Building communities

Community, to Block [the author], is about membership, feeling part of something larger than oneself, feeling at home, relating to the rest of the world — and participating in, owning, and being accountable for what one creates with others. It matters not whether the community is a small group, a neighborhood, a city, a multinational corporation, a global governance organization, or any other structure. Organizing any human enterprise is an exercise in developing community.

Block has applied rigor and years of experience in honing his understanding of how people can work together to create what they need and desire, “a future distinct from the past.” He focuses on the structures of belonging, giving detailed attention to the many elements of design, location, and process that contribute to having productive conversations, gatherings, and relationships. He says, for instance, that conversations should be structured around questions that evoke not answers, but commitment, accountability, and the possibility for transformation. These include questions of invitation (not mandate, coercion, or persuasion); questions about possibilities, how we wish to live in the future (not problems to be solved); questions about ownership that lead people to accept responsibility; questions about dissent that leave space for authentic doubt and reservations; questions about commitment that evoke promises and accountability for observable results; and questions about gifts that surface what we and others can bring to the quest for a different future.

Very interesting perspective here, especially in light of the traditional view that we should identify problems and try to solve them. Here we need to inspire people to come together to imagine something better, give them a stake in developing a successful outcome, encourage alternative opinions and create mutual accountability and commitment which should be recognized. Some lessons to be learned.

taken from a review of Best Business Books 2008: Capitalism and Community, by strategy + business

Economic downturn great news for the Planet

With less money to buy things, people are going to buy less and use less. This is great; there will be less construction, less need for paper and packaging, less automobiles and less of many other things... Not the best way for society to consume less, but the most effective!

There will be a need to keep an eye out for shortcuts being taken to make products cheaper by using less sustainable production techniques or using less sustainable materials. Hopefully pressure from NGOs and the media, as well as the recent spurt in transparency through online campaigns, will restrict the success of companies that try such shortcuts.

In the meantime, it can be expected that with prices of carbon being factored in, prices of water and transport increasing, and new ideas to integrate the environmental costs of products; prices for many products will continue to increase, further reducing consumption. With otherwise downwards pressure on inflation, this will be a good thing, and something consumers might be able to weather (unlike last year when inflation was so high).

Discovering what will be next

Yes, CSR is the answer to preventing the next crisis, because CSR if generally perceived as being about being responsible to stakeholders -which requires knowing what stakeholders think responsible is. And if you find some stakeholders that can define irresponsible -and related them to your company somehow; then that is where the risks are!

Stakeholder engagement, though, generally starts with talking to the main stakeholders and working out what the big issues are. Then engagement goes on two parallel tracks; one looking at engaging at those issues in depth across all stakeholders, and the other looking into depth at the key stakeholders (across the range of issues affecting them).

But for this to be effective, the little voices, the little stakeholders need to be heard. The one stakeholder that said that debt is bad, that debt and consumerism and endless retail growth is not sustainable -that stakeholder needs to be found and listended to, as wacky as that person might sound like. In reality there were not many stakeholders that said that debt was bad. The investors liked it if they saw greater profit (mistakenly it turns out); the government liked it if created more wealth (aka debt) and stimulated economic activity (aka unsustainable spending); customers liked it (who does not like buying?) and so on.

Finding the issues that will affect you, especially in an era where are few unhappy people can cause a big problem through the internet, is the nexy step for all the super-advanced companies with excellent stakeholder engagement. Yes they are aware of the current issues stakheolders have, but they are not doing well enough to spot the future ones -by talking to the minority stakeholders, who get crowded out from aggregated responses.

Go engage, but engage beyond the local level issues, the global issues, the 'expert opinion' issues and start to explore other industries that you never dreamed would affect you. Go explore the issue that no-one thinks is important -try to see if you can find any reason that it might be important. Go and spot trends through new media, employees and academics. Don't just predict and anticipate the future: predict and anticipate the issues in that future.

CSR: back to basics

A few years ago, after a mistake in Texas cost BP its reputation, a bunch of money, and sadly the lives of several of its employees, BP had to go back to basics. It had to do two things: Firstly, obey the law and create a culture of obeying the law and doing the right thing. Secondly it had to re-understand risk. BP had done a good job of looking for opportunity but had forgotten about the risk element of CSR.

Now, a financial crisis has hit a lot of companies in the same way. Granted the risks that have unfolded are much more unforeseen than those that affected BP, but none-the-less, companies should have, through stakeholder engagement internally and externally, foreseen this as a risk and taken certain preventative measures. They have not, and the results are serious -not just a PR problem -for many companies they mark the end of the line, so to speak.

Several years ago SustainAbility reported that the economic dimension of the Triple Bottom Line was not being assessed with as much rigour as the Social and Environmental. They pointed out that most companies dealt with their financial reports separately and that the leading companies were looking at the economic impacts of their work, through suppliers, employees, trade etc. A few companies had looked at issues like taxation properly but, apart from that, not much else was being looked at critically.

Now we have found what they were missing: they were not finding that some critical risks to their firms, such as lack of capital, lack of cash and so on, were real risks. Risks that they needed to address. They did not. When such issues developed into reality the enterprises folded. They'd got so excited using CSR for business benefit they had forgotten about using it to minimise risk. Risk being something that is hard to quantify, but necessary, as we have found it recently.

So what will be next? What other crucial assumptions do businesses make, assumptions which provide risks, if something happens? Many companies have looked at terrorism and political risks; many have looked at pandemics too. Some have looked at oil and energy and transport prices; others have looked at trade barriers. Of all the key inputs, money, people and resources are the most important. Ironic that companies had neglected to really deal with the money input, of all the inputs.

Next might be some of the key resources or secondary inputs (inputs needed for money, people or resources). Likely contenders are water, food and energy, but there may be other likely issues too, by sector. The lesson for business is to take a long hard and deep look at the risks their businesses face from all angles; social, environmental, economic, political and anything else they can think of. In particular they need to understand what risks affect their stakeholders that might alter their stakeholder's actions, and thus affect the business: beyond employees and customers, think regulators, civil society or competitors.

What worth is CSR Assurance?

Recently a report came out about assuring CSR reports (i.e. verifying that the information in the reports are true) which was funded by CSR Assurance companies (hmmm), saying that not enough companies are assuring their CSR reports (surprise, surprise).

I would like to proffer that CSR assurance is actually pretty pointless and useless (in of itself) because:
1) How much time or effort do any of the assurers put into looking at any of the data to see if it is true; is it even possible to verify half the data anyway?
2) Is there any legal liability for assurers, like there is for assuring regular financial reports?
3) Does the assurance mean anything to the reader at all, or add any value to a CSR report?

Question 3 is rather interesting, because the best CSR reports now include all kinds of other methods of assurance, though not technically 'assurance' which for me are much more interesting and useful. These include comments from concerned employees or customers, (unedited) comments from critical stakeholder councils and even comments from a CSR expert on whether the key Reporting principles have been followed or not (e.g. GRI has several principles including materiality). Others include reports from SRI experts or other relevant shareholders.

All of these comments mean more than a statement that the numbers are correct, which i truly doubt, since many of the most important numbers are hard to measure and the rest rely on self-reporting from the company anyway (rather than some auditor going across the world to check on what the exact waste is from any particular machine and whether that is what it has been claimed to be).

So, nothing wrong with assurance, but i do not think it adds much value to a CSR report for external readers, and probably does not (in of itself) help a company improve itself internally. At least, in the press release, they admit that the quality of assurance varies widely, and also point out that many of the assurers are also the ones who help prepare the report!

Responding to signals and feedback

One of the most striking concepts in Diamond's book is that of the rulers and elite of a society becoming too insular from the actual society and thus unaware of the signals of pending problems; once they realise, it is too late to change.

In this sense, we must wonder whether the elite of society would be the ones most able to survive a collapse (and if so, they have no motivation to prevent a collapse) or whether they too would suffer.

Somewhat related to this is that it seems businesses are being more responsive to the trends in society than elite or politicians are; maybe because businesses are thinking long-term and elite or politicians are not. Businesses might, though not democratically elected, be more responsible to their share holders and customers and employees (through active media, NGOs etc) and thus responsive to changes. However the problem with business is, though they need a successful civilization/society/economy in order to exist, their focus is not on the success of society, their focus will be on profits or some other metric that is rather selfish (as with selfish, nationalistic, governments).

In this sense are the current systems of global governance helping or hindering in any improvements in our responses to the obvious destruction we are causing?

It would seem that the global formal and informal governance systems are not up to the job, but they themselves will protect themselves (and resist too many calls for change or competition for governing institutions) and we will be unable to solve global problems collectively, or as individuals.

Collapse of civilizations

Jared Diamond has moved on from Guns, Germs and Steel, which gave an account of what factors influenced the growth and development of civilisations in certain parts of the World and not in others. Collapse, looks at why civilisations, well, collapse..and why some do not. Well worth at watching his lecture, available online here.

A few key points include Jared's 5 main reasons for collapse:
1) Human environmental impacts
2) Climate change (and how that impacts environmental services provision)
3) Hostile neighbors (to take advantage of internal weaknesses)
4) Trading partners (as the society may be too dependent on successes or failures of neighboring societies)
5) A Society's institutions being able to perceive and solve, or ignoring and failing to solve the other 4 problems.

He also discusses some of the differences between the past and the present such as:
-We have more people with more potent destructive technologies that can cause more destruction more quickly.
-Faster communications and transportation of good and bad things like terrorists, immigrants and diseases.
-Societies cannot really collapse in isolation as there are likely to be consequences elsewhere, including remote countries like Somalia.

On the other hand, greater hope comes from the faster and greater spread of knowledge for us to learn from mistakes and successes around the World now, and in the past. This gives us the chance to know what we are doing and gives the choice to continue or to change.

Some things he seems to believe are not as important include cultural differences and political system differences, which is quite interesting. I have not read the book but am keen too. In particular I find 5) the most interesting issue.

In bad times...

If the Tragedy of the commons is a real problem, and has been especially so in recent times as everyone gets rich from the growing economy and if there has been a dash for wealth almost everywhere; a dash to cut up the 'economic pie' so to speak... well then, in bad times will the situation be worse or better? Will people get desperate and have even greater disregard for common property?

It seems to me that in good times we are selfish and in bad times, even more selfish. But there could be a tiny chance a few people might realise that if we all act less selfish we could all get to better times much quicker. The chances of that happening? Well, we just have to look at the past ... and hope the future is brighter!

Personally there is always some hope, as Margaret Mead said:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Indeed, the only people who have changed the world are people -and people is a collective noun for many persons, which is a group of ONE person. ONE person who starts something, carries something on, supports something or does something... we must hope we can realise a balance between each of us acting as individuals (hopefully for good) and each of us releasing our responsibility and acting as a group (generally not for good).

Business approaches and Traditional approaches needed, to reduce poverty

Yes, i totally agree with Paul Polak, Jacqueline Novogratz, CK Prahalad, Stuart Hart, Nancy Barry and the others who think a new, business, approach is needed to help combat poverty. It is, for sure. It helps create new products that the poor need and can afford, and can access. It helps create jobs. It empowers the poor and unleashes them do work hard to reduce their own poverty. It can be sustainable. It can be scalable. There are many many books and reports written about this approach, how it is changing the world, how it is changing the business world and how it is making aid and traditional appraoches to poverty reduction/eradication a waste of effort, time and money.

However, as much as I agree with them, I have to say that there are a number of things that determine poverty, and the business approach will nto solve all of them. It will not help put children in school, not will it get rid of corruption, or write laws that protect citizens, or protect citizens by enforcing those laws (though business could play creative roles in all of these, in some way).

Aid is still needed -more aid and better applied. Governance is a key issue, and one, unfortunately, where so little progress is being made. Ultimately irregardless of how one tries to reduce poverty, be it through aid, loans, business etc... a country needs a good government that sets the right framework for a country (i.e. laws that are implemented), does what is best for its citizens and so forth.

With issues like poverty and Climate Change, where incredibly fast progress needs to be made on a massive scale, there is a need to engage governments and improve the aid agenda (where actually some progress has been made, despite constant environmental degradation, increasingly unfair trade, increasing population growth, wars, greater incidence of diseases amongst others) AND for business to utilise business approaches to poverty reduction. Let's pay more attention to the business approach, but not forget the need for aid and 'traditional approaches to poverty reduction'.

Blanket statements criticising 'traditional approaches' as useless, are not useful. Instead one needs to see how they have helped and learn lessons to improve traditional approaches, and use their lessons in business approaches. Ultimately business will find it very hard (though possible) to thrive when there is no effective government creating an effective marketplace.

Why don't we care about Climate Change?

Dan Gilbert gives 4 reasons (PAIN):
1) Personal: Our brain cares more about tangible, social (i.e. people) threats that can be personified
2) Abrupt: Our brain cares a lot more about current threats than potential threats
3) Immoral: Our brain cares about unethical threats to us, and no-one has anyone in particular to blame Climate Change on, or any reason to see it as unethical.
4) Now: Our brain does not effectively notice slow changes, and therefore cares less

We are sleeping in a burning bed, and our senses are not aware of it!

Desperate...

We are getting desperate, having messed up the planet so badly, and continuing to do so, and without any real hope of any significant behaviour change until it is too late, we are having to rely on technology to save us from ourselves, technologies like geoengineering (which would change oru atmosphere artificially) or genetic engineering (to create organisms to generate energy from CO2).

Tragedy of the commons and climate change

Sustainable Development is really about the Tragedy of the Commons: the concept that when there is a common resource, each of us seeks to exploit it so much, that it becomes over exploited and thus depeleted so we all lose out.

This can be applied to almost anything and ultimately is an issue of how much competition is good, and how much collaboration is good. Nowadays there are numerous new ideas that are part-competition and part-collaboration, not the least the concept of open-source where something is created and then given away for free, or the concepts of wikis where contributors help create something for free, because they recognise that the value of what is created by all contributors will be beneficial to everyone.

As leaders we need to explore these problems and seek new solutions; we also need to examine waht solutions work and imitate them elsewhere. We need to be fast, we are depleting all known resources too fast. There are very few cases where we have collectively worked together to stop a particular resource being depleted, or even begun to rehabilitate it. Despite knowing that deforrestation is bad, deforrestation is getting worse, globally, not better. Despite knowing our sources of non-renewable energy are limited, we are using more, not less, of them. Despite knowing our population is growing too fast and each of us are consuming more than the planet has to offer, the global population continues to expand and individual consumption continues to expand.

In rare cases, we have managed to overcome issues, collectively, such as the hole in the Ozone layer, that is now no longer getting worse; but this was an easy issue to overcome, one that was really about technology and uncontroverisal political decisions. Even in cases of war, with real-time, immediate consequences of death, we are unable to solve collective action problems. The 'we' is both the losers, the outsiders and the winners.

The search still goes on for ways for each of us to understand the long-term negative impacts of our current actions on our own future. Not just on our children's future -but our own future. Can new forms of media and communication lead to new forms of collaboration, or will they lead to new forms of competition? What mix of collaboration and competition is requried to solve our problems -when is competition better and when is collaboration better, what happens when some want to compete and some want to collaborate?

This is the problem we have with climate change -where some see they lose they refuse to collaborate, but others see that without collaboration everyone will lose. The solution is to ignore the past, forget the past and move on. This is not easy, but is the only solution. We cannot complain about others being richer or better-off. We need to all work together to ensure a better future for us all, without worrying about the past, because if we continue to complain, criticize and seek retribution or compensation, we will not move forward. This is the problem -not just that we cannot see long-term, but that we cannot forget the past. That, the problem with human nature, is the real tragedy.

Can Green be a sign of status?

There comes a point when people move beyond buying out of neccessity and convenience to start buying for greater luxury and status. In China and parts of Asia it's fair to say that the environmental footprint of the poor is fairly low, but the middle classes is higher. Although many that buy cars argue it is a necessary purchase, the reality is that many cars are as much a status symbol than a neccessity. It is reasonable to expect comfort to be an important decision factor but is it unreasonable for status to be such an important factor?

For the upper middle classes, apart from the car, the choice of accommodation also affects one's environmental footprint. Again, though location and comfort are important factors, it is a matter of status: how one's spouse, parents, peers or business partners view your choices matters.

In travelling between Beijing and Shanghai, though the trains' sleeper carriages do contain their fair share of business travellers, most business travellers fly. It can be important to spend the night with one's family, but apart from that, taking the train has many benefits: the stations are on the subway so travelling to/from the station is not just cheap but there is no need to worry about traffic jams. The journey itself is comfortable and efficient -with a few hours to work or read before sleeping. In fact many business travellers i speak to have just never considered the train and are not against taking it, but are just used to flying and are not motivated enough to change.

There is absolutely no status to be gained by being 'green' in China. No-one is proud of taking the train, no-one is proud of buying a smaller (though still comfortable) car and no-one is proud to buy a green apartment. In fact though companies are proud of their environmentally friendly offices, none of them encourage staff to not fly. There are many schemes that work elsewhere to encourage cycling (i.e. suitable cycle storage and showers at work) or public transport (i.e. free public transport cards and financial incentives to use them). It is not cool to cycle to work.

What is needed is a shift in how status is gained, which is not just about being seen in a positive light for being green (like many who buy hybrid cars in the West) but more about being seen ina negative light for not being green. We might start to see this change if public opinion shows distaste at those using plastic bags, instead of a re-usable one. A few are buying fashionable re-usable bags now to seem cool, apparently. but this is not mainstream.

If it becomes mainstream, could it spread? Could 'green' be the real status gainer in China, or will it just affect the youth? If a sense of shame starts to develop that would be great, and maybe have a wider affect than the positive status of being 'green'.

In reality though this needs to lead to something bigger...to the demand for greener cars, greener apartments, environmentally friendly clothing and so on. How can we make 'green' a status symbol beyond the fringes of society, so that demand affects supply leading to retailers, developers, salesmen etc developing greener products, because of the demand for them. How can we create this demand for green life? How can we start to make it embarassing not to use a reusable bag, to fly, to consume too much (waste food or buy too many clothes)?

Although this is yet to even affect the 'cool crowd' in the West it might not be unreasonable to target the 'status' crowd in China (as well as the 'cool' crowd; though the 'status' crowd are those with a bigger impact). It is not just the plastic bag example that could offer a glimmer of hope. The other example is of course the earthquake where amongst the 'status crowd' you were looked down upon if you did not donate a certain amount or attend certain fundraisers. If it was possible to create such an atmosphere because of the earthquake -and that, like china's current environmental crisis, also had no direct impact on the 'status' crowd, is it possible?

The situations are not the same, but there is some hope.

Who is pressurising Chinese companies in Africa?

What comes into my mind when reading some of the endless articles of Chinese companies irresponsible practices in Africa, like this from Bloomberg news, is not the reasons why it is happening (of course there is pressure to keep costs low and pressure to access resources), not if Chinese companies are any worse than Western companies (either past or present) or other 'developing countries' companies (presumably not that much difference, but more Chinese companies out there and China is in the spotlight more) -but i wonder what the people running these companies are thinking.

I am a strong believer that people are inherently good, though also selfish. This thus means many people will put themselves over others, but if it is a matter of 'a bit more wealth' vs 'death for a child', i am mystified how people can, as human beings, make such a choice. The answer might be that such a choice never happens -that poor decisions create accidents, rather than people purposely acting irresponsibly knowing the impact it will have. Besides, if it is not forced labour, if it was so bad, wouldn't the workers find work elsewhere?

Is not this just the same as has happened (and still does happen, though not so explicitly any more) in China for decades? If China has improved (somewhat), will Africa improve too? Why did China improve and what lessons might this hold for Africa? Does Africa need a strong state to establish and enforce laws (though China's strong state only selectively enforced its own laws)?

Does Africa need more pressure from the West (presumably this makes no difference, as there has been pressure for a long time with no impact) or does Africa (note, the use of the term Africa in this post is inappropriate, but we will use it for simplicity) need other forms of pressure -from customers (Western end-customers might care; direct Chinese middle-men or end-Chinese customers probably do not care), from media (Chinese media will rarely criticize Chinese companies), from Chinese NGOs (are there any that do this kind of thing, apart from INGOs in China?) or from other groups..... I have to say, it does not look good.

The pressures that helped China clean up its act somewhat (some will say that it is still getting worse in China!) do not exist in Africa, so I am wondering how can we encourage some kind of pressure...from Chinese NGOs on Chinese companies, from Chinese media on Chinese companies, from Chinese government on Chinese companies or from any other source of pressure -ideally inside China and ideally with some actual leverage on Chinese companies in Africa. Any ideas?

On a slightly different note, many of the companies that get into the news about Africa are either state-owned, privately owned or micro entrepreneurs. What is the role of the Chinese government in monitoring these activities? Is there a role at all? For some activities, where there is funding from the Chinese state (through the export-import bank) there is a clear role and clear line of responsibility, and the Exim bank, as it is known, is claiming to take its responsibility seriously (though not as seriously as other International banking institutions that have signed up to the Equator Principles and similar collaborative agreements).

For the others operating in China, the government is unlikely to see a need to interfere at all. There is no such 'Alien Tort Act' for Chinese companies operating overseas, as there is for American companies; which can be prosecuted in the USA for irresponsible activities outside the USA. Any lawyers out there know of any Chinese legislation that could be use, say by an INGO, inside China to sue the companies mentioned in the Bloomberg report?

The limits of strategic community programs

In Asia businesses are starting to focus their community programs, make them 'strategic', leverage their limited resources as much as possible, instigate lasting and large-scale change, increase their community investments as the region's importance to their business grows and explore ways of distinguishing their programs from the rest as well as a number of other trends. This article aims to identify the limits of such trends in order to guide businesses as they develop their programs.

Best practise for an NGO: Identify the problem, identify the best solution, get the resources required to implement solution, use resources when needed (i.e. may vary depending on implementation progress).

Best practise for a business: Identify a problem related to the business (i.e. in the business's local community, related to business's line of work etc), identify what the benefit is to the business to adressing the problem, identify what resources the business has that can be used to address the problem (and that bring the desired benefits), provide said resources. Attach strings to ensure resources are used as benefits the business (i.e. location of implementation), as convenient for the business (i.e. volunteers) and to ensure appropriate use of resources.

Though the above statements are very brief, they describe the dilemna that exists whereby the way an NGO and the way a business addresses problems are very different, and can even be come incompatible in some cases.

Businesses should benefit from their community programs and they should seek to utilise their specific resources as best they can, but this may only be part of the solution. It is rare a business has all the resources to meet the NGO's needs -or the willingness to provide all of those resources.

The result is an imperfect provision of resources to the NGO, restricting an NGO's ability to tackle the problem as it would wish -but this is accepted as a sacrifice in order to get neccesary resources. In some cases NGOs can seek multiple resource providers and combine them, but in many cases this does not work due to business's requirements for 'exclusivity', location specificity, different financial and impact reporting requirements and so on.

Now this situation might only occur for so-called 'strategic' community programs, and not every program need be strategic as every program will vary by business type, location, sector, size etc.

Additionally it musy be recognised that though business can be the solution to many social and environmental problems (as well as economic ones), they cannot solve all of them. Though strategic community engagement is a good thing, as are other programs engaging with the environment and other issues, it must be recognised that there are other limits as to what business should or is willing to support.

There are other resource providers out there -each with different roles to play, resources that can be provided and interests including governmental funding, aid funding, individual charitable donations, foundation funding and so on. Some issues business will not touch, either becuase the link to the business is too weak, the issue is too sensitive or business does not have the required resources.

One benfit of a corporate foundation, especially for US companies, is that the foundation can have a wider remit and address issues the business might not want to. In fact the more strategic businesses become with their community programs, the more there seems to be the need, in Asia especially, to keep some money and other resources aside for non-strategic purposes.

Increasingly businesses are recognising the importance of actually engaging the community through employees as volunteers and this is a welcome move to adding value to communities and educating employees, providing them extra skills and so on. Unfortunately the side effect of this is that, in Asia, most businesses are therefore more willing to support programs in major cities close to where their customers, employees and target markets are. Indeed, in this case, a strategic community program can be crafted, and this should be encouraged.

The problem with this is that most of the social and environmental problems, in China, and other parts of Asia (though not all), are not in the major cities but in rural areas, away from the major cities. In these circumstances resources are not going where they are most needed and instead are going where is most suitable for businesses. Again, this is just good CSR, but is not good for development and this is the conflict.

In fact, in 1 example, businesses are falling over themselves to support migrant children because, as an issue, it is a hot issue, it is no longer politically sensitive, it is an urban issue and it is a ‘children’ and an ‘education’ issue. This is not a criticism for businesses who are supporting this issue and it is still worthy (though, increasingly less so as the government policy changes and government allocates more resources towards it, such as in Shanghai). It is especially a large issue in the smaller cities, though these are often places businesses are only just starting to touch with their community programs.

At the end of the day a little money can make a big difference and any difference a business can make is good for society and good for the business -inspiring employees, generating good PR and generating goodwill. So as businesses grapple with this issue of focussing their community programs but at the same time wanting to do what is best for development, they need to:

• Recognise the limits of what they can do
• Recognise the NGO perspective and needs
• Be flexible and explore different options and partners
• Recognise how important small grants (or volunteers, in-kind product etc) can be, especially in stimulating smaller NGOs' development (even if these small grants are not ‘strategic’)
• Explore partnerships with other businesses with complementary resources and aligned interests (i.e. pool resources)
• Explore supporting joint initiatives (e.g. Chambers of commerce, World Bank etc) in order to reduce transaction costs in developing suitable programs and to contribute to programs that otherwise are too big to do alone
• Continue to support employee driven local initiatives, even if not strategically aligned with the business
• Develop a coherent plan within different business units and within corporate foundations, so that where foundations are more separate from businesses, there is less overlap and foundations can focus on those areas business units might not be interested in
• Explore ways to support programs and projects that might not be such an obvious strategic fit, but can still be a good fit with a bit of thought making the partnership mutually beneficial.

.....For example, this could involve supporting programs in rural areas and sending volunteers there (and covering these costs and time off) for a number of days. Such volunteering activities can be used as team building activities as well as providing real eye opening experiences to employees and fully immersing them in communities for a longer time.
.....For example, looking at longer term secondments that can bring tangible benefits to the secondee, as well as the NGO.

This article is not a criticism of strategic community programs; it is an attempt to help explain the limits of such programs and to explore options for overcoming some of these limits. It is, though, intended to sow some ideas for readers to contemplate how businesses can be a part of the solution for those issues that many businesses are not yet part of –but that definitely still need solutions to come from somewhere. There are other resource providers for many of these solutions, but as we all recognise, there are some resources foundations, government etc just cannot provide that businesses can: be it brand awareness, staff expertise, technological expertise or a multitude of other useful resources businesses can apply to make the World a better place –for those in habiting it, and for the businesses that depend on it.

Fast-tracking poverty reduction

In the world of poverty reduction, shortcuts will not work, but there are various ways to speed up the process and increase the impact of projects (such as that mentioned in the previous post):

+For example, it is now popular to try to leverage your resources to gain other resources so that the impact of your contribution is bigger. Other resources could be from governments, other businesses, other partners or from local populations (remember that when locals have to contribute for something they always value it and respect it more).

+Another popular option is to organise a competitive process. The idea being that although the contribution only reaches (say) 5 people, (maybe) 15 people were inspired to try (and thus might continue even without your prize) and you can be sure the person/project you support is the best one to support. Competitions can be a great way to discover and promote new ideas especially.

+Partnerships, as always, can (though not always) create situations where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, especially, if in the case of a poverty related project, the value of the in-kind contribution would otherwise be prohibitively high (products, labour, advice etc).

+Learning from previous lessons and sharing your lessons with others helps ensure that projects become iteratively better, and if your project was successful or developed some resources that can be useful for others, they should be promoted and shared to increase their impact.

+Although organising conferences is an old favourite of many, and criticised and expensive by many others, there is a need for these kinds of activities. Though much could more could be written on these, it is important such events have clearly defined goals, are designed to achieve those goals and is not an event in isolation. Ultimately some events, like the Global Clinton Initiative or TED have value incredibly greater than the cost of organising them, though for others I am not sure. Tip: if your conference is related to poverty reduction or environmental sustainability, don't have expensive or environmentally unsustainable events!

+Choosing between starting something new and potentially successful vs. selecting something already successful and scaling it up is difficult. Both are needed and both have great impact -ultimately the choice here will depend on the specific options available.

+Try to use human nature and the market, rather than always trying to change it (though there is a place for this as well). Even altering is easier than changing! The old saying of 'banging your head against a brick wall' is very valid and many people do not realise this. Though the temptation is to head straight for the target, a more convoluted path may, in fact, be better. Incentives and punishments need to be used in the right way and in the right combination.

Making a difference to education

Always a hot topic and ultimately the bedrock of creating a sustainable society, for without quality and accessible education there can be no government officials, judges, teachers, doctors, engineers, journalists etc and it will be harder to reduce corruption and inequality or increase participation.

It is common to focus on helping those who really need it, and making a massive difference to those who are disadvantaged and lack the opportunities that others have. This is not a bad thing, especially if the school or students have (or will have) a relationship to the company, i.e. by being in the company's 'local community'. Scholarships can be great especially if they are motivating others as well as those who get the scholarship, and if they are really helping the needy.

But, for these initiatives, a holistic perspective must be taken. The most needy might not apply for the scholarship or be able to take advantage if they have to care for their family or must work to earn income for their family (so does one provide a scholarship to the student and also cover the opportunity cost of that student not generating income?). A school might look great, but what is the quality of the teaching? In many poor areas, even with trained teachers and good facilities, is there ongoing support for the teachers and are the children actually healthy enough to attend school and concentrate?

A school is not just teachers and students, it is also head-teachers, local education officials, parents and even sisters/brothers. All of these (and more) are stakeholders in the school to varying extents and through participation ideas and efforts from all can be generated and then implemented. But participation does not come naturally and must be facilitated to ensure those who do not want to participate, who are afraid to participate, who are unable to participate -do participate.

Support also must take a long-term and wider perspective in order to understand any side-effects from the program. An extreme case could be that the government has money for the school, but because of a corporation's contribution, that money ends up in someone's pockets, but to all affective purposes, what the money was earmarked for was achieved and thus the books can easily be amended! And what about the other schools, or the other students, that do not get the support of the company -how do they feel? How can the support in one location rub-off onto others? Anything is possible as long as such an approach is taken.

This kind of effort is not easy, and this is why companies rarely do this themselves and instead partner with another organisation, but a company needs to understand the issues to thus select a suitable partner and help that partner (whose capacity may well be weak, if they operate in an area that needs help). Reducing poverty is not easy and as with the case in China, the poor are often stuck in a rut. A certain proportion can get out of poverty relatively easily, but for the rest, it takes a long time and a lot of effort.

How can a corporation make a difference?

If a corporation takes a broad aim of 'to improve the environment, to support education, to increase transparency' or anything else, for various reasons -selfish and altruistic, what are its best options?

Well, ultimately the biggest difference occurs from systemic changes and behaviour changes -none of which are easy, but which a corporation can support by working with government, with business associations and with initiatives (i.e. research, pilots, advocacy).

The next step would be to support others that are helping make systemic change; they are often doing this by raising awareness or improving accountability (naming and shaming, for example) and this could be the media or civil society or initiatives to build participation in decision making. This, again, often requires supporting existing initiatives and helping scale them up -or it could be to seed something new (but that will be sustainable or will have a defined end date).

Next could be to improve the ability for enforcement of laws and to improve the ability to meet legal requirements or implement legal reforms which may mean supporting NGOs, training government officials, training teachers, supporting training institutes, organising skills sharing etc. Supporting Universities can be a good way to support promising research, build capacity in teaching institutions etc.

Next, is the difference the corporation can make itself through its operations and its products. Making its operations more sustainable (Reducing waste, improving safety etc) and by developing products that are more sustainable.

Finally, once the corporation has got itself to a decent level it needs to start helping others reach this level, it needs to raise the bar. Not only does this provide massive benefit for the company in terms of PR, but it also raises the standard and forces its competitors to meet it. Best practise needs to be shared and others inspired to achieve. Influence should be used, especially on business partners and suppliers.

Ultimately it is the market that affects businesses and if the market mechanism is used to force others to improve, whilst the corporation stays ahead of the market, the corporation will always be first to market (since it is creating the market!). It is thus in its best interest to effect legal change that influences the market and to support the implementation of that legal change.