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.

Is there Social Intrapreneur in all of us?

"Social innovation is the unwritten bullet-point in everyone’s job description" is the opening line from Marzena Zukowska, media manager and strategist with Ashoka Changemakers, in her Forbes article 3 Necessary Ingredients for Corporate Changemaking. The article is about Social Intrapreneurs; employees, who are working to change the culture of their workplace from the inside. There are some remarkable examples of how this is being done. Check out this video of the Food for Good initiative, thought  up and bought to life by PepsiCo employees in Dallas, Texas:

Click here to read about other inspiring examples from around the world.

At the end of last year, Ashoka and Accenture, launched The League of Intrapreneurs, a competition to raise awareness about what they're calling a 'lost tribe' of social innovators from all over the globe; the millions of employees, who have come up with projects to help their employers fulfill their commercial and social objectives. Winners will be featured in the globally distributed 'Intrapreneur Toolkit', they will be publicized on the Fast Company's Co-Exist blog and they will receive consultancy support from Accenture Development Partnerships.

This celebration of Social Intrapreneurs is a an important step - it's recognition of that the fact that it's not only entrepreneurs that have great ideas; that employees in companies, whatever their day job, have the potential passion, creativity and skills to bring groundbreaking new social projects to life. In my opinion, if this competition can encourage companies to provide the means and mechanisms to enable employees to communicate and develop their ideas and, most importantly, inspire employees to fight for what they're passionate about, it will have been a success.

We can all find our inner hero!

Having said that, we're not all Social Intrapreneurs, and, let's be honest, it would be a nightmare for companies if we were! Nevertheless, the phrase 'social innovation is the unwritten bullet point in everyone's job description' is still true. Everyone in a company can help make the business they work for a 'better business' - from finding ways for their team or department to use less paper, to changing to a supplier more in line with the values of the business, to working alongside a 'Social Intrapreneur' to make their idea a reality. What is important is that their company has a clearly defined purpose and strategy that inspires employees to work towards a clear, shared goal and empowers them to make a difference as part of their job, without waiting to be told to do it.

So whilst we unlock the potential of Social Intrapreneurs, let's not forget the potential of everyone in a business to change it for the better.