How to Drive Change Within Your Company

Don't ask people what they can do for you, ask what you can do for them.

This blog was originally published on the Net Impact Blog as part of its Voices series, featuring Net Impact leaders around the world who are making a difference on their campuses and in their careers.

At the 2014 Net Impact Conference, students and professionals from a variety of organizations (and at very different stages of their careers) gathered together. What united us all was and is a strong desire for change: a passion for making our organizations, lives, and the world better. This uniting factor is also one of the biggest challenges when it comes to breaking boundaries.

Affecting change within an organization is an art, not a science; there is no one way to shift attitudes, change behaviors, or reverse bad practices. However, during Friday’s session "Leader of the Pack: What's the Future of CSR Leadership?” the panel shared their experiences of breaking boundaries in their organizations. and there was one insight that seemed to resonate above all others:

Ask people what you can do to help them.

It sounds simple but, in our excitement and sometimes impatience, it is easily forgotten. As Leo Tolstoy put it, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

When Tim Mohin joined AMD as Director Corporate Responsibility, he intentionally took time to understand and respond to the passions and pain points of different people across the organization. This approach got a positive response and, to this day, he continues to actively listen and work out how key Corporate Responsibility strategies and activities can support and enhance his colleagues’ priorities.

His fellow panelist, Dave Stangis, Vice President, Public Affairs and Corporate Responsibility Campbell Soup Company, agreed with this advice and encouraged all of us to get curious and take the time to meet with as many people across our organizations as possible. He added that knowledge is also crucial and coached us all to keep learning and evolving our ideas because when the people you need to work with to affect change become more engaged, you need to be prepared.

As a consultant in the CSR/sustainability world, I have always been able to add more value through listening, adapting, and being flexible rather than approaching an assignment with fixed ideas or opinions. The session with Tim Mohin and Dave Stangis confirmed this approach, as well as the importance of building relationships and gaining trust. At the end of the day, you can have a robust business case and brilliant ideas, but they will never fly if you do not have the right relationships to advance them.

Aligning CSR Strategy with Brand

This is a blog I published on Cause Consulting's Blog Cause Nation a few weeks ago. I thought some of you, my lovely blog readers, might be interested to read it too. 

CSR/Sustainability and Marketing professionals have not always been the best of friends.
In fact, recently, Thomas Kolster, Creative Director and Author of Goodvertising, and Founder of Where Good Grows, posted a cartoon showing them at opposite ends of a couple’s therapy couch. However, when they do work together and see the benefits, there is potential for transformative, long-lasting social and environmental change.

So what are the requirements for a successful relationship between CSR/Sustainability and Marketing? This was the topic up for discussion at the Net Impact Boston Career Summit on Friday February 21st. Harriet Henry joined John Rooks, President, The Soap Group, Chris Mann, Vice President of Corporate Partnerships, City Year, Kyle Cahill, Senior Manager, Corporate Citizenship, Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA, and Anne Erhard, SVP and NA Director, Corporate & Brand Citizenship, PurPle to discuss ‘Effective CSR Marketing: Aligning CSR Strategy with Brand Marketing Objectives.’

Here are the top five tips for effective CSR marketing discussed by the panel:

1. Start with a great strategy. An effective CSR strategy aligns closely with core business and brand objectives; the more closely aligned, the more successful it will be, and the more authentic any marketing and communications around your CSR activities will be. Take the time to develop a killer CSR strategy and engage your marketing teams in the process, as they understand your brand and target audiences better than anyone.

2. Engage your employees first. Everyone on the panel agreed that it may take time before you’re ready to communicate your CSR activities externally. Typically, your first audience is your employees; they are the people that will execute and bring the CSR strategy to life.  They are also the strongest brand ambassadors you will ever have. Only once the CSR strategy is embedded and generating wins internally should you start to think about going external.

3. Don’t try and go it alone – talk and listen to your stakeholders: It’s likely that your CSR strategy will deal with some complex social and environmental issues, and it is unlikely that you will have all the necessary expertise in-house. So go out and find subject-matter experts, nonprofits, and other stakeholders who can help you shape your plans. Even if you think you have a winning strategy, it never hurts to validate what you know and, what’s more, seeking support and guidance is respected and may win you essential allies and partners for the future.

4. Don’t preach: When you’re ready to communicate your CSR initiatives to consumers and customers, remember that they already have a long list of worries and don’t want something else to feel bad about. Make them your partners, treat them like humans and be humble. No one has all the answers and no one is perfect, so be honest and tell your consumers this. In the end, they’ll like you more for it!

5. Make it relevant and fun:  As good as it is, your CSR strategy is not what most people want to hear about. Similarly, just because you think something is important or interesting, it doesn’t mean others will. Talk to your consumers and customers, find out what they care about, and then engage them in a fun way that they will remember.

Send them to the Amazon

It’s the age-old question - is it possible for a business to transform itself for the benefit of society and the planet without a visionary, forward-thinking leadership team?

Patagonia's Founder Yvon Chouinard
gets it - how can we help other leaders
see the light?

I recently listened to a Shared Value Initiative webinar, which featured representatives from Kemira and Barclays Bank talking about how their companies are Innovating for Shared Value. Kemira spotted the risks and opportunities inherent in the global water crisis and changed its competitive positioning from chemicals to water quality management, a move that seems to have been beneficial to its bottom line. Barclays Bank is taking a slightly less dramatic and more experimental, though still innovative, approach to shared value, investing £25 million in its Social Innovation Facility, through which it is developing commercial products that deliver social impact.

What do both these examples have in common? New leadership taking the reins and moving the companies in the direction of Shared Value.

Of course, there were other factors that inspired the smarter approach to business – for example, consumer trust in Barclays Bank was at an all-time low following Libor Gate – however, the change of leadership seems to have been the engine behind the transformation. As Valerie Bockstette, Managing Director, FSG, noted at the end of the Shared Value Initiative webinar, “visionary leadership is a key ingredient for creating shared value.”

In some cases, it is not so much a change of leadership, as a mind-set change among the existing leadership. Take former Walmart CEO, Lee Scott, whose trip to see the aftermath of Katrina led to “Walmart mobilizing its tremendous logistics infrastructure to aid disaster victims.” It also inspired him to launch “one of the biggest corporate sustainability initiatives in history.” Coca Cola’s CEO Muhtar Kent was also inspired to take a more sustainable approach to doing business after visiting the Arctic and seeing Polar Bears struggling to find food.

So should all CEOs be sent to the Amazon? Or to the slums in Mumbai? Or anywhere in the world where they can see first-hand the material impacts of the company they lead?

The answer is yes, according to Harvard Psychology Professor, Daniel Gilbert, “when we only learn from the experience of others, this is often insufficient to drive action and behavior change.” 

To add another layer of complexity to the challenge, however visionary and forward-thinking a CEO is, if his shareholders and investors don’t play ball then he’s not going to be able to radically transform the business anyway. Particularly, as many shareholders and investors are still blinded by short term wins. A 2013 McKinsey and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) study of more than 1,000 board members and C-suite executives around the world, found that “79% felt especially pressured to demonstrate strong financial performance over a period of just two years or less.”

So it seems true purpose-driven companies must have all its leaders, shareholders, investors, employees and stakeholders unified behind a shared mission to deliver long-lasting, sustainable value to the business, society and the world.

But, in the absence of visionary leaders, there’s still progress that can be made. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, spent 5 years studying companies that made the leap from good to great and then stayed there. He found that “the real path to greatness…requires simplicity and diligence. It requires clarity, not instant illumination. It demands each of us to focus on what is vital—and to eliminate all of the extraneous distractions.”

So his response, in answer to the question “But how do I persuade my CEO to get it?” is “don't worry about that. Focus instead on results…within your own span of responsibility.”

And this is the message we need to remember. The circumstances won’t always be perfect but those of us who get it need to keep educating and raising awareness of the long-term, global, shared benefits that can be achieved.