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.
Recently the news media was all a twitter about billionaire movers and shakers getting together to discuss the increasing need for philanthropy in the U.S. and abroad. Bill and Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffet were alleged to be attending the secretive meetings. Personally, I was heartened to learn that humanity was top of mind for global leaders because if there ever was a time to lead and address need, certainly, that time is now.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
If your organization has been sitting on the side lines waiting for a better time, a better place, it’s time to move off the fence. Starting a community based program (aka corporate philanthropy program) would be a good place to start. If enough companies birthed mini-versions of Buffet and Winfrey-like programs, the world would be a vastly different place. Why not start now?
To get started, I’ve outlined five simple D’s to create an A-level program that would do any company proud. To begin:
Define your company’s purpose for the program. Start by asking and surveying employees: what do we want to accomplish? What should the purpose be for the program? What value can the organization uniquely bring to the world/state/region/city that would make a difference? What needs should be addressed? Where we can be of value? What matters most to us? Then whittle the ideas down to the top 5 or 10 for consideration and exploration.
Discover your passion. Once you’ve defined what matters most to your employees, discover all you can about each need or topic. Ask employees to discover: who currently addresses this need? Can we collaborate with them? Ask them to discover what programs are addressing these needs and why they are successful? Have them talk to groups about their experiences. Inquire about their strengths. Their successes. What worked? Why it worked and how it worked? What did they learn from this experience? What did they value most? What value to do they continue to bring to this need? Stay away from weaknesses. Focus solely on strengths-based results. Only by understanding what works and why it works can we mirror and replicate success…Choose to focus on creating success with your program.
Dream your passions into life. Now that you have a handle on what you wish to create, dream about it. Imagine the answer to this question: It’s five years out and the New York Times is interviewing your company for a story about your corporate philanthropy program. What successes would you play up? What successes were most important to you? How did you make a difference? Where did you address the greatest need? How did you do that? What was most effective? Play with these questions in your mind…Consider: What if we …..? Imagine if we….? How could we? Dream big. Let your imagination lead the way. When we dream, we shift our minds from limitation-based thinking to the unknown where we can freely explore new avenues of possibility. Play with your dreams and see what forms. Then follow your company’s heart to the place that resonates best with your organization’s voice and mission.
Design a successful process. Once you have your dream established, it’s time to design a system to implement and execute to it. Take your dream and make it real by putting a foundation to it and processes in place. Make it real and tangible. Let your employees determine the processes and foundations. Invite collaboration and knowledge sharing. When employees are invited to participate in ventures that matter to them, productivity, morale and success increases exponentially.
Deliver a program that makes a difference in the world. Implement your vision with the utmost compassion and of course, passion. Once your organization has a handle on its strengths, host your own mover and shaker meetings with other like-minded organizations to share best practices so that the circle can begin again.
| Comments |
| RE: Addressing Needs: Five D’s to Create an A-Level Corporate Philanthropy Program Today |
| Lori, this is a great primer on how to put together a program that will make a difference! I think most companies understand the importance of being strategic in this area and putting dollars in projects that will yield results and a good return. If they follow your advice and focus limited resources, they will achieve those objectives. |
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.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has put together a series of videos called “Policy Translated,” whose purpose, I gather, is to cut through the fog and simplify major policy issues for Americans. You can see the one on corporate social responsibility here. Go ahead and watch. I’ll wait.
If you decided to skip ahead, though, I’ll summarize. Companies contribute everything they need to contribute to society by being in business. They create jobs, pay taxes, make shareholders wealthier (at least ideally) and keep the economy humming with their purchases of goods and services. Demands for companies to do anything more will be the death of capitalism. Or, in a word, refried Milton Friedman.
This whole line of thinking depends upon setting up straw men that have nothing to do with modern thinking about CSR. No reasonable human is dreaming of the day when corporations will take every cent they make – and then some – and hand it over to social agencies. Of course that would destroy capitalism; who would deny that? But that’s not what CSR is about.
This either/or approach to the discussion of corporate responsibility is tiring after a while. For decades, companies voluntarily have set aside resources to do their part to make their communities better. There’s nothing new about this. And there’s nothing to force companies to do so. Companies may feel pressure from demands for corporate responsibility, but the decision of how to respond to that pressure is theirs and theirs alone to make.
Whenever I see these simplistic critiques, I feel like borrowing the line Ronald Reagan used to disarm Jimmy Carter: “There you go again.” (The issue Carter was attacking Reagan on, incidentally and fittingly for this day and age, was health care reform. But that’s another story.)
If the Institute wants to make a real contribution, it can do better than the “take a swipe” videos it has produced. What do you think?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
In all the coverage of General Motors’ problems in recent days, we haven’t seen much about the company’s record of social responsibility. With all the issues of debt, the health-care burden carried by the company, and its difficulties in a crowded supplier market, social responsibility concerns often fade into the background.
Interestingly, though, at least one voice has risen up in praise and appreciation of GM. The Washington Informer, and presumably other African American newspapers, carried an article today by William Reed of Black Press International. Reed calls attention to the long history of GM in working with, employing and supporting African Americans and indeed black people in many parts of the world, including South Africa.
Reed points out that in 1971, GM appointed the first African American to the board of a Fortune 500 company. That appointee, the Rev. Leon Sullivan, became internationally famous for developing the Sullivan Principles, which challenged U.S. companies with operations in South Africa to treat their black employees equitably and fairly. At the time, GM was the largest U.S. employer in South Africa. GM followed the principles in South Africa, and eventually 125 U.S. companies within operations in the African nation followed suit.
Of the companies that adopted the principles, at least 100 withdrew from South Africa as it became apparent that the government would not readily change its apartheid policies of segregation and discrimination. Certainly the economic blow of having so many companies leave contributed to the eventual overturn of these policies. GM and Rev. Sullivan were squarely in a leadership role on the issue.
In his article, Reed also lauds GM for other initiatives:
“It was GM that provided buses to transport people to the Poor Peoples’ March on Washington. Since the early 1970s, well ahead of other companies, General Motors has gone the extra mile to make sure the American dream was achievable for all Americans. Under the guidance of Sullivan, in 1972 GM became the first auto company to launch minority dealer and minority supplier initiatives. It spent $2.5 billion with people of color and women-owned suppliers in the U.S., and had full-time management focused on supplier diversity.”
Reed calls upon African Americans to rally behind this company as it emerges from bankruptcy and seeks a new competitive footing. If this happens, GM could realize a substantial reward for all the good work it has done over the years. For those who doubt the importance of building strong relationships through responsible action, perhaps this will be a lesson.
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.
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.
I had just been reading another book on sustainability when my copy of The Responsibility Revolution arrived in the mail. Wrapped in 100 percent post-consumer fiber, I picked up the book, read the preface and introduction and gleefully put down my prior read to immerse myself in Hollender and Breen’s next adventure.
A nice complement to The Necessary Revolution, by Peter Senge (Senge writes the forward in this book as well) Hollender and Breen have a refreshing way of making responsibility real and tangible for companies considering the shift to this new for-purpose (and profit) way of life.
The book’s opening chapter champions five directives businesses can adopt to transform conventional enterprises into “responsible and authentic” businesses. To support this blueprint, Hollender and Breen provide provocative case studies that support their theories and prescription for success. While Hollender admits: “There is, of course, no one right way to transform a conventional company into a revolutionary company” — the authors note four key principles must be manifest — mission, transparency, authenticity and innovation. Following is a high-level overview of the five directives outlined by Hollender in the book.
Blueprint For a Responsible Company
To build a truly authentic and responsible company, Seventh Generation’s Co-Found Jeffrey Hollender says a company’s mission should matter. “Responsible companies believe that what you stand for – your purpose and values – is far more important than the products you make or the services you sell.” He adds: “When organizations stand for something big – something that truly matters to people – they sharply differentiate themselves from their competition.”
To build trust in the company and its mission, Hollender states that organizations need to become transparent in their dealings with all stakeholders, from employees and customers to communities beyond. “By publicly baring its less than admirable impacts on society and the environment,” Hollender writes, “the transparent company preempts its critics – and takes the first step towards collaboratively fixing its problems.”
To unleash solutions, Hollender proposes that responsible companies transform workplaces into burgeoning communities of purpose and innovation. “Talented people, animated by a community’s sense of purpose,” the authors explain, “provide the brainpower for generating breakthrough ideas and the firepower for getting them into the world.” In other words — when companies let associates set their strategic direction, they act less like employees and more like entrepreneurs primed to innovate.
To optimize the value of “community” innovation, Hollender advocates bringing consumers into the organization. The more heads a responsible company can collaborate with, he notes, the greater the impact on the company and marketplace. “Good companies genuinely listen to customers and outside stakeholders. They interact. And a few dare to put consumers at the very heart of their innovation process,” Hollender observes.
Whether an organization seeks to create meaningful innovation, build community or bring consumers into the fold– Hollender is emphatic that all actions must come from an authentic place that demonstrate a “real” commitment to solution-making. “Do-good marketing doesn’t cut it anymore,” Hollender writes in his book.
And lastly, for the responsible enterprise seeking longevity, the authors state: “No enterprise can truly attempt to embed the sustainable ethos into everything it does without constructing a collective view of what it should be.” To demonstrate the value of this insightful point, Hollender opens chapter two with his first case study — a deep dive into OrganicValley’s 2004 Dry Thursday event.
If you’re not familiar with this story (originally covered in Inc. Magazine), a massive shift to all things organic back in December 2004 meant Organic Valley did not have enough product to fill orders. The company had a critical choice to make – continue to serve the big box retailers who were driving organic mainstream, or hold true to the green grocers that helped build the market in the first place. Since this case study is central to the heart of the book and Hollender’s blueprint for a responsible company, I won’t delve into specifics here other than to say that Hollender is spot on when he says: Mission matters. To learn more about this case study and others profiled in the book, check out The Responsibility Revolution.
Source: The Responsibility Revolution, Jeffrey Hollender and Bill Breen, March 2010, Jossey-Bass™ Publishing. All quotes attributed to authors.
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.
Twenty-five years ago, I edited Enterprise, an employee publication for Southwestern Bell Corp., which at that time was newly independent from the mother ship of AT&T. Ironically, years after the government split the Bell system apart, Southwestern Bell became so strong that it bought almost all the old pieces of AT&T, including AT&T, and renamed itself AT&T. That’s a story for another day, however.
At the time, Southwestern Bell, as a newly independent company, turned to a number of management experts and thought leaders for advice and counsel. One of them was a young Paul Hawken, who had just written a book called The Next Economy and had founded Smith & Hawken five years earlier. Just recently, Smith & Hawken announced it was going out of business, but it had a good run. Over the years, Hawken himself has continued to be respected as a thinker and innovator in sustainabilty and environmental responsibility.
Today I want to share some of the thoughts Hawken brought 25 years ago to Southwestern Bell. In my next post, I’ll share some of his more recent thinking. It’s interesting to see how a thought leader like Hawken can find a theme early in his professional life and then grow personally and professionally with it over the years. Here is Paul Hawken, circa 1984:
For the past 100 years, we, as a society, have been developing our motor skills. For the next 100 years, we will be putting the nerve system in place as we turn from a mass economy to an informative economy.
From 1880 to 1973-74, we experienced what I term the mass economy, in which we developed our manufacturing capabilities. During each decade of that period, we escalated our use of fossil fuel to produce goods for the masses. And we were successful.
But since 1973, the cost of energy in real terms has gone up, and wages in real terms have gone down. Therefore, we have had to make a choice – to use less energy or continue to consume. We are changing rapidly, entering what I call the informative economy.
This new economy is characterized by an emphasis on design, utility, knowledge. It is more human in that it stresses service, morale and understanding.
And it is a consumer-led change. For many years, Americans assumed their wages always would continue to go up. Their purchase patterns reflected this.
Now Americans are emulating Europeans, who have seen their economies wiped out every few decades by war. Europeans are cautious consumers. Americans are becoming much more cautious and are demanding quality. We may have less, but it will mean more to us.
This change in consumer attitudes has a big impact on an industry (like telecommunications) that is being deregulated. Your industry will have to satisfy the selectivity of the market.
One way you are doing this is the introduction of technology such as fiber optics. Such technology uses fewer resources but possesses more intelligence. This is key in the informative economy. The phone system will become a nervous system that thinks.
There are certain problems involved in this transition from the mass to the informative economy. There will be high capital costs, the liquidation and breakup of large corporations, a contraction of government and the elimination of the middle man.
But overall, the shift to the informative economy presents a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs who can see the change and take advantage of it.
I read Hawken’s words today and am very impressed with how much he got right. What are your thoughts?
As I mentioned in my last blog entry, Paul Hawken, already 25 years ago, was working with themes that have sustained his career for, well, a quarter of a century. I’m particularly impressed that he saw the drive toward building quality into products, to reduce energy, and to succeed by providing exceptional customer service.
This spring, Hawken gave the commencement address at the University of Portland. These excerpts show what he’s talking about today. I can’t think of a better challenge to be laid down for those who care about corporate citizenship:
Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you
are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades….There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t
be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done….When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums….
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.” …
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television….
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequeathed to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.
