doesn’t have a preference for size over substance. All one needs to succeed is a few passionate deck hands and support from the top, to get the ship out of the harbor.
If your company doesn’t have a program just yet, here are five compelling reasons to develop one today. Global stewardship programs:
1. Empower employees with purpose. This might seem like a no-brainer, but purpose is important to employee productivity. As employees watch the stock market perform its daily aerobics and the focus shifts from work to worry about jobs and the future — employees need a reason to stay centered and focused on tasks at hand. Give them one by engaging them in a mission they care about. Having a clear purpose will always bring people back to center, and having an energized workforce will enable your company to continue its forward direction.
- Shift mindsets from fear to hope. Believe it or not, what we choose to focus on does makes a difference. What would you rather have your employees engaged in? Fear and uncertainty? Or an invitation to hope? The results will be obvious. But, the choice is up to you.
3. Teach activism over victimization. As one might imagine, change agents are far better prepared to handle the open seas when the going gets rough, than deck hands who live in fear and hide. When employees receive the tools they need to ride the waves, both your company and society benefits. Can you think of a few ways you can empower your crew to navigate its own Sea of Change?
4. Unite collective groups around a common cause. It sounds like a no-brainer, but one of the first tangibles to go when a workforce is fearful is teamwork; employees don’t just covet their jobs, they covet the jobs of their teammates, too. However, when employees are united around a common cause, morale stays high and lines of communication remain open — keeping fear at bay. List two ways you can help keep fear at bay by strengthening communication and bonds of connection.
5. Make a difference. Not surprisingly, at the end of the day, most employees want to feel valued, respected and heard. They also want to leave a footprint in the world, to let the world know they were here. Empower your employees to do just that with a Global Stewardship program, so that even when challenging times visit, employees have the skills, mindset and dignity to tackle their next great adventure.
This post was based on the Communitelligence webinar by the same name. You may purchase the replay of the webinar here.
It’s often difficult for executives at the top of a corporation to understand how anyone can dislike their company. Top corporate leaders often have spent their whole careers inside their company. They like their co-workers. They believe the products or services they provide are helpful, useful and often even essential. And they believe they’re being responsible as they work to maximize earnings for their shareholders. From their point of view, what’s not to like? They fail to see how their company can be tarred by the actions of another company, and they find it almost impossible to see any flaws in their company that might lead to public concern, skepticism or distrust.
The first is with stakeholder groups who can help the company further its philanthropic interests. The partnerships Habitat for Humanity has with many different firms in construction and home products is a great example of this. Habitat receives building materials and supplies; the companies strengthen their reputation by giving back to the community.
The second type of engagement involves companies with nonprofit and advocacy groups that at first glance might appear to be uncomfortable for both. The partnership between the Sierra Club and Clorox, for example, wouldn’t strike most people as a natural fit, and it has caused controversy for both the company and the nonprofit. Each, however, saw the other as beneficial to furthering their mission and enhancing their reputation. I believe both also have been exposed to new ways of thinking and hearing that will make them more open, more transparent and more effective.
If you want to learn more about how to forge alliances between companies and nonprofits, sign up for the Communitelligence Webinar on Thursday, May 7, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m eastern time. I have the honor of moderating the session, and you’ll hear from two corporate pros, Bob Langert of McDonald’s and Ed Nicholson of Tyson Foods, about how to make alliances work. It will be worth your time, so take a moment and register today.
An opinion piece in today’s Daily Mirror raises an interesting point: George W. Bush (who is partly blamed for the banking crisis); Andy Hornby, former CEO of HBOS, the failed U.K. bank; Rick Wagoner, CEO of nearly bankrupt General Motors; and Jeff Skilling, disgraced CEO of Enron, all hold MBAs from the Harvard Business School. Allan Mullay, the Ford CEO who is being severely criticized for his $21 million compensation package, holds an MBA from MIT. In fact, many of the world’s top banking executives hold MBAs from major business schools.
The question raised by the piece is this: Do these schools devote enough time to the study of ethics and values? Supposedly, business schools are receiving strong criticism for creating a mindset of self-interest and self-preservation that ignored the need to balance the interests of all stakeholders a business touches.
Business schools move their students through quickly; a typical course of study lasts 12 to 24 months, and it can be difficult to sandwich in courses on ethics, good values, and corporate citizenship. Even so, the best business schools will make this happen. Tomorrow’s leaders need to understand that they must, in fact, lead in the area of corporate citizenship.
One proposal is to require students to take a kind of Hippocratic oath upon graduation. The oath might touch upon such issues as selfishness (“considerations of personal benefit will never become more important than the interests of the enterprise I manage”) and transparency (“I swear to represent my enterprise’s performance accurately and transparently to all parties”).
Carried to its extreme, this would seem to require a licensing board and the possibility that someone could lose his license to practice business. That seems to be a little much. I’ve always opposed licensing journalists and PR people, and I feel much the same about business people. In this country, anyone should have the right to go into business and succeed or fail as skill and enterprise dictate. The market should be able to shake out incompetence. The law should be able to give a comeuppance to ne’er-do-wells.
That said, top business schools need to move beyond teaching the ins-and-outs of net present value and hurdle rates. In my MBA program, a common theme was that executives existed to maximize shareholder value, and that’s fair enough. We’ve seen the damage that can be done, however, when that notion is emphasized to the exclusion of others, such as fair play and an understanding that shareholders – and society – pay a price for unethical behavior.
Business schools can make a great contribution by helping their students understanding their responsibilities to a variety of audiences beyond shareholders.
