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.